Onion skin trouble

[kerry_fullington]

Gary,

The .dxf import will work as long as you follow Scott's suggestion that they only include Lines and arcs. No polylines, splines etc. If an arc or circle in your .dxf file is segmented then the control will look at each segment as a straight line and cut that way.

I am curious how complicated Tim's .dxf was? Is he creating the .dxf's himself or importing files from others?

I find the cad tools in eCabinets to be great for cabinet work. You just have to get used to them.

[chunkstyle]

Kerry,

No polylines were used in the imported DXF. No Splines either. Nor would it explain why the .37" passes will cut smoothly but not the onion skin on my machine, Gary's near full depth pass or the Thermwood shops not having any issue with this geometry. It was also cutting out arcs and circles on my machine without issues until a couple of jobs ago.

I'm glad your jobs are of a nature where you can rely on the included cad editor in E-cabs. That's not going to fly on some of the jobs I have to do. It would also not make any good business sense to have to re-draw what's already been done for architectural submittals or shop drawings in a proper DXF format. I'm drawing what I'm cutting. Arcs, circles and lines.
(though I have drawn polylines and had them cut out with a THERMWOOD I agree with you and wouldn't advise it).

This appears to be a link issue until TWD can determine otherwise.

[chunkstyle]

Thinking about it some more Kerry, if you have any interest I could send you the job file as well as the DXF to see for yourself. Try air cutting it and see if your mileage varies any from my results or the one Gary had?

[Gary Campbell]

Kerry...
If I could find a way to define arc or line segments as per Scott's suggestion, I would. Unfortunately those are not terms available in my frequented apps.

Tim's Part was relatively simple, about 8 by 12, designed by him.

This last one we have to agree to disagree on. Maybe if I had never seen another CAD program. Nope, not even then. Maybe if I didnt have to constantly have to remove and reapply PE cuts and constraints to simple parts like my web tops. They become unusable when constrained, fillets are applied and cabinets are resized.

My problems are different from Tim's. I gave up on the DXF import. If you can find out the brand of cad program and the settings that it takes to get a viable import then I would try it again. Please leave out Autocad.

[kerry_fullington]

Tim,

I would like to look at the job and file. I can try running it when I cut my next job. I think there is some software available to convert polylines to lines. As I understand it an arc created using a polyline will be segmented.

Gary,

In Intellicad my tool bar has icons for Lines, Polylines and Splines. I just use lines.

I received a tool profile drawing from a friend recently created in Delta Cad. The file looked fine but I had to spend quite a bit of time joining and trimming lines removing duplicated lines etc. to get it to work in the Shape Manager. It would have been much easier to draw in eCabinets.

If this looks like a link problem send the files to Thermwood.

[chunkstyle]

Thanks Kerry,

I'll send the File along with the DXF in the morning. It will be interesting to see if the results will vary.

I have reported this to TWD, along with DXF's, Link settings, etc...

The feed back was it was running fine like the Thermwood shops result Friday. I'm not sure how TWD tests the link as I understand it there isn't a SB on premises. Might explain how they can't see what is happening from my end and now Gary's. Hopefully it will be a quick fix as it wasn't doing this until recently.

Thanks again Gary. Your generosity is appreciated.

[chunkstyle]

Gary,

Not plugging any cad product over any other. Just saying that the Thermwood shop and myself have been having very few issues (counted on one hand at most) using Turbocad. Mostly with lines being drawn incorrectly, mentioned in Kerry's post.

Untill recently, we've had no problems with importing DXF's into the part editor. We started importing DXF's into part editor about 2-3 years ago with good results.

Thanks again,
Tim

[Gary Campbell]

Kerry...
Over the last couple years I have drifted away from the pure CAD apps and have used only CAD/CAM (Vectric VCPro) for design. This allows me to design and toolpath in the same app.

Like Tim, I used to be able to export my geometry as an ACAD DXF from Vectric and Delcam products and get usable geometry in eCabs. This is no longer the case. At present, all export options yield segmented arcs when brought into eCabs. The first time I noticed the "jackhammer" corners from VCPro DXF's was around last December. Prior to that all worked well. I dont know which of the softwares changed, but something is different.

[kerry_fullington]

Gary, Tim,

it will be intersting to see if this turns out to be a Cad problem or a link problem.

[Gary Campbell]

Kerry...
Me too. My guess is that both sides say that the problem is "on the other end".

Tim...
There has to be a way... we will find it. Feeling like the Red Headed Step Child yet?