After clicking tabsheet register Polygon cut, you can draw a shape on your screen which will be projected through your parts when you perform the cut.
In the first mode you can create and edit your polygon. With left-clicks on the screen you set corner points for the cutting line. With default color settings, the points appear as yellow squares and the cutting line is blue. When you set the third corner point, the first and the last point are connected so that the cutting line becomes a triangle. Further corner points make it a polygon. The corner points you add are always connected to the two corner points attached to the closest line.
The tabsheet options for the Free Cut with a polygon.
For a clear preview on the cut, the section which will be cut out is colored grey. With the scroll bar in the tabsheet box View, you can edit the Transparency of that preview. If you move the slider to the right, the preview gets more and more transparent and at the end vanishes. After creating the cutting geometry, it is also possible to save it, if you need to use it more than once. To do so enter the Load/Save tab and use the dialog to save your cut. You can chose between Cut 1 and Cut 2 in the dropdown menu, but you can also create more cuts by clicking on Save as. The blue gearwheel next to the dropdown menu lets you rename cuts or load cuts from an XML, should you be willing to transfer a cut from another computer for example. Delete cuts by clicking on the red X next to the gearwheel.
Left: Set corner points for a polygon with simple mouse-clicks. Center: After changing the perspective you get a good preview of the cut. Right: The two parts after performing the cut (Triangulate Cut is activated).
With a click on the Create circle icon, the predefined shape of a circle cut will be previewed on the part. In the tabsheet, you can enter an exact radius or you can pull the yellow anchor on the circle in order to change its size.
The following function works very similar: a rectangle is being created on the part and you can adjust its size in the tabsheet or by pulling the anchors. Adjusting borders and tolerances is possible in both features.
Polygon cuts (the free polygon, not the rectangle or circle) can be enhanced by predefined shapes:
- · a dove tailed line
- · a jagged line
- · and a puzzle.
After you’ve created a polygon, either click the icon Edit edge to add the pin (then it’ll be automatically applied to all lines of the polygon) or right-click on the according line.
Open the context menu for predefined cutting shapes with a right-click on a polygon line. Define these shapes with edit edge.
In the new dialog you can set the exact parameters for each shape.
- · Count: define how many pins you need on
one edge.
- · Distance: how far should the pins be apart
from each other.
- · Pin type: 3 types are available. See list above.
Below these general settings it’s now possible to enter the measurements of the pins:
- · Height (h)
- · Upper width (w1) and lower width (w2).
Apply the changes either to all edges or to only that edge that you have selected before. Then click OK.
3 pins on each edge - left: dove tailed, middle: jagged, right: puzzled
With a right-click on the line, you can now edit the edge again, delete all pins of the whole polygon with or reset only the pins of the selected edge. If you want to add only single pins, press Duplicate pin.
The context menu for editing the edge and the pins.
When you right-click on one of the red anchor points in the middle of the pin, you can remove only this pin or spread all pins evenly. To adjust the size and the shape of all pins, just pull the anchors of the pin corner.
The context menu of the anchor points. With pulling the anchors of the pin corner (on the bottom left in this picture) you can adjust the size and the shape of the pins.
Example of a box cut by puzzle pins.
By clicking on the fifth button in the tabsheet, you switch your mode to Select parts. With that mode activated, you are no longer able to edit your cutting line. Instead, all options of the standard interface become available. You select parts by clicking on them and you can move and rotate them by drag & drop. Also, all context menus of the standard interface are available.
If you change the perspective after setting the first corner points, you can look at the cutting section from different angles. The cutting line is not rotated with the perspective. With the button Reset perspective to cutting direction you can set the perspective back to the one you had when you started setting cutting points.
To change the shape of the cutting line, you can move the points by drag & drop. The points are always moved sideways and never up and down (as the cutting line is projected through the whole area where it meets parts anyway). So, when you have changed the perspective, the shift can be a bit different to what you would expect intuitively. Rotate the perspective with the right mouse button to understand how the cutting line has been changed. After right-clicking on a corner point of the polygon, you can remove that point in the context menu.
When you click on Cut, the cutting line is projected through your parts. Everything within that projection is then cut out of your parts. The direction of the projection corresponds to the perspective from which you were looking at the project when you started drawing the line. You automatically leave the Free Cut module.
With Reset in the tabsheet you can remove your polygon and start a new line. You automatically get back into the mode Create/Edit polygon.
In the borders tab below, you can add tolerance spacing to the cut. This means that additional space between the two resulting cuts will also be cut off, which gives clearance to the parts. If you use a 3D printing technology, where the contours swell up at little, this is very helpful.
Activate the tolerance spacing with a check mark first, then define its thickness. You can choose if you want the space to be added inside, outside or on both sides of the original cutting line.
With a check mark on create round corners, the corners of the polygon will be smoothed. The value next to it defines the radius of this rounding.
Increase or decrease the transparency of the polygon.
In the information tab, there is an information box which specifies the number of points of your polygon and the volume of the whole cutting section which is about to be cut out of your parts.
Define clearance between the parts cut off parts and set the radius of rounded edges.
The polygon’s information.
Left: A polygon cut with a 6.000 mm tolerance space on the inside and a 5.000 mm corner rounding. Right: The cut part.