How do I make "minimum distance" work in V carving

[gumbyrulesyou]

The minimum distance feature in V carving in VM6.0.7.3 doesn't seem to be working - Checking the box doesn't look like it's doing the trick (yes I checked it BEFORE regenerating)

This tool path took something like 4 hours to generate on an 8 core I7 with 24 gigs of ram... and has close to 40,000 goto's in it, so that might have SOMETHING to do with it, but I'm afraid half the run time will be in rapids...which even at 2000 IPM is a long time by the looks of it. Help? Suggestions?

[DareBee]

Hi Andy

I have no "fix" for you, just a couple of tips.

What I have done in similar situations is to break up the area to be machined into multiple containment regions.
This will
- limit the maximum "air cut" to the length of the region.
- reduce generate time and subsequent re-generates
- as soon as 1 area is generated the machine can start cutting
- all other Mops are likely the same so just copy/paste and change containment region.

There is a good chance you know all this already - just trying to help

Derek

[gumbyrulesyou]

Here's the result of directional sorting... Equally or even more traumatic than minimum distance. It just seems like it's not working. I don't get it. The order changes, but it's not any better.

I do realize that generating it in pieces is better, and I've tried it, and it keeps the number of 80" long rapids down, but still, it's a pain in the butt, and with all the compound shapes, if I cut the wrong one, then all my insides are outsides, etc etc and the artist has a freak out. It's something like 4500 objects in file.

Dear MecSoft, please make this work right! It works in pocketing mode OK - All these rapids are adding up to huge amounts of lost time and $$...and that's bad for everybody.

Thanks!

[MecSoft Support]

The Sorting is done to the regions/curves before the toolpaths are computed. Since the V-carve toolpath involves interference checking between multiple curves, this will break up the tool-path and this is what results in the jumping around of the tool. We are working on a sorting algorithm that will work on the toolpath rather than the regions/curves. This is not quite so easy especially when you have multiple Z levels and care should be taken to order them correctly so that we are not jumping Z levels.