Onion skin trouble

[kerry_fullington]

Tim,

You can send the files to kerry@kerryfullington.com

[kerry_fullington]

Gary,

Tim emailed me his .dxf this morning and when I opened it I found his title block included in the file.


I cleaned that up and then saved the file as entities and now the arcs all import into eCabinets as single line arcs not segments. I hope this fixes it for him.

Kerry

[chunkstyle]

Hi Kerry,

I don't know what your opening up the dxf in. Never saw the title block open like that before. Even has the fonts jacked up.
Couldn't run the edited DXF as sent. Open vectors. I would have to re-draw it out. Thanks for the help, though.
From what I can tell, looking at the dxf you altered, it looks as though you may have exploded some groups of lines?
If that's the case I could do similar to the original DXF and run it. This has not been an issue in the past but maybe something shifted somewhere. Lemme know what you were trying to change and test and I'll try it.

Tim

[chunkstyle]

If it helps,

Here's what I'm looking at when I import this and any other dxf into part editor.

[chunkstyle]

Just finished deleting title block in the dxf file. Never had the paper space vectors come over onto part editor but thought I'd try it.
Same results air cutting. Smooth .37" passes. Jittery onion skin pass.

[kerry_fullington]

Tim,

I didn't explode anything I just cleaned out the title block then re-saved the file. I didn't try to cut the file in eCabinets or I would have seen that some of the lines aren't joined.

I cleaned the file up in eCabinets and saved it as a parasolid file.
I was able to cut the file in eCabinets I will email you that file.

[chunkstyle]

Kerry,

Just ran the file usint the x_t file. Imported the File into contour editor. Lines were applied to panel. Went back into part editor. Right moused 'create part using closed contour'. Panel now has the shape of the x_t file. Saved off panel as an assembly. Batched assembly. Created TWD file. Ran TWD file thru Link. Same problem Jittery onion skin. Smooth pass depths. Thanks for the effort, though.
Question: Are you saving the impoerted DXF drawing off as an x_t parasolid file in contour editor?

Put the call in to TWD about the issue and havn't heard from them yet.

Very baffling.

[chunkstyle]

Just an update.

Kerry, you got me thinking about why the arcs on the outside of my shapes were segmented and not the inside arcs in the contour editor. Rummaged around in my head and realized that the outside corners radius were created by using the fillet tool to join to intersecting lines with a specified radius.
The inside arcs were created by splitting a circle.

So....I went ahead and deleted the outside radius corners of the dxf. Created a circle of the proper radius. Split it into 4 quadrants and copied the quads to the corners where the arcs were deleted from previous. Brought the revised DXF into contour editor and the outside arcs are now single lines instead of being all broken up as segments.

Applied to panel, blah blah, and then air cut the file.
The result was a smooth motion on the onion skin at the previous jittery corners cept for a start and stop at the begenning and end of the arc. That is also the case for the inside arcs.

Went back to Turbo and selected all the lines as a group and applied that shape to the panel. Still had the same result. Smooth .37" cut passes on inside and outside arcs. Start and stoppy on the onion skin.

Why the onion skin pass is having all this difficulty is any ones guess.

Again Kerry, thanks for the help. Got me thinking the line issue down to the tool used to create it. Got the how know, just not the why and why now is there a problem with it on the onion skin. Maybe I'll hear from TWD tomorrow and they can better trouble shoot the importing DXF issues.

It's appreciated,
Tim

[kerry_fullington]

Tim,

I just opened your .dxf file in Contour of the Part Editor and erased the segmented arcs you talk about. I then extended the lines and trimmed them and finally used the fillet tool in eCabs to create new arcs that aren't segmented.

I bet you and Gary are correct that the problem is in the link if the onion skin is the only jumpy cut.

It will be interesting to see what Thermwood has to say.

I enjoyed playing with it.

[Gary Campbell]

Kerry...
I have said this before, but welcome to the dark side, my friend. The real deal is all the software developers SAY they can import/export to/from etc. Very seldom works as advertized. Many times its a versionality issue. "We have just upgraded to allow import of the latest and greatest of XXXX brand DXF" What they dont say is that we have just lost ability for any legacy vectors. So goes life!

My guess is that eCabs has had a number of version changes and the SB Link has not been updated since last June. In the past the TWD crew were all over bug fixes and often tossed in some features for good measure. Not so in the last 10 months. Hence the Red Headed Step Child inferrence. eCabs and the Link are soley responsible for over 85% of our work. 100% of the commercial. The joinery and cut quality sells any shop I have shown samples to. The Link has kept me in business by allowing me to generate wholesale work that was not possible prior to implementing it in our shop.