Hollow Stock?

[Mark Cook]

Hi all,
I'm trying to machine the end of a pipe so it will intersect another section of pipe and fit properly, it's for a space frame. Is there a reason why i can't import a hollow pipe as stock? I get a solid block as if you draped a sheet over the model.
I know the toolpath generated from this will still work, but it will also have alot of cutting in fresh air. As you can imagine, there will be quite a few of these joints in our space frame so this will really slow the whole process down...
I suppose i can edit the G code manually and try and cut out all the stuff i don't need, is this the what i will have to do?
Any ideas would be gratefully received!
cheers
mark

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Mark Cook
School of Engineering and Electronics
The University of Edinburgh
[email protected]

[MecSoft Support]

Hi Mark,

There are a lot of questions in your post and let me try to answer them best.

1) First of all you need to be using the Polygonal Simulation model when you are trying to do this. The voxel model will treat stock models as if they did not have any undercuts and that is why you are seeing this "sheet draping" phenomenon
2) The polygonal simulation also requires a closed solid. We try to close the imported model to create a closed solid. But if this fails due to gaps etc. we switch to the processing similar to the voxel model and you may still get the "sheet draping" problem.
3) To ensure this does not happen, create a closed STL file for the import stock and then import it. Everything should work fine after that.

Let us know how it goes.

[Mark Cook]

Hi, Thanks for getting back to me on this.

1) Ahhh! I was wondering why there were two simulation methods...

2) Seems rhino has a few problems generating a closed mesh a lot of the time, but solid edge is managing fine. Thought the problem might be with the tolerances in rhino but haven't found a solution yet...

Thanks for guiding me through this, i think i've got it now.

cheers
mark