It would be useful to allow additional offsets when doing contour cuts. Right now, if I want to leave a finish allowance, I create additional geometry (offset vector), then run the rough cut on the extra geometry, and the finish pass on the original.
This has two disadvantages
- need to keep geometry in sync if there are any changes
- toolpaths have to be on separate layers (if using the toolpath on layer feature).
If I could specify an additional offset, then both these problems go away:
- rough cut always references original geometry
- Rough and final cut can be on the same layer.
It also allows fine-tuning, without having to create new geometry. Part slightly too big? Edit path with small offset to compensate.
I would imagine that the default value would be zero, and that current choices would work exactly as today when the additional offset is zero.
Positive offset value should move ‘away’ from the vector, negative towards it. For no offset, additional offset for me would make sense of +'ve towards outside.
The other work around would be to lie about the toolsize by the size of the desired offset, but that seems like a recipe for future problems.