[Gallchobhair]

Would anyone know why when I invert something in Bobcad the toolpath becomes three times longer would triple in density and running the simulation the toolpath runs three times as long as the original.

Don

[Trotline]

Depending on the toolpath, the stock, and the tool, I could see it. BobArt is out there in the fuzzy, weird mesh world. Doing things like an invert there can make major topological revisions to how a toolpath sets itself up. I could definitely see a well behaved toolpath getting cranky because it interprets the base geometry it operates on as having gone from the outside of an object to its interior.

Luke

[mmoe]

I would need to see a sample file to understand what you are asking about. Depending on the geometry, one face of a surface may very well require a much longer toolpath than the other. If you can picture a half sphere, if you run the tool on the inside of the sphere, the offeset for portions of the sphere where anything but the exact tip of a ball end mill is cutting would be essentially along a smaller geometry than the sphere itself. If you run the same tool on the outside of the sphere, the opposite would be true and the geometry the actual toolpath follows would be larger than the sphere. I would expect that it could be as much as half again different, but three times longer seems a bit off and there must be something else as well.

[Gallchobhair]

I did reverse the project in Corel and ran the vectorize on the mirrored image and it was back to 15 minutes. I will post the before and after Bobcad files tomorrow.

Don

[jrmach]

Are we using the terms invert and mirror correctly here ?
You are talking 2D geometry in the end,correct?
Did you use the clean-up/optimize ?

[magicniner]

If you want to mirror a part in X or Y and you're using Mach3 you don't have to do much, you can enter -1 in the Scale adjacent to the appropriate DRO in the Mach3 screen to mirror the part ;-)

- Nick

[Gallchobhair]

I may have caused confusion. I meant and do mean Mirror. I will try the trick of using Mach3 to do the mirror.

Thank You Everyone
Don