Advanced Toolpath Editing in PowerMill 2019

CHRISTOPHER MARION: My name is Christopher Marion. I am from the Windsor, Ontario, Canada office. If you don't know where Windsor is, it's a small little town just on the other side of Detroit, Michigan. With me today, I've got Todd Steele and I've got Rob Walker. So if anything happens during my time here in the next 90 minutes, if you get any help with anything, just feel free to put your hand up. Just please don't interrupt me. Just put your hand up on one of those guys will come over and assist you.

So the class title is described as advanced toolpath editing PowerMill. How many people here have used PowerMill or are using PowerMill right now? One person, Rob. So I mean on a day in, day out basis?

AUDIENCE: Yes.

CHRISTOPHER MARION: OK. The class was originally tailored to be full advanced, but as you start looking at the class list coming through it's like well, there's going to be a lot of people that are just kind of testing the waters out. So the first session, we're going to break this down into three sessions, basically. The first session is going to be right from the get go. We're just going to go over some basic items. And then we're going to get into more of the advanced items later on towards the end of the class. So even a user that's been using the software, you might pick up some things on the way, right?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

CHRISTOPHER MARION: OK. So again, my name, Chris, Chris for short. Christopher [INAUDIBLE]. Just call me Chris.

So people that do not know what PowerMill is. It's basically a dedicated CAD CAM or CAD system that produces a quick calculation, high efficiency, safe tool pass. It's got comprehensive finishing strategies for basically every industry out there. So if you're doing Blisk blade, we have dedicated strategies for doing Blisk and blade. If you're doing tool mold work, there's dedicated strategies for doing rib machining. So additive strategies have just came out in the last year. So if you are doing DED, we do support additive toolpaths. None of that's going to occur in this class, but just keep that in the back your mind. So we will be going into the last bullet point there on the list is the flexible toolpath editing and optimization.

So again, just the lab overview. Some of these changes are going to be just simple changes. Could be just more like a feed rate change or a lead in, lead out movement change. And then we're going to get to some more of the complex changes towards avoiding some maybe potential collisions on the machine tool. Or maybe just modifying the tool axis behavior.

So in this lab, if you guys are taking labs throughout the week, normally there's a folder on the desktop for your data set. In here when you open up the software, the data set's going to come in with it, OK? So you don't need to drag and drop files and everything's going to be inside the software itself. But if, by chance, the data set disappears for you in the Explorer on the left hand side, there's a tab at the very top of the ribbon interface labeled Autodesk University 2018. All of those will bring in the data for whatever session we're talking about at that time, OK?

So actually, while we're on the discussion here. So just some terminology you're going to hear in the next 90 minutes if you're not a PowerMill user is, again, the Explorer. Explorer's on the left-hand side there. That's where things get populated as we build things in PowerMill. So if we bring in models, you're going to see a model all put inside the models branch. Toolpaths. When we start populating toolpaths, again the branch is going to populate. The ribbon interface at the very top is where we need to get to to access certain commands.

All right. So unfortunately, you're going to just see this as being more or less a wait time before the actual class gets started. But the guys that have no idea how PowerMill works we're just going to spend about five minutes just going through using the mouse controls, because that-- again, in the next 90 minutes. If you don't know how to use the mouse, it's going to be painful. You're just going to be sitting there fumbling around with the mouse. So five minutes, we're going to go through the user interface and some of the mouse controls.

So on the desktop, there is a PowerMill startup icon. So if you double click that your session should open. And on the left-hand side there in the Explorer, you're going to see this guy here, and this guy will open up most of the data that we're going to work on today. So I'll give a couple seconds here to load up. And once it loads up we will press on the Autodesk University Las Vegas 2018. And there's two spots that we're going to work in.

So the first spot, the model manipulation, is going to go through just how to manipulate your models and use the mouse to move your models around or select items. So every Autodesk software has that little nice ViewCube in the top right-hand corner, so if you're familiar with Inventor or AutoCAD, this guy is going to be pretty familiar with you guys. So just hover your mouse over somewhere on the ViewCube, selecting the little indicator, and the box will turn the view into that orientation.

Moving down the list here, model rotation. So if I click on one of these images inside the Explorer here, it's going to load up just a simple dummy model. So every image in that Explorer will open up the same model. So if you mess something up, just click on the image and it'll bring the same model back in. So rotating the model is the center mouse button. Just pressing the center mouse button in, rotating the model around, will allow you to rotate and move the model to whatever side that we want to look at. All right. Entity selections, a left mouse click, is just selecting something in space. I'm selecting the model, I'm selecting hitting the left mouse button click.

So menus are right mouse menu clicks. So if I were to click out in the graphic space it's just going to open up a default menu. But if I were to right click on say, the model, it's going to open up different options for me. And that goes for same thing inside the Explorer. If I were to right click on one of the branches in the Explorer, so the toolpath branch or the boundary branch, it's going to give me items. That's going to give me options.

And then down the list, number pad hotkeys. So this will just allow me to use the hotkeys on my keyboard to mimic the-- of course, mine's not working right now. There we go. So number lock has to be on. So Control-5 would be a top view, Control-6 would be a side view, and then all your isometric views are the keys on the outside looking into the number five. So 1,3, 9 and 7 give your isometric views.

And then zooming controls. On the right-hand side in the Viewing toolbar there is an option here to zoom. So this little flyout menu comes out and it allows me to zoom to a box. So if I wanted to zoom in to a particular area, I can use that option with the magnifying glass on the box. If I click it once, the icon changes inside the graphic interface.

And if I just make a selection box by holding the left mouse button down, dragging it to the opposing corner and letting go, it will zoom into that location. That's probably going to be the easiest way for you guys in this class to move around or zoom in, zoom out. You can use the scroll wheel back and forth, but that's just really clunky and it just, you know. It's really hard to really find tune your zoom. And then down at the very bottom there is a little hotkey, a little trick.

If you're not familiar with that. It's the Control and the Shift key. Hold those down and then make that same selection box with your center mouse button. That'll zoom you right into where you need to get to. All good with that? OK. That's-- again, that's one of the important things I want to show you guys, because if you're not familiar with PowerMill you're just going to be like, how do I rotate? How do I get to where I need to get to? I know it's quick and easy, but at least you hopefully you keep that in the back your mind.

So in the handout, it'll basically describe the same things I just mentioned to you. If you guys go back and you want to play around with this at your workplace or at home, you can download the 30 day trial of PowerMill and you can download the dataset as well. The dataset is going to react a little bit differently if you open up the projects by themselves. But if you take the dataset and install it in your C drive. How about this. After class, if you are really interested in doing this back at home, I'll show you how to set up the dataset to work exactly like we're doing in class, OK?

All right. So moving forward, We're going to go into the first session, so just go back to the PowerPoint here. And this first session, all we're going to do is really go over it again. We're going to start at the top, just go over some really basic editing options, basic meaning this might be more of advanced function for users that are coming from a different CAM system, but for PowerMill, there is really some basic, basic editing options here.

And then we're going to get into maybe some more intermediate or even some advanced features towards the bottom, but we're only going to spend about 30 minutes. So I'm going to go through these examples. I'll take my time, especially at the very beginning, especially since you guys are new. I'll take my time. And then as we start going down the list, I'll start kind of speeding things up a little bit, because I want to get through everything if possible in 30 minutes.

OK. So to get to the first session in the Explorer, if you hit this arrow it'll bring you back to the option here to go back into the Autodesk University fileset, and we're going to hit the toolpath editing option. That's going to bring me to where there's three sessions here that we're going to run through.

So the first session is the basic and intermediate editing, and if you click on this image right here. And if I click on this image, this is going to load in the data for this first session. And important to note, if you do lose track of where you're at, every single example we go through are going to be completely different. So if you miss something, say, on a lead in, lead out move that we're going to apply, forget about it. We'll just catch up on the next one, OK? So there's 12 different examples here. If you get caught up on one, just let it go and then start over on the next example.

All right. So if we expand the toolpath branch there, it's going to expand and show us 12 different folders. So we're going to go through every one of these examples, the first example being just a simple ramp move. So if I expand this folder of ramp moves, you'll see that there is a toolpath here and it is uncalculated. So this is probably going to be the only toolpath that we calculate in this class. Everything else, toolpaths are already calculated. We're going to change and we're going to edit those toolpaths. But this toolpath, we're just going to calculate it.

So in order to calculate this toolpath, I need to activate. And that's a pretty key word in PowerMill, activation. So I can activate a toolpath or activate a boundary or activate a workplane. I can only have one active entity at one time in PowerMill. So if I activate this toolpath, that is the active toolpath that we're going to change in mimic and alter or simulate or do whatever with.

So to activate this toolpath, right click brings you up that menu, Activate. It's the very top of that menu. And how do I know it's active? Well, in the Explorer, you'll notice that the letterhead is bold and there's a little arrow pointing towards it.

So once I've activated that toolpath, I'm going to go up into the Toolpath tab. And tabs and groups in PowerMill-- every time I say a tab, that represents one of these guys at the very top of the ribbon. Every time I say a group, you look down here at the very bottom. It's within this group. So if I tell you to go to the Toolpath tab, and we're going to go into the Calculate group, I'm going to select the icon here of the command to calculate this toolpath.

So after we calculate this toolpath-- the safety factor in PowerMill is amazing. It really will tap you on the shoulder as a user and just give you some information like hey, this toolpath here has got no entry moves into the stock. Since this is a roughing strategy, we might want to add some kind of movement into the stock. A safe movement, almost like a ramp move, OK? So this is why this warning comes up. It's a soft warning because we get this yellow triangle here. It's just a soft warning. Doesn't mean that we have to change this, but it's just a little friendly tap on the shoulder.

So I'm going to hit OK. And if this toolpath took me 15, 20 minutes to generate and all I want to do is add a ramp move, the nice thing about PowerMill is the fact that I can just add them in after. So here's my toolpath. You can see that these cyan moves are just coming straight plunging into my stock. I'm going to zoom back out and I want to add some ramp moves.

So I'm going to go into the Toolpath Edit tab. And this Toolpath Edit tab is where we're going to work most in the next 80 minutes or so. So in the Toolpath Edit tab, there's an option here for Toolpath Connections. So in the Toolpath Connections there's an option for lead ins. So how do I lead into the material? And right now, our first choice is set to none. There's no entry movement into the stock.

So if I pull this menu down, there's an option here to add a ramp move. And when we add the ramp move, there's a little icon that pops up right below the selector group. If I open that up, then I can change the way I want the tool or maybe the entry angle, or maybe I want to do a helical move or I want to follow the toolpath. So in this case, all I'm going to do is add a three degree zig angle, hit Accept. And when I hit Apply, you'll graphically see those links apply to that toolpath. Just like that. I didn't have to regenerate the toolpath, it just did it.

OK. So let's go onto something a little bit different here. So below, there's a folder for Speeds and Feeds. Seems very minor, but some CAM applications actually make you generate the toolpath again just to add, say, a feed rate or a spindle change. So if I were to activate this first toolpath against. Right click on it, Activate, and my tool path here displays. And if I go up to the Speeds and Feeds in my Toolpath Edit tab, we will see that the default speeds and feeds have been applied.

So the user did not change the speeds and feeds of this toolpath. So in this case, I'm just going to change. I'm not sure what the handout represents. I'm just going to put some different values in. Let's go 2000 RPM. We are doing a center drill operation. That's probably a little bit quick. Cutting feed rate 5 inches, and let's do a plunge feed rate of the same. And I'm going to change the skim feed rate to 1,200 inches inches per minute. And simply apply. And that change there just applied to that toolpath. I didn't have to regenerate the toolpath, it just applied those new speeds and feeds to it.

So those two options that I showed you are very, very basic, OK? So let's get into something a little bit more here. So I'm not going to go through the second option of speeds and feeds. In the handout, it basically describes a different scenario. But for this application, I'm just going to go over to the next folder, which is the Vertical Arc Leads.

So again activate the raster top toolpath. And we can see the toolpath displays in the graphics window. And at first glance, we can see that this toolpath is very inefficient. Firstly, the tool basically plunges rate onto the model, and it's retracting to the safe plane at each cutting segment. So again, we do not need to recalculate this toolpath. All we need to do is go up into the Toolpath Edit tab, Toolpath Connections. And again, my lead in, how I want my tool to lead into the cutting segment.

So I'm going to zoom into this area here. So we can see how it's plunging straight down. So if I added a vertical arc move of say, 90 degrees from the cutting segment, and let's go 100,000 radius. And I'm going to hit Apply. And you'll graphically see those arc moves just apply to the segments. Again, we're not regenerating the toolpath. It just automatically applies it. And if I wanted to have the same behavior as it leads out of the cutting segment, I can apply those here as well. So vertical arc 90 degrees, radius of 0.1. Apply, and you see graphically again. We see those link moves just apply automatically, OK?

So the nice thing is that again, cutting segments, non-cutting segments are completely independent of each other. So if you just want to change something minor, like leads and links, we can just do this off to the side. So I generate the toolpath. I'm going to come back in later on, just kind of play with these values. But again, still didn't really fix the retract. The retract is coming up to the safe zone every time.

So that's our links, how I want this link to go to the next lead in or lead out. I want to change that link. So I'm going to go into the Link page, and right now the toolpath is going up to the safety height every time. So if I were to change that to, perhaps, on surface, and hit the Apply button. Again, we could see all those retract moves just disappear, right? Because we're keeping that tool down as much as we possibly can on that model or on that toolpath. So since we're having an arc move, that's basically just going to go right to the next spot lead back into the material.

Another nice feature is maybe I don't want a straight move. Now if I'm cutting at a high feed rate, I don't want that quick change of direction on the machine tool. Well, I might put a circular arc here just to have that nice, clean movement all the way around. The only downside is that I've got this big link move here, right? This big circular arc move, and I probably got a few more over here as well.

So there are these constraints here that just give PowerMill a rule. I'm going to add a circular move if the move is less than 1 inch. If it's greater than 1 inch, then do the next choice. So if I were to change this to say, quarter inch and hit Apply, you will notice that that circular arc just left. Now it's going back to that safe zone. And if I don't want to go back to a safe zone, I just want to maybe just skim over top of the model. The second choice here, I can change that to a skim move, hit apply, and we bring those moves down a little bit closer over top of the model.

So let's go on to something different here. Let's go into folder number four, pocket center lead ins. So I'm going to expand that folder, activate toolpath Swarf Pocket. I'm going to activate that tool path. And if we look into this pocket we can see the tool basic come straight down that vertical wall.

Obviously, if we're finishing or if there's excess stock on that pocket, it wouldn't be a good result with the cutting tool. So we want to bring this off the pocket wall, maybe arc onto the wall and then arc off. So again, activate that toolpath, Swarf Pocket, go into the Toolpath Edit tab, Toolpath Connections. And since this pocket is fairly small, or fairly thin, I might want to change the lead in to perhaps Pocket Centre. I want to go to the center of that pocket.

And I want the same lead out. I mean, I can mainly go to the Lead out tab, change it, but there is some quick icons over here that allow you to make the lead in and the lead out the same. So this first option here allows you to click it and it will apply the same lead out as what my lead in page has. Just saving you a little bit of time. And then hit Apply, and then you can see this nice little wind fan that comes in from the center of that pocket.

So it's going to start at the center of the pocket, arc onto the material, finish its cut and then arc off back to the center pocket and retract out. And there is this option here for overlap distance. So if you are wondering, this is starting and finishing at the same location. It's on the handout. But if I wanted to put a overlap distance of 100,000 and hit Apply, now you're expanding. You're actually adding a nice little movement between those two arc moves. OK.

So pushing on here. I'm going to go into the fifth folder, horizontal arc leads. I'm going to activate this toolpath. And again, this is going to be the same situation as we just went through with the vertical arcs, except now we're just going to play some horizontal arcs. So if we look at this toolpath again, very inefficient. It's just retracting into this skim move every time. I want to keep this tool down as much as I possibly can. And I don't want to be plunging on the stock. I want to maybe lead in off the model as well.

So I'm going to go into the Toolpath Connection tab, Lead in. I'm going to add a horizontal arc. And again, I'm going to play a 90 degree angle, and I'll make the radius rather large so we can see it up there. So an eighth of an inch. And that little tip there, I want to make both my lead in and my lead out the same. So I'm going to click on this icon and I'm going to hit Apply. And we can graph, we see how they update automatically. So we've got these nice lead in, lead out options here. But it does still does not fix the retracts.

So to fix those retracts, we're to go back into the Links tab. And then the first choice, instead of going to safe, I'm going to apply a circular arc. So I want to keep that tool down, just like we did on the vertical arc, the vertical lead in, lead out, we had that circular arc move. I'm going to apply the circular arc move to this toolpath as well. Hit apply.

And again, graphically we see those movements just instantly update. We're not waiting for regeneration of the toolpath. And if I simulate this toolpath-- so when we simulate a toolpath, almost like in the center line type option, right click on the tool path, it gives me the option right the very top of that user menu to Simulate from Start.

And when I simulate from start, it automatically brings me to the Simulation tab. I don't have to go searching for it, just automatically does it. And then we've got the simulation controls here in the Simulation control group. So if I hit the Play button you can see how the tool stays down. It's just almost like a helical move into the next cutting segment.

OK. I'm going to pause that. Hit the pause. And I always get into the habit of going back to the beginning, just to kind of reset the simulation. Just one of these habits that I get into. Brings the tool back to the starting point.

And we're going to go into the next folder, folder number six, Toolpath Reorder. So we're getting into a little bit more of the, at this point in time, intermediate functions. If you're newer to PowerMill, you might not know about this option. You might know about it. But what I'm going to do is activate this toolpath. Again, when I activate it, if I look graphically, I can see color on my toolpath. That's a really good indicator knowing that I'm looking at the active toolpath. OK. So it's almost like the same situation that we looked at in the previous example. We applied the vertical arc on and off. So again, I'm to treat this the same way.

We're going to go up in to my Toolpath Edit tab, Toolpath Connections. And in the lead in option, I'm going to change this back to a vertical arc. And I'm going to apply a 90 degree movement with 125,000th radius. I'm going to make both my lead in and lead out the same. I'm going to hit Apply.

And again, I'm going to change my link move to circular, just like I did in the last example. I'm going to hit Apply. But you're going to notice that didn't really apply it to this toolpath all the way through. And the reason why is that if I simulate this toolpath real quick. I'm going to close this form out. Right click, Simulate from Start and if I hit Play, a lot of retracts, because we're cutting in one direction.

So you're client cut only. So when we generated this toolpath, we didn't describe to PowerMill that we want to cut back and forth, like our climb conventional, climb conventional. So again, do we need to recalculate this toolpath? Well, we don't. We can actually go and use a tool that's in the Toolpath Edit tab, Reorder. So in the Reorder option, it gives me a list of every single cutting segment that is listed in my toolpath.

And if I wanted to, I can select one and I can reorder that one. I could put at the very end of my toolpath, I can put it in the middle my toolpath. I can put it wherever I like to put it in this toolpath. In this case, if I deselect that segment and just leave everything empty, I can take every other segment in this tool path and reverse the cutting direction just by simply hitting this icon here, Alternate directions.

So hitting the Alternate direction will change this toolpath to a climb and conventional cut. Again, I don't have to go back in the toolpath, make the change and recalculate it. It's just going to do it. And it automatically optimizes the leads and links for me. I don't have to redo it, it just does it for me. OK.

So let's go on. I'm going to go into the Copy Multiple function. So again, every single option in PowerMill, whether it's a boundary or if it's a pattern or If it's a toolpath. I can take that toolpath, I can move it. I could transform it with a rotation. I can transform it with a mirror function. So I can take the toolpath and do quite a few different things with it. So if I activate the Multiple Passes toolpath, we can see that we've got one toolpath segment at the very bottom of the spaces there.

So if I wanted to take this toolpath and maybe do multiple cuts. I mean, I could regenerate the toolpath or a different type of toolpath but in this case, instead of going back in the toolpath and regenerating it, I'm going to go up into the Transform option, which is in the Toolpath Edit tab. So I'm going to select it, and I'm going to go up into the Move option, the very first command on the far left-hand side. I'm going to move that toolpath, but instead of just moving it I'm going to copy it.

So this little icon here in the left-hand side of this floating toolbar. This allows me to keep the original and make multiple copies. So in this case, I'm going to make 10 copies. And I do have to look down in the status bar down there at the very bottom. The quick option is this green field down here. I could just simply add some values. So X, Y, Z. I could put an X value, space, Y value, space, Z value.

Or I can go into the option right next to it, which is the position form. So either one is going to work. I believe the handout it describes to go into this green field, so I'm going to select there. And I'm going to put a 0 value for-- I'm not moving it in the X space. I'm not moving it in the Y space, but I'm going to move it up 62 and 1/2 thousandths 10 times. I'm going to hit Enter. The handout might describe something differently, but I've moved this up 10 times at 62 and half thousandths. If I'm happy with that, I'm going to just hit the Accept button. And what PowerMill will do, it will keep the original toolpath and it's going to create a direct copy of that toolpath. So if I were to activate Multiple Passes_1, that's my new toolpath with the multiple cuts that we've just applied to it.

So one thing to keep in mind, though, is that we took that toolpath and we translated it up. Well, if I do a simulation on this toolpath and hit the Play button, it's going to start at the very bottom of that wall and then work its way back up. And that's obviously not what we want to do. We want to start at the top and work down. So quick and easy way of fixing that, reorder it. So that's my active toolpath. I'm going to to go into the Toolpath Edit tab, reorder this toolpath, and I'm basically going to flip it upside down by clicking the Reverse order option, which is the one with the two arrows pointing at each other. So if I click that option, it's going to take the segments and reverse them. Right click, let's do a simulation. Hit play, and now starting at the top and it's working its way down to the bottom.

So I'm going to just bring my simulation back to the beginning. And we're going to press on here and go into the next folder, the Mirror toolpath. Same situation if I activate multiple passes. It's basically the same toolpath that we just looked at. But now I want to take this toolpath and I want to flip it over to the symmetrical side on the other side of my part. Since this part is symmetrical down the x-axis, instead of recalculating this toolpath on the other side, I want to take the original toolpath that I've got here I just want to bring it over to the other side.

So I'm going to go back up into the Toolpath Edit tab, Transform. And I'm just going to hit the Mirror option. And the Mirror option, since I have my active workplane is active, the default location is going to go at the center of my workplane. And in this case, I'm going to rotate it or I'm going to flip it around the XZ axis or XZ plane.

And you can see there's like a preview in these purple segments that show up. That's exactly what I want. So I'm going to go and hit Accept. And you're probably going to get this appending option. That just means that we can't make these toolpaths be one. So it's going to separate the toolpath into two toolpaths, which is what we want. So again, it saved my original. Here's my mirrored to the other side of my part for me. Pretty simple, but just know that it's there. OK.

So folder number nine, Edit Feed On Surfaces. So this does come in handy, especially if I wanted to change the feed rate in a particular area on my toolpath. So if we look into this corner of this part, I might want to change, in this case, it's not too drastic, but if I wanted to change the feed rate in this corner here, in this internal corner, I can select this corner, right click on this toolpath, go up into the edit.

And some of these options don't exist in the ribbon, so this is one of these options that is kind of tucked away in these rightmost menu clicks. So if I hit the Edit option inside this pull down menu, it actually opens up another submenu on the right-hand side. And there's an option here to edit feed rate on chosen surfaces. There's actually two different options, but the option we're going to look at in this case is edit feed rate on chosen surfaces. I'm going to select that. And what we need to do is create a set.

So this little dialog box pops up, and I'm going to create a new set. And then there's this option here to acquire. Whatever surface that I have selected right now or highlighted. In this case, I've got that filet in that corner of that toolpath there. I got that one selected. And I'm going to hit this icon to acquire that surface into this set. And I'm going to leave all the feed rates in that the same.

Basically, I just want to hit the Apply button and it's going to apply those new feed rates, the modified feed rate of 50 percent, on that surface. Hit Apply. We visually don't see anything but again, the same behavior applies. It keeps the original, makes me a new toolpath. And if I want to visually see these feed rate changes, I can go into the Toolpath tab and there's an option here to show feeds. And it's just going to give you this dialog box that kind of indicates to where the changes are based on color.

So I'm going to go ahead and close that. Move on to the next example, Moving Start Points. So again, I'm going to activate this toolpath, Moving Start Points. And if you look at this toolpath from the center of my part, we don't see any safe movements on the edge of my pocket. It's a vertical wall. The tool's just moving right down the center of that pocket right on the wall.

So I'm going to go ahead and add those nice lead in, lead out options again. So lead in, horizontal arc. Let's add a 90 degree arc move, 125,000 radius. I'm going to make them both the same. Go into my Links tab. I'm going to change that to a circular arc and hit Apply. And we'll automatically see those changes apply to my toolpath. I almost got this nice helical move going down the side of my pocket. And I'm going to hit Accept.

Now if I look at this from a top view, I might want the start and end points to occur in a different location. Since it's a circular pocket, it's not really a huge issue but if I was working with a pocket that had some internal corners, I might want to start that away from those corners. In this case, again, we're going to change it anyway. I'm going to go up into the Toolpath Edit tab, which is already open. I'm going to go into the Move Start Points, which is next to the reorder icon. And the normal default for moving start points are to move all of them in the same location. And that's why this one here, Multiple, is depressed in already.

So in order to use this function, PowerMill's waiting for me to draw a theoretical type line. It's waiting for me to draw two points. So if I click a point here and then draw a point over here, it's going to move those start points to that location. Since this function is still, open I can still move it over here if I wanted to. Or I can move it over here if I wanted to. Move it over here.

If I wanted to move one point or multiple points singularity, then I can move the multiple option over to single point. And this allows me to zoom in and drag these control points to wherever I need to. It's over here. Perhaps I want the third one down over here. For whatever reason, you have that control. Hit Accept, and then you see the leads and links automatically update as well. I don't want to reapply them. It's just smart enough to know that I have to adjust my leads in and lead outs, my linkings.

A couple more examples here. So I'm going to go into the Edit_Replay option. I'm going to go ahead and activate this toolpath. And for whatever reason, we want to take this toolpath and we want to trim some of it away. So if I go back up into the Toolpath Edit tab, there's an option here for limiting. So I can take this toolpath, I can trim away sections of it, I can trim with a plane, with just a user-defined polygon or a boundary.

So in this case, we're going to trim away using a plane. So I'm going to leave the plane function alone and I'm just going to click somewhere over here and it's going to move that plane to that position. And then there's the option of saving the inner or the outer. In this case, you want to save the inner. So anything that's inside those arrows. So this would be the inner in this case. I want to save that, so I'm going to hit Apply. So you can see how it trimmed everything on the outside in the same location. And it updated the leads and links for me as well.

I'm going to go ahead and cancel that. And I'm going to go back into that same function. So this time, I'm going to go back to the Limit option and I'm going to change the limit to-- instead of a plane, this I'm going to change it to a polygon. And I'm just going to trim away this center portion. For whatever reason I need to trim it away.

Perhaps there's a clamp that or something. We're going to go ahead and hit Apply. But this time, I want to change-- instead of inner, I want to save everything on the outside of that polygon. Hit Apply, and it's trimmed out those cutting segments and replaced them with our linking moves. So it automatically changes that for us. So I'm going to go ahead and cancel this.

And there is a feature built into PowerMill where if I've made some edits to this toolpath and I wanted to change something. In this case, I would have to recalculate if I want to change perhaps my stepdowns. Or if I want to change my thickness. Perhaps I've calculated this at 0 stock, but actually I want to leave 0.005 on the wall. So in this case, we would have to recalculate this toolpath.

So if I were to right click on the last toolpath, the one that's active in this case, the one that we edited. If I were to right click on it and go into the settings, this brings up my calculation form. So all the parameters I've originally placed into this toolpath, stepdowns, thickness, tolerance. So I'm going to hit the Recycle option and this allows me to go in and change some parameters. And in this case, I'm going to change the thickness to 0.005 and I'm going to change the tolerance to 0.002. And when I hit Calculate.

Oh, I didn't select my surfaces. So since this is a swerve toolpath, we need to have these surfaces selected beforehand. So what I need to do is just right click on this toolpath here before, select surfaces, recycle this toolpath and I'm going hit Calculate. So if I did it correctly the first time I hit Calculate, you'd notice that toolpath regenerates itself and then it still retains all the editing information that I did to this toolpath. so I trimmed it to a plane. It's going to retrim that toolpath. And since I've got that polling on the center it reapplied that edit as well.

All right. So, not going to be able to get to this last one here. I want to cut this off at this time. We'll go into the next example in next session. We're going to take this to the next level. So I don't want to spend too much more time on this, since we're probably going to run out of time.

So to open up the next session, we're going to go up in to the Explorer. And you notice that there's the planet Earth there, a browser icon. That's going to bring me back to where we were originally at the very beginning of the session. And if I drag this down and I select the image underneath the dynamic machine control, that's going to load in this project for me.

I think I mentioned at the very beginning before we first started that PowerMill really strives on being a safe CAM tool. So if I'm generating toolpaths, before I send these out to the machine tool I want to catch problem areas, either it be a collision with a holder, or it could be a collision with the machine tool itself.

So if we expand the toolpath branch, there are again some four folders there that we're going to go through. Not as much as the first example. So I'm going to open up the Collision Checking folder. And there's a toolpath, Finish Locks. I'm going to go ahead and activate that toolpath and I'm going to zoom into that location.

And all we want to do right now is make sure that this toolpath is safe. What I mean by safe is, is the holder safe against the model? Before I run this out to the machine tool, is my holder going to rub against the side of my model? It's a three axis tool path. I want to keep it three axis toolpath. I just want to know that that holder, that assembly that I've got drawn right now is it going to cause me problems?

Built in, there's some status lights on every toolpath. And the status lights are located next to the toolpath name. So this white status just represents that this toolpath is safe against the cutting edge of the tool, but not the full assembly. What we want to do is we want to see a nice blue check mark there. PowerMill is going to tell us that yes, the full assembly of that tool is safe against the model or the stock.