I have gotten great results making dovetails in CC, and am able to construct a joint almost effortlessly now, after a few adjustments. But one thing that I struggle with is the need to make truly minuscule size adjustments to the pins. Tiny resizes to each pin can have a huge difference in whether the joint will close properly, but the only tools I can think of are to use an offset from the shape, which creates a new line, which I then need to adjust my tool path to accept as its origin.
What I would love to see is some way to tell the toolpath directly: really, this is a larger or smaller cutter diameter than I told you it was. The way that the tool library is set up, though, I would have to duplicate an existing cutter, redefine its settings, rename it, and remember which one did the adjustment larger or smaller. The existing contour toolpath has a “stock to leave” feature, which can make a small object larger, but I don’t think it allows negative values. Further, this only applies to contour, not pocketing operations, and when cutting pins, the stock is held vertically, and while a contour operation could cut their outsides, it would never finish the cheeks of the pin tenons.
Is there another way to think about this that could provide a repeatable way to adjust a fit like this? We are talking about tenths (or less) of a millimeter changes here, very much driven by the qualities of the wood in use and the scale of the joints.
