A bit baffled by 3D

So I have watched a few of the tutorials for CC Pro but I am still a bit baffled by 3D. If I take a B&W png and import it as a component, the simulation shows the supposed carve just fine.


but there seems to be no object to select in the tool path.

Am I asking it to do something it’s not designed to do?
Am I skipping a step or setting somewhere?

As I said, 3D is a very new beast for me.

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did you follow steps similar to

?

specifically you need to draw a rectangle in the design pane

and then use that to make to make toolpaths

Thanks. I had not seen that one. Let me follow it through and see if I gain some clarity.

you pretty much already had step 1 and 2 so you can skip those :wink:

and the c2d file is there so you can see how it fit together

I see it now. My mistake was just importing the component but not giving it a shape to map to. I didn’t create a rectangle and select it, but CC happily imported the PNG as a component. Is that intentional?

Importing an image without a boundary is just fine. If I recall, we made it just scale the component to the document if no contour is selected. You will need a bounding contour to define the toolpath though.

Thanks Rob.
I create the rectangle, select it and choose Import Component in the model tab. I import my greyscale png file, select a .5 inch height and click Apply/Done. The 3D render now shows me a half inch board with my carved png image in it.
When I select the rectangle with the component in the toolpath window, set the tool to a 1/8 ball mill, it appears to calculate, but I am getting empty toolpath message. It still displays the 3D render correctly. Am I correct that a greyscale png file should work, or am I missing steps again?

how thick is your stock set to ?
one thing to remember is that the 3d modeling pretty much works bottom up from the base, while all other things in cc go top down

The stock is set to .7 inches. This is a quick 2 minute video of exactly what I am doing. It seems like I am just missing a step somewhere or a key piece of 3D knowledge.

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I’ll take a look right after my meeting

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ok at about 30 seconds in you say “my base height needs to match my other height (stock), 0.7”
then you add a 0.2" on top

this is where it goes wrong.

counting from the bottom of the stock you now first have 0.7" of just a cube, and on TOP of that you have 0.2" of your design

but since your whole stock is only 0.7… there’s nothing to cut into the stock!

if you had set base height to 0.5" then it would have done what you expected

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Thanks @fenrus! I think that has me started in the right direction. I have a toolpath I can work with now.

it’s slightly confusing, in that almost all of CNC / Carbide Create is subtractive thinking, but 3D modeling is additive thinking, with subtraction happening only at the toolpath phase

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