How to pocket a pattern automatically

[drmosh]

First off - I'm not sure if the title is the best way to describe my question, but bear with me. Second - I'm not the worlds best Dolphin user, so again, bear with me.

Imagine I have a very simple design (for example a simple cross or asterisk) composed of line segments. Now imagine that I used a 1" cutter and simply cut along the paths, with the cutter centered along each line. Easy to image, right? Now what I want to do is use a 1/4" cutter and cut the pattern so that it *automatically* ends up with the exact same result as the pattern cut with the 1" cutter.

I know that I could add circles to the ends of the lines with the right radius, add more lines, join vertices, etc. to create an outline that I could then create a pocket cutting contour that would match the profile of the 1" cutter. But what I want to know is if there is a way to *automatically* get DCAD to do all that work for me. Or at least, what's the simplest way to get the same result?

Thanks alot and by the way - I think DCAD is GREAT! It's the most easy-to-use and intuitive cad/cam I've ever used.

mt

[Chad_Clark]

Yes sir,

The answer to your question is Dolphin will do this for you automatically and easily. You do it by using the area clear function in our CAM program. You will draw just the outside shape in DCAD and then use the DCAM to do an area clear and that is where you will tell it the step over you want to use and the tool information. I am going to make a simple video for you in the morning. Also feel free to go to our website (www.dolphincadcamusa.com) and check out the support page. You can call that phone number and I will be glad to help you out.

Chad

[drmosh]

Chad,

Thanks and I'll contact you tomorrow to talk through it more, but I think your comment about "you make the outside shape and do an area clear..." indicates that I didn't explain my question well enough.

The point I was making is this: if you take the example I gave, a simple cross with two line segments and drop a 1" diameter cutter down on it and run the contour, you'd get a pocket cut into your material with edges exactly .5" on either side of each line. That's the natural "contour" the cutter would leave. What I want to do is cut the *exact* same resulting contour, except I want to use (for example) a .25" cutter.

I don't want to do anything at all to the drawing itself - i'd like to find a way to have DCAM somehow do it on the CAM side, not the CAD side. So somehow to manipulate settings in the CAM section so that the result with the .25" cutter was absolutely indistinguishable from the 1" cut. To do that, DCAM would have to do an "auto-area clear" routine because obviously a .25" cutter can't possibly do in one pass what a 1" cutter would do - it would have to be an area-clear operation for the .25" cutter.

The ultimate point of all this is that for certain dado cuts/inlays for what I do, it's a lot easier to think of the centerline of a cut, instead of the inner/outer edge coords of an area.

Thanks and again, I'll try to contact you tomorrow to talk it through in more details.

mt