Very weird situation...

[saturnnights]

I'm designing a simple heart in Rhino - made up of curves (interpolated point). Basically, I opened a bitmap and traced it with that function in Rhino. Then I copied the one heart and moved it next to the original - just two of them. I have a box around it... I've done this a bazillion times with other designs and had no issue.

Okay, now here's where it gets weird. I save the original as a Rhino file and then a copy as a .dxf. I open the .dxf in Sheetcam 3.0.2 and the heart on the right side is slightly bigger than the one on the left!!! ?????

Okay, so maybe it's a Rhino issue? I made another heart in another CAD program and loaded it into Sheetcam and it did the same thing!!! Both of these .dxf files were Autocad 12.

Another oddity... The box in which the two hearts are positioned is 3/4" tall and 2" wide. The hearts are positioned near the left and right edges - in maybe 1/8". Okay... Now if I slide the "bigger" heart on the right slowly toward the left and each time, reopen it in Sheetcam, it hits a point where all of a sudden it's the correct size. Slide it a little to the right and it grows again.

I've manipulated this like crazy and can't get it to stop doing this.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Mark

[locost_cam]

That is really strange. Could you send me a couple of dxfs, one with the hearts showing as different sizes and one with the hearts both the same. email les {at} sheetcam.com (replace the {at} with @).

Les

[ger21]

Are you sure it's not just a display issue? Maybe they are the same size, but just don't appear to be?

[saturnnights]

Originally Posted by locost_cam That is really strange. Could you send me a couple of dxfs, one with the hearts showing as different sizes and one with the hearts both the same. email les {at} sheetcam.com (replace the {at} with @). Les

Sure - I'll send them in a little while - need my coffee first

[saturnnights]

Originally Posted by ger21 Are you sure it's not just a display issue? Maybe they are the same size, but just don't appear to be?

I thought that at first, but I aligned them both with their respective edges of the drawing and ran Sheetcam and if you modify the size of the end mills, you can actually count differences in the number of passes in the toolpath. Also, if you load the gcode into Mach3 and look at the toolpaths, you can see it there.

I'll send Les a couple of my files and see if he can figure out what's happening and then I'll post my resolution...

[saturnnights]

Originally Posted by locost_cam That is really strange. Could you send me a couple of dxfs, one with the hearts showing as different sizes and one with the hearts both the same. email les {at} sheetcam.com (replace the {at} with @). Les

Well, it's not doing it anymore... I'm thinking that when I shut down the PC and restarted it yesterday morning, that was the equivalent of rebooting and "fixed" something. The hearts were different in size on the screen and number of toolpaths, but Sheetcam now shows the same number of toolpaths in the right places so I don't know if it's fixed or was just a Windows os fluke? Anyway, I said, "What the heck" and ran the file on my mill and measured the hearts and they're identical, so at this point, I'll just assume that it was "one of those Windows things" and not worry about it. If I can get it to happen again, I'll snap a screenshot along with packaging up the .dxf file.

Thanks for your willingness to help, but speaking as a former IT pro, this wouldn't be the first time I've seen Windows as the culprit. Sheetcam is still a fantastic application.

Thanks,
Mark

[locost_cam]

I hate it when that happens. I am always left wondering if the problem is a SheetCam issue or something else.

Thanks,
Les