Not able to see any toolpaths, geometry etc in simulation mode. Am I doing something wrong?
Operations:
Simulation:
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Hi Bill, another thing I noticed is that your tool is a 1mm diameter bit but your project is only ~10x5mm in size - judging by what appears to be the default grid with major lines every 10mm and 2mm subdivision lines. The red/green/blue axes are also 1" in length, so the project is pretty tiny. There doesn't appear to be any areas inside of a project that small that the 1mm bit would be able to remove material from without infringing on the parts of the input image that aren't supposed to have material removed from them, maybe a peck or two around the wrists holding the glasses? The horizontal milling operation will only remove material where it can be removed from without cutting into parts of the project that rise through the depth of each cut layer:
Hi Bill, I did manage to solve one issue with the horizontal operation - one which is responsible for producing the error you're seeing but it allows for a totally separate problem to occur. There won't be a quick fix for the horizontal operation that I foresee, and it's going to require a bit of work to get working more solidly. I would suggest experimenting with larger parameters when using complex images and try to work your way down to the step and cut depth sizes you're looking to use.
I *could* temporarily 'fix' the horizontal operation but it would involve stripping the existing sorting mechanism down (which is already sub-par as things stand) and runtimes would increase greatly as it would effectively order the cuts layer-by-layer, not moving on to the next cut depth increment until all cuts at the current level are complete. For some images with a lot of individual islands/pockets this means a lot of rapid movements between toolpaths. The ideal and optimal sort involves detecting when there are groups of cuts that form a pocket and linking them together so that the tool will effectively carve all the way to the bottom of a pocket when there are no other neighboring cuts to make. The existing sorting algorithm does this, somewhat, definitely not as much as I had hoped for but without it the toolpaths generated would result in many more rapids in most cases. Perhaps I could add in an option.
Personally, I'd rather not even touch it until after I've gone back to the drawing board and re-written the entire sorting algorithm from scratch. The individual cut moves themselves are solid, I just need a better way of linking them together, and it's tricky because they generate at depth increments across the whole image.
As for the simulation not generating I'm not exactly sure what the situation is, I don't have much to go on until you can give me more details. Is the horizontal operation generating a visible toolpath? If it is, have you tried lowing the mesh quality under the config menu in 'simulation settings'? What's the logfile have to say about the simulation generating?
Thanks!