Mastercam Version 9 Solids Tutorial docx

This Software License Agreement shall not constitute a sale of the Software and no title or proprietary rights to the Software are transferred to you hereby.. Unauthorized copying of the

Tutorial

Version 9 Solids Tutorial

(Metric version)

Mastercam  Version 9 Solids Tutorial (Metric version)

Date: March 15, 2002

Copyright © 2002 CNC Software, Inc - All rights reserved

First Printing: January 21, 2002

Software: Mastercam Solids Version 9

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Table of Contents

1 Introduction to Mastercam Solids 1

Using the sample parts 1

If you need more help 2

Additional resources 4

2 Designing a Chair Seat 5

Exercise 1 – Starting Mastercam 5

Exercise 2 – Defining the seat’s basic shape 9

Exercise 3 – Creating indentations in the top of the seat 13

Exercise 4 – Smoothing the seat’s center edge 15

Exercise 5 – Smoothing the seat’s remaining edges 21

3 Designing a Plastic Cap 31

Exercise 1 – Creating the base of the cap 32

Exercise 2 – Creating a nozzle 35

Exercise 3 –Trimming the top of the cap 38

Exercise 4 – Reducing the number of display curves 41

Exercise 5 – Smoothing the cap’s edges 43

Exercise 6 – Hollowing out the cap 47

Exercise 7 – Cutting a hole in the nozzle 49

Exercise 8 – Creating a tab on the sides of the cap 52

Exercise 9 – Extending the tab 55

Exercise 10 – Cutting attachment holes 59

Exercise 11 – Enlarging the attachment holes 61

Exercise 12 – Creating a snap edge 64

Exercise 13 – Smoothing the snap edge 67

4 Designing a Connecting Rod 71

Exercise 1 – Creating the connecting rod body 71

Exercise 2 – Creating the ends of the connecting rod 74

Exercise 3 – Creating connecting tabs 79

Exercise 4 – Cutting bolt holes in the tabs 83

Exercise 5 – Removing material from the body of the connecting rod 87

Exercise 6 – Creating beveled edges 90

Exercise 7 – Creating rounded edges 95

Exercise 8 – Defining the connecting rod’s weight 107

5 Designing a Forging Die 111

Exercise 1 – Setting visible levels and display lines 112

Exercise 2 – Creating the die stock 114

Exercise 3 – Removing the connecting rod from the die stock 117

Exercise 4 – Reducing the connecting rod’s weight 121

Exercise 5 – Scaling the forging die 122

6 Designing a Windshield for a Toy Race Car 125

Exercise 1 – Defining the windshield’s shape 125

Exercise 2 – Creating the windshield’s solid body 131

Exercise 3 – Refining the windshield’s shape 133

Exercise 4 – Making the windshield more aerodynamic 142

Exercise 5 – Hollowing out the windshield 144

Exercise 6 – Smoothing the outside edges and nose of the windshield 146

Exercise 7 – Smoothing the inside edges of the windshield 151

Exercise 8 – Adding a screw plate to the back of the windshield 152

Exercise 9 – Smoothing the back of the windshield 160

Exercise 10 – Adding a snap closure to the windshield’s nose 165

Exercise 11 – Smoothing the snap closure’s edges 172

7 Designing an Injection Mold for a Camera 175

Exercise 1 – Importing the camera files 175

Exercise 2 – Checking the cavity and core for errors 180

Exercise 3 – Creating an operation history for the camera cavity 181

Exercise 4 – Modifying the spot faces 186

Exercise 5 – Creating curve geometry for a sprue hole and a gate 188

Exercise 6 – Adding the sprue hole and the gate to the mold 193

8 Designing an Injection Mold from a Surface File 201

Exercise 1 – Importing a surface file 202

Exercise 2 – Modifying the part design 203

Exercise 3 – Creating the mold stock 211

Exercise 4 – Creating a parting surface 217

Exercise 5 – Splitting the mold stock into two pieces 231

Exercise 6 – Creating a void between the mold core and cavity 235

Exercise 7 – Creating a drawing layout for the mold core 238

9 Designing an Electrode 251

Exercise 1 – Creating a sheet solid from the mold core 251

Exercise 2 – Reducing the size of the Y-shaped cavity 253

Exercise 3 – Creating the electrode blank 257

Mastercam Shortcut Keys 269

1 Introduction to Mastercam Solids

Welcome to Mastercam Solids Version 9 Mastercam Solids brings solid modeling to NC programmers with tools designed to make the line

seamless between solids and machining Mastercam Solids is an add-on to Mastercam Design, Mill Levels 1-3, Lathe Level 1, Wire Level 1, Router, and Router Pro It is not included with any product

To help you learn Mastercam Solids, this tutorial and extensive online help accompany the product

Use this tutorial as a self-training aid to orient yourself to the Solids program and interface After completing the tutorial, you will have a good introduction to creating solid models in Mastercam However, the tutorial does not try to cover every Solids feature

Use the online help as a reference for specific “How to…” or “What’s this…” questions, like “How do I vary the fillet radius along a solid edge,” or “What’s a Boolean operation?” This tutorial shows you how

to use online help

Note: For information on creating toolpaths on solids, see the online help and the Mill/Design Tutorial and Lathe Tutorial

Using the sample parts

The sample parts for all of the exercises in this tutorial are located in the

C:\Mcam9\Tutorials\Solids Tutorial\Metric directory The sample parts

are read-only, so you do not accidentally write over them You should

Chapter 1

Note: The parts for the exercises in this tutorial were created using metric units of measurement When you open one of the tutorial parts, if you are using a configuration file based on different units of measure, Mastercam will automatically switch configuration files to match the units in the current file For example, if you are working with the metric configuration file for Mastercam Mill (Mill9m.cfg) and you open an inch part, the

system switches to the inch configuration file (Mill9.cfg)

If you need more help

Online help

Online help contains the latest and most up-to-date information about Mastercam The following pictures show how to use the online help

Press the Help button

to get information about the dialog box

Click on the question mark then click on any field for more information

Tip: You can also

Dealers

If you have a question about Mastercam and have not been able to locate the answer in this tutorial or the online help, contact your local Mastercam dealer

Technical support

If your dealer is unavailable, you can call CNC Software Support Services Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m - 6:00 p.m., USA Eastern Standard Time

When calling CNC Software, Inc for technical support, please follow these guidelines:

Be sure you have already tried to contact your Mastercam dealer

Be ready to describe the problem in detail Write down what

happened, particularly if you cannot call immediately after the

problem occurs

Be in front of your computer when you call

If possible, try to duplicate the problem before calling Our Support Services technician may require you to duplicate the problem while you are on the phone

When you call, have ready a complete description of your hardware, including your operating system (OS), central processing unit (CPU), mouse, and memory

You can also leave a message for CNC Support Services twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week by way of e-mail or the web site If

sending e-mail, please include the serial number of your SIM and a

telephone number where you can be reached A member of our technical

Chapter 1

Keep the following information on hand in case you need to reach us:

Important Information

Address CNC Software, Inc

671 Old Post Road Tolland, Connecticut, 06084-2830 USA

TELNET and ftp://

ftp.mastercam.com or 172.16.100.100 Internet

Address http://www.mastercam.com E-mail support@mastercam.com

2 Designing a Chair Seat

In this chapter, you will use existing wireframe geometry consisting of points, lines, and arcs to generate the following solid model of a chair seat

You will learn how to perform the following skills:

Creating a base solid (Extrude) Cutting material from a solid (Sweep) Creating constant and variable radius fillets on solid edges Propagating a fillet to tangent edges

Correcting fillet overflow conditions Checking radius values along a filleted edge Verifying solid selections

Viewing a solid operation history Shading a solid

Chapter 2

The following picture shows you some of the main features of the Mastercam workspace

Learning about the HASP and NetHASP

Mastercam uses two types of licensing: single-user licensing and network licensing If you are using single-user licensing, you need to have a special piece of hardware called a HASP (sometimes called a dongle or SIM) attached to your parallel or USB port If you get an error message like the following:

Toolbar

Each button is a shortcut to a common menu command

Hold the cursor over a button to see what it does

Graphics window

Your part and toolpaths appear here

this component is either missing or not configured properly Refer to your installation instructions (included in a separate document) or contact your dealer for assistance

If you have a network license (NetHASP), you must have at least one Solids license programmed on the NetHASP If you see either of the following messages, you may need to update your NetHASP See your Mastercam dealer for more information

Error checking out a Solids license No

licenses have been purchased for this

product

All available licenses are in use.

Controlling part display in the graphics window

Mastercam provides several different ways to control how jobs

display in the graphics window In the toolbar, the buttons below let you control the display scale of the part in the graphics window:

Zoom with window

Use the cursor to draw a box around the area to be enlarged

Chapter 2

To the right of these buttons in the toolbar are green buttons that control the graphics view (Gview), which is how you view the part in the graphics window:

Note: The graphics view does not affect the plane in which the part geometry exists In Mastercam, this is called the “construction

plane” or “Cplane” Please refer to Mastercam’s online Help for more information on Cplanes and Gviews

When you right-click in the graphics window, a menu appears that lets you control the display in a similar way to the toolbar buttons and also provides some additional controls:

You will use these controls throughout this tutorial

Zoom control

Enlarge the display scale of the

windowed selection, or reduce it by

Draw control

Enlarge or reduce the display scale to

fit the screen, or refresh the screen

Dynamic controls

Use the mouse to spin (rotate) the displayed part, to move the view right, left, up, or down, (pan), or to zoom in or out

Exercise 2 – Defining the seat’s basic shape

The first operation that you perform when creating a solid is referred to as the base operation There are many ways to perform a base operation, which defines the initial solid In this exercise, you will define the chair seat's basic shape by extruding, or driving out, a chain of curves along a linear path The shape of the curves defines the shape of the resulting solid

Turning on the AutoCursor and AutoHighlight features

The AutoCursor feature aids the process of entering points in

Mastercam by automatically detecting entity positions, such as

midpoints and endpoints AutoHighlight makes it easier to identify entities by automatically highlighting an entity when the cursor is over it You will turn on both of these features before you create the chair seat

1 Right-click in the graphics window Mastercam displays the following menu

Chapter 2

2 If the AutoCursor and AutoHighlight options do not have check marks next to them, choose each option to enable it Mastercam closes the menu after each choice, so right-click again if you need

to If the option already has a check mark next to it, the feature is already turned on, so click in the graphics window to close the menu

Chaining the geometry and setting the extrusion direction

1 Choose Main Menu, File, Get

2 Navigate to your working folder: Mcam9\Tutorials\Solids

Tutorial\Metric

3 Select chair-wireframe-mm.mc9 and choose Open

4 Choose Main Menu, Solids, Extrude The Chaining Methods

menu displays

5 Select the dark green geometry at the position shown in the following picture Mastercam highlights the selection

6 Choose Done The Extrusion Direction menu displays

7 A direction arrow on the selected chain indicates the extrusion direction Check to be sure the arrow points up If it does not,

choose Reverse It

Note: The default extrusion direction is normal, or perpendicular, to the plane that the chain lies in

Setting extrusion parameters

The base operation results in the creation of a solid Therefore, the only option available in the Extrusion Operation section of the dialog box is Create Body You will extrude the shape of the curves a

distance of 24 millimeters

1 Check your settings against the following picture Make any necessary adjustments

Chapter 2

3 Press [Alt + S] to turn on full-time shading Your part should look like the following picture

4 Choose Main Menu, File, Save

5 Navigate to your working folder: Mcam9\Tutorials\Solids

Tutorial\Metric

6 Type chair-solid-mm.mc9 for File name and choose Save

Exercise 3 – Creating indentations in the top of the

seat

Once you have performed the base operation and defined the initial solid, you can perform additional operations to customize the model further In this exercise, you will create indentations in the top of the chair seat to make it comfortable and attractive You will use the Sweep function to remove material from the extruded solid

Selecting the section chain and sweep path

The Sweep function requires you to define two sets of geometry The first set consists of one or more chains of curves These chains are called section chains because their cross-sections define the shape of the resulting solid, cut, or boss In this case, you will select one section chain to use as a cut The second set of geometry consists of a single chain, which defines the path along which the section chain is swept

1 Press [Alt+S] to turn off shading

2 Choose Main Menu, Solids, Sweep The Chaining Methods

menu displays

3 Define the section chain by selecting the red geometry at the position shown in the following picture

Chapter 2

Note: A branch point is the position where the endpoints of two

or more entities meet and where there are different paths that the chain can take

5 Define the sweep path by selecting the red geometry at the

position shown in the following picture The Sweep Chain dialog box opens

Setting sweep parameters

Now that the file contains the extruded solid, you have the option to perform another base operation (Create Body), in which case a

second solid would be created You can also modify the extruded solid by removing material from it (Cut Body) or adding material to it (Add Boss) For this exercise, you will cut the extruded solid

1 Choose Cut Body

2 Choose OK The system cuts the shape of the section chain from

the chair seat

3 Turn on shading Your part should look like the following picture

Exercise 4 – Smoothing the seat’s center edge

In this exercise, you will further customize the chair seat by rounding its center edge using fillets, or blends

Selecting the center edge

1 Turn off shading

2 Choose Fillet from the Solids menu The Pick Solid Entity menu

displays

3 To limit your selection to solid edges, toggle Edges to Y and all other Yes/No options to N, as shown in the following picture

Chapter 2

4 Move your cursor over the geometry at the position shown in the following picture

5 The cursor symbol changes to show that an edge has been

detected Click to select the edge

6 Choose Done The Fillet Parameters dialog box opens

Setting fillet parameters

You have the option to fillet the selected edge using a constant or a variable radius value For this exercise, you will vary the fillet radius

at several positions along the edge

1 Choose Variable Radius

2 Choose Smooth This option forces the fillet’s end condition at

non-tangent edges to be parallel with the original edge, as if

3 Check your settings against the following picture Make any necessary adjustments

Defining the radius at the vertices

In this exercise, you will set the fillet radius to a different value at each vertex, or endpoint, of the selected edge

1 Click on the + sign next to EDGE 1 The Edge List area should

look like the following picture

Chapter 2

3 Enter 72 for Radius

4 Click on the second VERTEX in the Edge List area Mastercam

highlights the corresponding endpoint in the graphics window, as shown in the following picture

5 Enter 480 for Radius

Dynamically editing the radius along the center edge

In this exercise, you will vary the fillet radius at two interior positions along the seat’s center edge

1 Choose the Edit button (located below the Edge List area)

Mastercam returns you to the graphics window and displays the Fillet Edit menu

2 Choose Insert dyn

3 Select the center edge, as shown in the following picture The

4 Press [S] to turn on snap mode The prompt area indicates that snapping is on

Note: When snapping is active, the cursor snaps to the point entity closest to the cursor’s position when you left-click the mouse

5 Position the cursor crosshair over the point at the position shown

in the following picture, and click

Note: The crosshair at the base of the dynamic arrow may or may not be located at the same position However, be sure that

Chapter 2

9 In the prompt area, type 288 for the radius, then press [Enter]

10 Choose Done to return to the Fillet Parameters dialog box The

Edge List area now shows four radius positions for EDGE 1

Checking the radius values along the center edge

In this exercise, you will check the radius value at each position along the center edge

1 Click on the first VERTEX in the Edge List area Mastercam

highlights the corresponding endpoint in the graphics window The Radius field changes to 72, the radius value at this position

2 Use the down arrow key on your keyboard to cycle through the radius value of each point for EDGE 1

3 To check the radius values graphically, choose the Edit button

Mastercam returns you to the graphics window and displays the Fillet Edit menu

4 Choose Cycle from the Fillet Edit menu Mastercam highlights

the first vertex and displays its radius value in the prompt area where you can edit it, if necessary For this exercise, you will

5 Choose Done to return to the Fillet Parameters dialog box

6 Choose OK to fillet the center edge

7 Turn on shading Your part should look like the following picture

Exercise 5 – Smoothing the seat’s remaining edges

In this exercise, you will fillet the remaining edges on the top of the seat using a constant radius value To save time and reduce the number of edges that you have to select manually, you will select one edge to fillet, and propagate the fillet to all tangent edges

Smoothing the chair seat’s inside edge

1 Turn off shading

2 From the Solids menu, choose Fillet The Pick Solid Entity menu

displays

3 Select the edge at the position shown in the following picture

Chapter 2

4 Choose Done The Fillet Parameters dialog box opens

5 Choose Constant Radius

6 Enter 48 for Radius

7 Select Propagate along tangencies

8 Check your settings against the following picture Make any necessary adjustments

9 Choose OK to fillet the edges

10 Turn on shading Your part should look like the following picture

In addition to the selected edge, Mastercam filleted the tangent edges along the interior curve However, the fillet stops at the non-tangent edges along the front of the seat

Smoothing the chair seat’s front edge

In this exercise, you will fillet the chair seat’s front edge Once again, you will use the propagate feature to minimize selection time

However, you must select more than one edge to propagate because the edges that define the complete path of the front of the chair are not all tangent

1 Turn off shading

2 Choose the Screen-Zoom toolbar button

3 Click at opposite corners of a rectangle around the front of the chair seat, as shown in the following picture

it then select the correct edge

8 The system detects multiple edges at this cursor position and

displays the Verify Solid Entity menu Choose Next until the

small, horizontal edge is selected (highlighted in blue), then

Chapter 2

11 Choose Done from the Pick Solid Entity menu The Fillet

Parameters dialog box opens

12 Enter 24 for Radius

13 Set Overflow to Maintain Edges This option prevents the fillet

operation from failing in cases where a fillet is large enough to overflow onto faces beyond its two adjacent faces The system maintains the edges of the fillet's adjacent faces

14 Check your settings against the following picture Make any necessary adjustments

15 Choose OK The system creates the fillets along the seat’s top

front edge

16 Choose the Screen-Unzoom toolbar button to view the entire

chair seat The Maintain Edges option prevents the fillet from overflowing past the edge shown in the following picture and causing the operation to fail

Chapter 2

3 Choose Done The Fillet Parameters dialog box opens

4 Enter 12 for Radius

5 Set Overflow to Default Mastercam determines how best to

resolve any overflow conditions for this operation

6 Check your settings against the following picture Make any necessary adjustments

7 Choose OK The system fillets the seat’s top outer edge

8 Turn on shading Your part should look like the following picture