Working with Chains and Entities

[John Tribe]

I produce the CAD drawing in Turbo CAD and export it as a dxf. In Lazy cam I can reduce the number of entities a lot by setting the sensitivity to lines and spaces down to 0.035 so that connections are made.

The resulting drawing that Lazy Cam produces is quite confused to begin with. I first tell it to layer the drawing and then do a clean.

Next step is to re-arrange the chains into their proper layer and then into an order that reduces the rapids. I do this with simply drag and drop things to where I want them.

My problem comes with entities. Usually a chain with have about 4 entities and I simply cannot move or reorder them and they are causing a number of rapids that aren't necessary if the order was changed.

I have attached a file (dxf) that shows the problem (can't attach a .tap file). The teeth of the gear on the right side are just fine, however those in the lower left are full of rapids and I can't seem to eliminate them. Since the teeth are all the same designed shape they should all cut the same.

How can I manage entities?

[ger21]

That's a really bad .dxf file. Most of the lines overlap or are short and don't connect. The outside teeth are not in a flat XY plane, looks like they are rotated if you look at it from a side view. The center lines are at different Z height from one end to another. I'm not sure how LazyCAM can do anything with this file.

You're best bet would be to redraw it properly, with all enities flat and on the same plane, at Z=0.

Here's a side view from Autocad. All you should see is a single, flat line.