Update 6.15 released 2nd August 2004

Changes in this update:

New method for selecting a chain.
When you select a chain it now has a magic cursor on it. The magic cursor is a box that attach's itself to the chain and as you move the mouse the cursor remains attached to the chain. This makes it much easier for selecting chains in a 3D environment.

New select profile
Select a profile and it will start from the selected point anywhere around the profile. It has to be a loop for it to do that. A loop of course is a complete chain and providing it is a loop the entry and exit of the profile will be at the selected position on the profile chain.

Auto Chain Correction
There were reports of bad profile that were really bad with tiny arcs and some arcs being only .00001 inch long and 100’s of gap errors in the profile but even works on that now. So there has been adjustment there but no changes in the functionality.

If the action of auto fix the chain is not required just make the chain gap a very high setting.

Hole Wizard
The Hole Wizard has been updated to enable the ability of making the material top higher or lowerthan the Z zero setting or the machining datum of the part. There is also the ability to insert the hole depth value as an incremental or absolute value. This is only the entered value not the posted value.

There is an important change now in the ISO drill cycles posts. There is a new variable for the R plane or the drill return value called DR

The hole wizard information now is carried into the NC manager and the job sheet.

The hole wizard has had some tweaking to select and sort quicker and more efficiently.

The hole wizard is now set for the ISO cycles with safety’s set so that hen you use the G98 return to R plane value or G99 return to the rapid clearance or initial position it will always return to that irrespective of the settings used.Some more dimensioning indicators have been added to the graphics in the dialogs to more easily describe the values and settings.

New Chamfer Feature
The chamfer tool can now be used to profile chamfer with full simulation. As a simple example if you create a cube and extract the 4 top edges of the cube then use stock tool-path profile with no offset and select that chain and chamfer the top of the block. If the chamfer tool is not pointed on the bottom end you will need to use the leave finish amount in the dialog to offset the tool to suit the minor diameter of the tool.

New File Translation methods.
Due to the inherent bad DXF imports from all sorts of bad cad we have completed extensivechanges to our translation ability.

STEP, IGES, VDA, SAT, 3DM (Rhino) all have now the ability to import and export surfaces solids and pure geometry this means that you import splines with true integrity DXF does arcs and splines poorly due the bad tolerance and accuracy ability.

We suggest to preferably only use DXF for dimensions notes and the like because STEP IGES VDA SAT and 3DM do not support dimensions text notes etc.

We do not pretend to be a fancy CAD package type package and support notes dimensions by any method other than DXF. Even in DXF limited to the basic essentials and does not include blocks brick patterns tree shapes and vegetation libraries and the like.

It is to be remembered that a solid model does not have a wire-frame or geometry by nature so ifyou import a model and there was no geometry or wire-frame in the file etc well it will be because there is not any in the file. There never is unless the cad that it has come from has created a wire frame or geometry and exported it. Mostly this requires a setting output in the exporting CAD.

We have a switch to select geometry or not on the import dialog for all file types other than DXF. We have an extraction function for when there is no geometry in the file that the user requires.

Language
There were quite a few language fixes also in the non English versions.

What else was done
We must thank the users that have sent files directly to us with good supporting documentation of he problems encountered which enabled us to correct difficult adjustments and all of those were fixed.

Update 6.14 releaded 28th July 2004

The hole wizard was updated to allow absolute values or absoluet values to be used also the ability to have the top of the job above or below Z zero. A new variable was added to the post DR being for the drill return position value.

Update 6.13 released 19th July 2004

.Some corrections were made due to multi-lingual problems