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Material management

When the geometrical configuration of the rough finished part and tooling creates non-machinable areas, TopSolid'Cam automatically creates a ‘residual’. This material left by the previous machining operation can later be machined using a smaller tool.

Also, any machining operation takes away material from the rough part! TopSolid'Cam constantly updates the representation of the rough for the following machining operations.

The following illustration shows the reaction of TopSolid'Cam depending on the possibilities 1 and 2:

The part to machine has a flat plane and a hole:

The user decides to start off by drilling the hole (solution 1). In that case, the drilling has to start all the way from the top of the part, since the flat plane is not machined yet. The drilling depth starts from the top of the rough part, but the effective hole depth starts from the flat plane. In order to optimize the machining, the operator can invert the two machining operations (shown in solution 2) and start off by machining the flat plane. Since TopSolid'Cam knows that the flat plane is machined, the drilling depth can start from the top of the flat plane. This simple operation inversion done using the operation sorting capabilities of TopSolid'Cam optimizes the operations and the associated rough.

This other example illustrates the creation of a groove before an Nibilling (1). In that case, the grooving operation is automatically extended to the rough of the part. When the extend contouring is created before, the grooving operation is only extended to the extend of the rough part, since it was updated from the previous Nibilling.

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