The new trend of associative toolpaths...better than before or a royal PITA???

Hi All:
I was programming the toolpaths for another freaky sex toy yesterday in HSMWorks and it struck me again just what a time-wasting nuisance associative CAM can be.

For those of you who've never seen one of these things, the shapes are all swoopy and flowy, so they need lots of surfacing of various kinds and the containment curves to go with them.
I tend to create the containments as I program the next operation, so the model is being edited frequently.
I program in Assembly Mode and create the containments outside of the stock model or the part model so they do not influence it in the same way they would if I created them within the parts themselves.

Well every time a change is made to the file; even a change unrelated to the task at hand, many of the previous operations become dirty and need to be regenerated.
The time this wastes on re-calculating calculation intensive toolpaths is epic, especially if I've done any kind of rest machining where the current toolpath depends on its predecessors.

Now I understand the basics of why it is like this but Jeez, I spend way too much time getting shit to regenerate over and over and over.

Up until a couple of years ago I was a Mastercam driver and I was using version 8.1...no not X8; Version 8.1.
Pretty primitive by today's standards, and not as capable of nice quality work, but at least what you did once was written in stone and you didn't have to go over the same shit over and over as the CAM programming evolved during the job.

So I ask myself...is this new way really worth it?

Now I'm asking all you CADCAM jockeys out there...are you faster overall now than you were when Mastercrap V8 and V9 were state of the art? (before all this associative stuff came into vogue)

I'm not asking if it was BETTER....I'm asking if it was FASTER.

My sense is that at best it's a wash; often it's gone backward, but I do confess I'm a Luddite who gets a guilty thrill when some dope falls into the water fountain while walking and texting at the same time.

Cheers

Marcus
Implant Mechanix • Design & Innovation > HOME
www.vancouverwireedm.com

Marcus, I see where you're coming from, and it is also one of the primary reasons I do not want an integrated CAD/CAM tool.

Is associative better? Perhaps for some ( yes yes yes, I know that's not what you've asked .. )
Is it faster however? I do not see how if otherwise perfect and unchanged features need to be re-done or just even re-visited.
I use FeatureCAM, and it offers a decent, middle of the road way to handle model changes.

When using a solid model to program from, after the first import FC creates it's own copy of the solid and retains it inside the program file.
If the underlying solid is modified in any way, upon opening the CAM file FC will alert you that the solid has changed and gives you the option
whether to re-import it or use the existing one. It is my choice what to do.
If the change is inconsequential or minor enough, I just leave it be. If OTOH it really does need to be re imported, it also means that some
things get broken and needs to be dicked with.

Is FC better and more capable today than it was in the days of MC V9? Absolutely better, but "associativity" has little to do with it.

At the same time, I have not been interested enough to try integrated CAD/CAM to see what the fuss is about.

If you know your previous toolpaths won't change because the model geometry isn't changing, just right-click them and select Protect in the popup menu.

There is also an Idea on the board to improve this (this is for all HSM products, so even though the poster is using Inventor HSM it should populate into HSMWorks and Fusion as well): non-critical changes causing operation regenerations - Autodesk Community

It can be a pain, but there are some techniques you can use to work around the time delay. I'm on HSM Works, and two things I found helped a lot:

1- Blast through the program with very high stepover/stepdown values on all the 3D toolpath. This lets you tune the containments and set up the interrelations between rest machining while cutting down on generation time. Also keep options like smoothing and feed optimization turned off. When everything is set up, you can go through each operation and plug in the desired steopvers/stepdown (or in HSM, use Compare and Edit).

2- Program in Assembly mode, and keep all the sketches used for containment outside of the original part file. HSM Works looks at part file changes to trigger the rebuild, so if the sketch is outside of the part file defined as the Model in your job setup, it won't force rebuild everything when you start sketching out those containments.

Hmm.. for what it's worth, I hate what you are talking about. I missed the software you are using somewhere, but using Inventor and HSM, if I do anything all the toolpaths go dirty! I mean, open the model side, add a sketch all the way at the bottom of the tree, and BOOM! all the toolpaths get a nice red X soooooo stupid and annoying. However, HSM (at least in Inventor) will still let you post and generate code. I think in this instance it is just 'flagging' the ops, and they aren't necessarily 'dirty' or unusable.

Atomkinder said:

If you know your previous toolpaths won't change because the model geometry isn't changing, just right-click them and select Protect in the popup menu.

There is also an Idea on the board to improve this (this is for all HSM products, so even though the poster is using Inventor HSM it should populate into HSMWorks and Fusion as well): non-critical changes causing operation regenerations - Autodesk Community

Click to expand...

Pretty much this, once you have an operation how you want it, just protect it. Can be annoying, but saves the annoyance of recalculation.

Well that's very interesting: I learned something new and very useful today and I also just lost a long cherished reason to be pissed off at HSMWorks.
My thanks to all who pointed that out.
Cheers

Marcus
Implant Mechanix • Design & Innovation > HOME
www.vancouverwireedm.com

implmex said:

Well that's very interesting: I learned something new and very useful today and I also just lost a long cherished reason to be pissed off at HSMWorks.
My thanks to all who pointed that out.
Cheers

Marcus
Implant Mechanix • Design & Innovation > HOME
www.vancouverwireedm.com

Click to expand...

I frequently work in a similar fashion, getting an operation locked down and probably even out running on the machine, then moving on to the next thing. I have to admit, I avoided Protect for awhile, but it REALLY starts making sense when you look at it from a 'this toolpath has literally been run. Any parametric change that happens to it is BAD NEWS, as i'm not running it again!" point of view.

I used to go through this headache at first and found that keeping good control of your original model is key. If you start moving your files around or go back and forth with them between the computer and a usb drive or make too many drastic changes you will set yourself up for a massive regeneration apocalypse. The key is to discipline yourself to make sure your final piece is locked and be 100% sure it is correct before starting up a cam project. These adaptive tool paths are very complicated.


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