A question about defining stock

[RMagnusson]

I have a CAD drawing of a valve cover in mastercamX that we will be machining . We will be machining the actual parts from a casting thats fairly close to the final product. I wanted to define the stock in mastercam to be the same as the casting, and lay my CAD drawing inside of that.

But it seems that I either have to use a simple bounding box and add my valvecover inside of it (which seems a waste as the mill will spend tons of time "milling" where there isnt any material), or use my solid as the stock.

Am I understanding my options correctly?

[RMagnusson]

Or if that question is kinda whack, how about this: When is it appropriate to use wireframe for a part? or surfaces? or solids?

[MoldMaker]

I use wireframe when not doing 3d toolpaths.
with the exception of contour (multisurf) paths for roughing shapes.
That is just the way Mastercam and I have evolved with each other since V3/4. If I were a new user I would focus more on solids/surface where applicable, thats where its all going.
Ken

[smoa1980]

try creating a roughing progam to rough out the bounding box to the approx. size of the casting. then run the program and save it as an STL file. then you can use that file to define your stock. Look up STL in the help menu

[RMagnusson]

Thanks for the advice Moldmaker. Luckily the guy that inported the design from autocad did so in solid form which forced me to start working with surfaces/solids right away. I'm glad to hear I'm moving in the right direction.

smoa, that sounds intriguing. I will have to read on stl files but I understand the basic concept of what you're saying.

Thanks guys.