Geomagic Design 3D CAD modelling and Mecsoft Visual Mill CNC software - local Australia technical support.

Moderators: caddit, progeCAD.de, Moderators

#1185 by Leon
Fri Jul 23, 2010 7:18 am
Hi,

I have (for example) 3 hole sizes in a part. If I choose CAM (version 2.0) and Drill I get to the page that requests

"Select Drill Points" . I then select my sketch from the design explorer and "Region 1" shows in the left panel.

If I then tick "Use Diameter Filter" and choose a min of 4mm and a max of 6mm (so that I pick up my 5mm holes) then choose "Generate" then I receive an error "No machining features/geometry found! Please select..."

I read thru the example but I can't see what I need to do differently.

Actually I also have a second question that ties in here:

If I have a sketch that has holes to be drilled and parts to be profile routed, I can set up a drilling operation to drill all the holes first but when I then try and profile it the software wants to also mill the holes that have already been drilled. Is it possible to ignore round holes when I profile, given that they have just been drilled. Or do I need to have separate sketches for the holes and the profiles, which seems to be the way the tutorials handle this. If I do need separate sketches then is it possible to move items from one sketch to another?

Thank you
#1188 by caddit
Fri Jul 23, 2010 4:18 pm
Hello Leon,


This should normally be pretty straight-forward in Alibre CAM.

Please have a look at what is currently listed at the left as the "Current Hole Feature(s) Selected" for the drilling Hole Features, once you tick "Use diameter filter".

In the example list below we have "FlatArea1" listed. If your list is empty when you go to "Generate" the hole feature, it could well explain the error you are getting. This would return an empty set - as if filtering nothing.

We usually use a 3D part representation of the job part and select all of the top faces using "Select Holes on Flat Area" first, making that our Selected Feature, then setting the Diameter Filter:

Image

#1189 by Leon
Mon Jul 26, 2010 12:17 am
Thanks! The key was the Flat Area Containment - this was not really mentioned in the Getting Started Guide but does solve all my questions for this post and my other post.

Regards