Use the Rest Area Machining dialog to set the profile work group as a rest area machining group.
The toolpath for a rest area machining group machines only those areas within the group's profile curves, which were not machined by the preceding group in the same face window.
To display the Rest Area Machining dialog:
- Select the Advanced Milling Toolpath option on the Profile Group Parameters dialog.
- Click the Rest Area button on the Profile Group Parameters dialog.
The following settings are available:
Enable Rest Area Machining — Select to enable rest area machining. When rest area machining is enabled for a profile group, PartMaker calculates the rest area to be machined based on the machining carried out by the preceding group in the face window.
- Minimum Material Thickness — When calculating the rest area to be machined, PartMaker ignores any material left over from the previous machining operation, which has a thickness smaller than this value.
- Material Expansion — After the material has been filtered using the Minimum Material Thickness, the rest area is expanded by this amount. This expansion does not violate any Profile Curves defined in the Profile Group.
How to set up the profile group preceding a rest area machining group
For a rest area machining group to generate a toolpath correctly, the group preceding it in the same Face window must:
- be a profile group that has the Advanced Milling Toolpath option enabled; or
- have a Strategy of Face Mill.