Hi all, sorry for the late reply.

When i use mach 3, I manually direct the tip of the bit to the top of the stock, then I zero everything out, to include "reference all to home"... When everything is completely zeroed, I regenerate the toolpath, start my spindle and hit start. With this code, however, it moves along the stop of the stock until it gets to the initial starting/entry point. from there, it raises in the air to what should have been the safe travel height, and then it initiates a plunge and begins the code.
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Fusion 360 forums have all said that I have a G28 "safe setting" set to 0. I dont know enough about g code to comfortably mess with the actual notepad code file. Here's the intro code and first few lines. Thanks so much!

Al
1001)
(MACHINE)
( VENDOR AUTODESK)
( DESCRIPTION GENERIC 3-AXIS)
(T1 D=6.35 CR=3.175 - ZMIN=-42. - BALL END MILL)
G90 G94 G91.1 G40 G49 G17
G21
G28 G91 Z0.
G90


(ADAPTIVE2)
M5
T1 M6
S5000 M3
G54
G0 X-27.525 Y324.991
G43 Z5. H1
Z3.
Z1.5
G3 X-25.816 Y324.674 Z0.429 I1.078 J1.043 F500.
X-24.955 Y326.185 Z-0.642 I-0.632 J1.36
X-27.94 Y325.884 Z-3.362 I-1.492 J-0.151
X-27.625 Y325.105 Z-3.854 I1.492 J0.151
X-25.955 Y324.618 Z-4.925 I1.177 J0.93