Workspaces for powderbed fusion machines
Netfabb's metal machines, or more specifically powderbed fusion machines, address the workflow centered around additive methods that repeatedly lay down layers of material powder and use directed energy beams, usually lasers, to sinter or melt traces into it, rendering the material solid and also fusing it with material rendered during previous passes. One notable feature of this workspace type is the direct access to simulation of thermo-mechanical effects that occur during the manufacturing cycle, such as transmission of heat, tension and distortion, or events such as recoaters colliding with warped parts. This is done using Autodesk® Simulation Utility LT for Netfabb® included in Netfabb Ultimate.
Netfabb comes with several metal-additive (and polymer-additive) machine workspaces addressing actual machine models available on the market, and there is also a generic metal-additive workspace available if the model of choice is not available.
Definitions for toolpath generation rules come in three variants:
Metal machines use configurations to describe global settings that are usually aimed at powder material's properties. An example of a configuration could be named AlSi10Mg Defaults (30µm, 100W). Configurations include one or more strategies which are the actual rules for toolpath generation, and you can choose different strategies for different parts on the same platform. An example of a strategy name could be Solid part.
The settings available here are partly direct-access process parameters like laser speed, partly shortcuts to more complex calculation macros not unlike the repair or support scripts. You cannot edit these macros directly; however, you can convert configurations into editable ones.