toolpath showing center of the cutter

[Dan B]

Displaying toolpaths from the tool center is the right way to do it, in my opinion. If the toolpaths were displayed from the tool tip, you would never catch it if you program with an endmill but intended to use a ballcutter, or vise versa. Also, just picture a toolpath displayed from the tooltip using a ballnose cutter and cutting an arc in the Z axis. The tool contact point changes, so the cutter path wouldn't look right. The actual contact point of the tool wouldn't be the actual tip, so the display could be deceptive. Of course the display could be calculated to display correctly, but displaying from the tool center makes this unnecessary. Check out these illustrations which hopefully illustrates the potential issue.

Dan