Operations page (Mill)

Use the Mill > Operations page of the Machining Attributes dialog to specify ordering and time-estimation settings.

To display the dialog, click Features/Manufacturing tab > Options panel > Machining Attributes.

Ordering

Automatic Options — Click to display the Automatic Ordering Options dialog.

Base priority — Features are sorted by their Base priority to determine the order in which they are manufactured. For features that have the same Base priority value, the system uses the Automatic Ordering settings.

To ensure that an individual feature is cut before anything else, you can set its Base priority attribute. All features have a default Base priority of 10. To ensure that a feature is manufactured first, set its priority to a lower value. To make a feature last, set its priority to a higher value. For example, if you set the Base priority of a pocket to 8, its roughing pass is the first operation performed, its finish pass is second, and the rest of the operations are ordered according to the Automatic Ordering or Manual Ordering settings.

Warning: Although you can specify the order of every feature by priority, you should not do so casually because you lose the automatic optimization sequences built into the system and it is harder to maintain or change the part.
Note: The order of operations in the document is controlled by the operation-level Priority attribute. If you use the Op List to drag-and-drop operations to the order you want, the Priority is updated automatically.

Don't ask at tool path simulation — This is a toggle for whether you are prompted with the dialog when you run a simulation. The Ordering dialog settings override the operation defaults set on this tab.

Time estimation

Set these attributes to fit the behavior of your particular machine. These attributes affect the machining time estimates printed in the operation sheets.

Rapid traverse — This is the feed per minute of rapid moves.

Tool change — This is the time in seconds it takes to change a tool (not including the rapid to get to tool change location).

Go to start — This is the time it takes for the tool head to move to the start location and the spindle or tool head to come to a stop.

Rotary rapid — This is the rotation per minute of the indexing axis.

Use acceleration — Select to manually enter the values for XY and Z acceleration: