I don’t seem to be having any luck with creating a contour for this simple cam that I designed in FreeCAD. It just keeps displaying “EMPTY TOOLPATH”. I don’t seem to have issue with contouring any other parts. It’s not showing as an open vector and I’m on Carbide Create 764.
I also tried pocketing it, but the results are the same.
I’ve attached the file (with all other vectors removed).
Hoping someone on here can point out the obvious!
JustACam.c2d (52 KB)
If you ungroup, the cam is made up of 6 separate vectors, each of which is closed. Each vector is going ‘there and back again’, you don’t have one vector that defines the outside contour.
Here’s one vector that I’ve edited the nodes on, you can see it’s a closed loop.
I don’t see a graceful way to fix this. Edit all of the vectors leaving one side of each shape in it’s original position. Select each vector then change the angle/slope of each end point. On the cam shape you also have to move the intermediate vectors. Move the vectors so they are inside of the shape.
The small fillets at the end of the cam shape look to be about 0.030 (1/32") ?
Select all 6 shapes & offset them 0.030 to the outside. Deleted everything except the offset.
Now offset that single shape 0.030 to the inside. Delete the first (outside) offset.
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Thanks Michael and Tod for proving insight into this! I poked at it in CC for the better part of an hour and it was getting pretty frustrating considering it was such a simple part!
With your insights tried just doing a section view in FreeCAD to get an outline that I could export as an SVG that didn’t have the “closed lines” problem.
Thanks again!
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