Hi Michael,

Doe's MoI's geometry library handle simplifying splines into true lines and arcs?

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Hi Danny, I think I have seen some function for approximating a curve with arcs (not lines, just arcs) but it seems to be an old function and possibly not used very often. I have no idea if it works very well or not.

It can be fairly difficult to do a nice job with that kind of a thing without generating too many arc pieces, I would not be surprised if it would need a custom replacement function to really do a good job of it.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

It's a CNC software thing, well with NX anyway.
If a spline is used to create a surface and that spline is a bit crappy as in knot points etc. the guys here have a hard time machining that surface, so what we do is simplify the spline and it creates nice arcs and lines and then the software is happy.
In the case where it creates lots of little arcs, then we use that as a base to reconstruct the curve.

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"Explode" with line and arc tolerances.

Hi Danny, yup I've heard of that being used before for CNC type work.

I just don't know if the function that is currently in the library does a decent job of that or not though. I may need to write a new one to get one that behaves well, so I'm not quite sure when I would be able to give that a try, maybe sometime in v3.

- Michael

That's OK Michael, I was more curious than actually needing this function now, V3 or 4 is fine.

Cheers

By the way there is a way to reduce machining time of complex 3D surface even though you use "dumb" CAM software and/or old CNC controller. You can simplify a true G-code using MetaCut Finish (http://www.nwdesigns.com/Products/MCFinishNutshell.htm) by fitting arcs, lines or curves (nurbs) to the point-to-point toolpath. -Petr