Tabs on a straight cut

[svrfsvp@netscape.net]

I was looking through the manual last evening and was unable to find a way to cut a straight line and use the tab option. Is it possible to do that? Basically I want to be able to make a series of cuts all the way across a piece of a piece of plywood, and would like the pieces to remain connected with tabs until all the cutting is completed. Ideas?

[Ron B]

Jay,

Bill Young (chime in hear Bill)leaves a few thousands from cutting all the way through. He finishes the cut with a utility knife. I have used this technique also.

HTH,
Ron

[seaside@esva.net]

Jay,

Ron's right, I usually leave a little bit uncut so that all the parts stay in the sheet. The main reason is to keep from losing vacuum from my vacuum table, but it also has some advantages in handling the sheets after they are cut and keeps you from chewing up your table top.

There is a tabbing function that you can run with a file; it's the last parameter in the FP command. When you get the fill-in sheet for the FP command, tab through the boxes until you get to the one for tabbing, and hit the spacebar to turn tabbing on. You can set the values for tabbing with the VB command. It lets you set the distance between tabs, amount of pullup, length of tabs, that sort of thing.

I don't think there's a direct way to use tabbing when using the MX, MY, M2, or other straight line commands. You probably would need to create a file with the line command in it, then run that file with tabbing selected.

Hope this helps,

Bill