Creating a Curve Following Operation

Activate the Manufacturing Program and click Curve Following in the Prismatic Machining Operations toolbar.

A Curve Following entity is added to the Manufacturing Program. The Curve Following dialog box appears directly at the Geometry tab .

The guiding curve in the icon is colored red indicating that this geometry is required for defining the operation. All other geometry is optional.

Still in the Geometry tab:

See Selecting Geometry

1. Click the guiding curve in the icon, then select the desired curve in the authoring window.

   This may be one curve or a series of joined curves.

   The Selecting Edges and Faces to Define Geometry appears to help with this selection.

   When the curve is selected, the guiding curve of the icon is colored green indicating that the geometry is defined.

   Important: The direction of tool path machining is in the opposite direction to curve selection. You can quickly check this by means of a Tool Path Replay.

2. If you want machining to be done in the order of selection of the curves, click either the blue arrow in the sensitive icon or the highlighted arrow in the authoring window to reverse the driving mode.
3. Set an Axial Offset on the guiding curve, if required.

Select the Strategy tab and specify the machining, axial, and user parameters.

Go to the Tool tab to select a tool.

See Specifying a Tool Element in a Machining Operation

Select the Feeds and Speeds tab to specify the feedrates and spindle speeds for the operation.

Select the Macro tab to add approach and retract motions to the operation.

See Defining Macros on Milling Operations

Click Tool Path Replay to check the validity of the operation.

See Replaying the Tool Path

• The tool path is computed.
• A progress indicator is displayed.
• You can cancel the tool path computation at any moment before 100% completion.

Click OK to create the operation.