MILLDIR

Milling Direction List

Description: Defines a list of milling directions for 5-axis milling manufacturing constraints in design optimization analysis.

Format:

Example:

Field Definition Type Default
LID List identification number. Integer > 0 Required
Di Direction symbols. See Remarks 1 and 2. Character Required

Remarks:

  1. At least one direction symbol is required. Specifying all 26 is equivalent to the default setting for 5-axis milling when a milling direction list is not specified on the TOPVAR Bulk Data entry.
  2. The following table lists all 26 possible milling directions. C symbols are for corner directions, F symbols are for face directions, and E symbols are for edge directions. The cube shown in Figure 1 represents the voxelized model with a bounding box with corners numbered from 1 - 8. The milling directions are in the manufacturing coordinate system defined on the TOPVAR Bulk Data entry.
Direction Symbol X Component Y Component Z Component
C1 1.0 1.0 1.0
C2 –1.0 1.0 1.0
C3 –1.0 –1.0 1.0
C4 1.0 –1.0 1.0
C5 1.0 1.0 –1.0
C6 –1.0 1.0 –1.0
C7 –1.0 –1.0 –1.0
C8 1.0 –1.0 –1.0
F1 1.0 0.0 0.0
F2 0.0 –1.0 0.0
F3 0.0 0.0 –1.0
F4 –1.0 0.0 0.0
F5 0.0 1.0 0.0
F6 0.0 0.0 1.0
E12 0.0 1.0 1.0
E23 –1.0 0.0 1.0
E34 0.0 –1.0 1.0
E41 1.0 0.0 1.0
E56 0.0 1.0 –1.0
E67 –1.0 0.0 –1.0
E78 0.0 –1.0 –1.0
E85 1.0 0.0 –1.0
E15 1.0 1.0 0.0
E26 –1.0 1.0 0.0
E37 –1.0 –1.0 0.0
E48 1.0 –1.0 0.0

Figure 1: Milling Direction Symbol Definitions