Inserting a COPY Operator Instruction

Within a Manufacturing Program, you can apply a COPY Operator Instruction to a delimited sequence of Machining Operations to repeat (an apply a transformation to) those Machining Operations. The sequence is delimited by COPY-INDEX type instructions.

Before you begin:

To compute the COPY Operator Instruction, all the referenced operations must:

  • be up-to-date or locked,
  • have a tool path.

Deactivated operations in the reference sequence are not taken into account when the COPY Operator Instruction is processed.

Related Topics
About TRACUT Operator Instruction, COPY Operator Instruction and Copy-Transformation Instructions
Working with Generic Machine Editor

  1. Open a product like this one,

    1. Select Start > Machining > Machine Programming.

      A PPR context with an empty Machining Cell is created. An empty Activities Process Tree opens automatically.

    2. Create a generic machine or assign a machine from the database.

      As soon as a machine is assigned to the Machining Cell, a Part Operation and a Manufacturing Program are created in the Activities Process Tree.

    3. Alternatively, open an existing Machining Process or PPR context .

      By default, the Activities Process Tree opens automatically.

  2. Create Pocketing operation:

    1. Click Prismatic Machining Operations.
    2. Click Pocketing and create a first Pocketing operation on the first square cut-out.
    3. Create a second Pocketing operation using a different tool on the first triangular cut-out.

      When creating these pockets, make sure that the Island Detection contextual command is not active before you select the pocket bottom.

  3. Right-click the Manufacturing Program and select Compute Tool Path.

    1. Select the Compute if necessary option in the pop-up that appears.



  4. Select the second Pocketing operation in the Manufacturing Program.

    1. Click Utilities.
    2. Click COPY Operator Instruction in the Copy/Tracut Operations sub-toolbar.

    A COPY Operator is inserted in the Manufacturing Program after Pocketing.2 and the COPY Operator dialog box appears.





  5. Create an INDEX instruction:

    1. In the dialog box, click Create an INDEX/I instruction.


      • creates an INDEX/NOMORE instruction in the Manufacturing Program.
      • associates an existing INDEX to the COPY Operator Instruction.

    2. Select an activity in the Manufacturing Program to specify the insertion level.

      We have selected Tool Change.1 to insert the INDEX instruction before that Tool Change.

    The COPY Operator Instruction is applied to the two Tool Changes and the two Pocketing operations.

  6. Still in the COPY Operator dialog box, set Number of copies (N). In our example, we have set it to 3.

  7. Define the transformation. For example:

    1. Set the Transformation type to Translation.
    2. Set the Translation type to Absolute Coordinates.
    3. Set the Distance along X to 100mm.



  8. Click Tool Path Replay to visualize the tool path resulting from the defined COPY Operator Instruction.



  9. If needed, select the Syntax tab to consult the PP instruction that can be applied to the COPY Operator Instruction.



  10. Click OK to create the COPY Operator Instruction in the Manufacturing Program.