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In this example we are going to introduce you to free shape design and how it can be used to modify imported, dumb geometry.
And we will show you how the tool path stays associated during these changes.
Let's get started.
On the view the right, you see our tool path. The view to the left is our design document. Let's make our first change.
Here we will go to free shape and choose to modify this part.
First, I would like to point out that we have a fun function called constrain automatically which will recognize specific geometries.
This is the area that we are going to use free shape to modify.
Let's get started by unfixing the faces that we want to modify.
Once the faces are unfixed we can then go and add a driving dimension to the faces.
This is very much like adding a driving dimension in a sketcher.
Once we locate that dimension we can then modify it; just by double clicking on it.
And like that the geometry is up to date.
Let's change it again.
How about 14mm.
Beautiful! And you are seeing the cam document dynamically updating to the right as well.
Here's another change...let's change it one more time.
How about 18 mm.
Beautiful. The change is done. Let's exit out of free shape, go back to cam, and regenerate our tool path and see what happens.
So here we will just hit regenerate.
And like that our geometric changes have been applied to all of the tool paths where they have been affected.
Let's look at another sample.
Let's go continue our free shape modifications.
Let's unfix the face of that through pocket,
we will flip the part around,
unfix that face as well,
and we will add another dimension.
Once the dimension is located we can go ahead and modify it.
Let's make it smaller and see what happens.
You will notice that it rebuilt the fillets in that pocket as well.
Now as we rebuild the tool path you'll see that everything updates without any problem.
Let's continue with our modifications.
Let's make it smaller still,
but let's use the tolerance on our dimension as well.
Here, we are going to modify it to 4mm and then validate.
Now when we go back to cam and we regenerate,
We are going to get an error.
It was unable to create the tool path because the tool won't fit in that slot.
Here is a list of events that have happened.
And here you can see it's showing you at this date, at this time, we had a failure of the generation of this tool path.
We'll stick the project manager back over there.
If we go back in here, this is the tool path that is causing the problem.
Let's see if we can fix it. We can either put a smaller tool in or again adjust the geometry. So here we will go back in an edit our free shape,
and here we are going to use the geometric tolerancing that we added.
So here we will apply a tolerance of H7,
and then were in a set that tolerance
to its minimum value...or
how about its mean tolerance?
Or average.
And like that when we go back into cam now, thanks to the tolerance adjustment,
our tool path will now fit.
Let's make another change may be a more drastic change.
Maybe we want to add a geometric relation such as parallel.
We want to take this face and the face of our slot and make them parallel. And again this is dumb, imported geometry.
We can then even add a dimension to the detail to control its location.
And now when we exit out of design,
and go back to cam, our cam document will update and of course our tool path will follow.