Stair risers

[andre]

I'm trying to do what i thought would be a simple task but am having problems joining these vectors to tool path. I started drawing squares and snapping to each corner then node edit and remove two sides of the square and and joinging with a line. the line joins all the corners instead of joining the two end points. I then tried welding squares together and can only weld the first two. Any one know the trick to this?
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[andre]

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[andre]

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[andre]

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[andre]

The first picture shows a free hand line shape. The toolpath syas that vectors intersect. The if I join the vectors with a line it joins at the corners.

[pete]

Andre

Can you not start with just one tread and one riser welded or connected together and then just copy and paste as many welded "steps" as you need?

What is your riser and what is your tread size and how many "steps" do you need overall? Pete

[Brady Watson]

Andre,
Start by creating a rectangle that represents the rise & run of each step. Then do a Block Copy, using "Distances are offsets". Plug in the X and Y dimensions of your square, and enter in how many steps you want. This will create a grid of squares. Then delete all of the squares that are not 'steps'.


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Then press the 'N' key to go into Node Editing Mode, and select one of the squares. Press the 'R' key to remove each span(s) that you want to get rid of from each step to create the stringer shape.


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Press 'Esc' to get out of Node Editing mode. Lasso around all of the steps and press <Shift> + J. This is a shortcut for joining multiple vectors. Select a tolerance of 0.02" and join. When this is done, just close the shape with a straight line using the Join/Close tools.


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-B

[andre]

This is the response I get when I hit shift J
Am I doing something wrong or is my PW messed up?

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[Brady Watson]

Andre,
Just manually join each step by selecting 2 of them, and right click-> Join, going step to step. I'm guessing that you are using PW3...which doesn't support the shortcut by default.

-B

[andre]

Brady thanks, I figured it out.
I had to join two at a time and then join two of those at a time and then all and then close with a line. I would imagine artcam would do a more efficient job of this