Hi all

Whilst Fusion 360 has continually impressed me with the quality of its toolpaths and just how easy they are to create, its support for 4th axis continuous machining has left me either confused, disappointed or both. As far as I've been able to find, it will let us wrap 2D toolpaths around a cylinder centred on the axis but that's about it.

Here's a a couple of typical ops I'd like to perform but that I can't work out how to set up and I'm hoping someone out there is going to reply with "Idiot: it's easy, just select strategy X and enable option Y."

1. "surface" a cylindrical face which is not concentric with the 4th axis. For example, if I want a piece of flat bar stock which has a slight belly on one side. At the moment I am stuck with indexing the 4th to set that face upward then doing a 3D path. I'd kinda like to get that 4th axis live for this operation to keep the tool tip normal to the model surface. Easy with the swarf op if you have a 5A machine, but nothing for "just 4th"?

2. Spiral cut around a form. Using the tip of the tool, again normal to the model surface, I'd like to be able to start at one end of the workpiece and spiral up to the other, cutting the outside of a smooth model. Sort of like a contour strategy wrapped around the part.

Am I thinking about all this the wrong way? Or have I missed something simple and obvious for doing it? Or have Autodesk just not implemented 4A support?

Thanks in anticipation of any help!