Eliminating Pockets

[robinsoncr]

Hi Everyone,

I'm trying to get this guitar body ready for the cnc. I think it would be much better to eliminate the pockets for the pickups, neck socket and hardware holes. That way, I could machine the surface of the body as a whole, then use pocketing tools to machine out the cavities and drill routines to bore the hardware holes.

Question is: Now that I have created these pockets, how do I put a surface back over them? I would like to leave the bottom of the pockets there. I would then have a reference to do the pocketing routine. I have tried researching the manual to no avail. I also tried deleting the poly-surfaces of the pockets and then trying the rebuild command but it didn't work.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Chris R.

[RandMan]

On most of them you can do an untrim command and select the edge of the hole. Since a NURB surface is a big square when you untrim it, it removes the trim information which makes the hole.

On the neck pocket: Duplicate the edges (dupedge) draw a line to connect the front and then do a edgesurf or whatever to create a cover surface. This approach won't build a duplicate but it should be close enough to keep your bit from falling in the hole.

Nice work. I generally keep a copy of a surface like a top for machining and then make the pretty one with the cavities.

[robinsoncr]

Randman, thanks for the tips! I'll give'em a try.
Chris

[JOM]

Chris,

It is also possible to use Patch.
1) Use Solid Tools-Extract surface and extract the top surface.
2) Use Curve from Object-Duplicate border and duplicate the borders of the trimmed top surface.
3) Use Surface-Patch and create patch surfaces from the borders of the pockets.

I also did create some sample toolpaths in madCAM on your model. I am not sure if this is the way you would like to have it but I hope it will give you some help.

Joakim

[robinsoncr]

Joakim, that is exactly what I wanted to do! And that's exactly how I wanted to machine the part. Thank you very much! I'll let you know how it works on the cnc.

Thanks,

Chris R