Brian,
I'll second Martin's comments. Firstly, I use MOI for virtually all of my modelling. I too use Vectric products (VCarve, after upgrading from Cut 2D, and Cut 3D) for all of my tool paths. I only use Cut 3D (STL exports from MOI) for true 3D shapes. If I have a 3D object (think acoustic guitar bridge) that requires holes, I'll export an .AI or PDF (MOI Ver 3 requires PDF I believe) with that data to VCarve and cut those tool paths after the 3D paths, usually. Just use silhouette to extract an outline of your object and use the same origin point that you used when you generated your 3D tool paths when you create your 2D paths and everything should line up. Things like pockets that don't go all the way through your work piece are trickier (use boolean difference to bisect the feature you're trying to cut, assuming it has a flat bottom, to get its depth measured from the top of your machine table), but I've found that the improved cut results are worth the effort. Also, sometimes my 3D final profile cut out results are kind of ugly when I run the tool paths in Cut 3D. I've learned to scale up my model by ~1/32" when possible then use the original silhouette to create the final cutout in VCarve and the edges are nice and crisp. Hope that helps, and good luck with the limit switches. They are still on my to do list.
Bob
|