Has this been fixed? I’ve tested the whole 4mm process used in the thread and changing it 5% and it is still showing 50%.
I’m seeing the same issue where it is not adjusting the %. It’s automatically adjusting it to 50%. If I select 25% nothing changes.
Please advise.
I’m not seeing where the % 3D stepover assigned to the tool is being used anywhere.
All the operations I create with a tool don’t use the value in the tool definition for anything.
It looks like most of the operations are just using a default stepover, and you have to edit it.
Hi Tod,
If you read the entire thread that I referenced, right at the last comment where Will Adams, and I quote “Hang on, gotta go file a bug report.”
Based on what you are saying, that is just a reference??? and I have to manually add it?
Please clarify.
No, I think you are correct it’s a bug. (Assuming it was intended to be used. Otherwise, why have it?)
I’ve just gotten used to adjusting it in the operation dialog, and wasn’t sure if it ever got used. I don’t see that it does. I thought maybe it was only for 3D operations, since it’s labeled 3D Stepover, but it doesn’t get used there either.
This is the frustration with the software. Things don’t get fixed, and stupid me for assuming it was doing the calculation. If I have to set everything manually, why bother with providing any information.
The fact that this bug has been in the program for little over a year is concerning. Are there any regular updates on the program? If it’s a bug then it should be fixed.
As with any other software product, bugs & features get prioritized and are fixed or implemented based on available resources & time.
And as the software evolves, some things become obsolete. (The machine & material selection in Job Setup don’t do anything.)
This just happens to be a very low priority bug, with a simple workaround (Enter stepover in the operation). 
P.S. I still can’t climb cut!! 
Well I don’t expect an Apple response to software development, but when I look at the Announcement Tab, the focus is very clear that Machines are the priority. When was the last update???
This could be such a better piece of software, but the lack of development or care of development is dishearting. Carbide Create is free, and a charge of $120.00 for Pro features that are actually don’t do anything or have to guess what inputs one enters into geometry without being able to actually troubleshoot your creations is pretty lame. You might as well give it away for free if you’re not going to keep updating it.
For example:
Find attached my first somewhat successful 3d carve. I say somewhat because you wouldn’t know there was a problem until you looked closer.
The first image shows two yellow circles in two of the three inner petals. The wood is so thin if I put pressure on them they will break through. The third petal has more wood on it. Now this could have been a problem with an uneven piece of wood, but it was perfectly flat as I planed it first.
My point in a previous post regarding the ability to see the geometry parameters would be useful to identify the issue. Were the settings deeper for 2 of the petals? Who knows, but now I have to experiment again wasting more time
The second issue is more directly related to 3d finishing and the stepover percentage. Before you make a claim that there is something wrong with my machine, it carved perfectly until this point and after I corrected the issue it still carved well. When the carve started it gouged right into the wood. Luckily I stopped in time and still have to repair a little bit more, but this was caused by the selection of the bit, a 1/4 inch ball bit that for some reason adjusted my plunge rate to 804mm/minute and feed rate of 1586. Stepover was of course 3.175mm. Since the 5% doesn’t work, I corrected it to .3175. I still don’t get when you pick a 1/4" tool, an automatic 50% is taken into account in the stepover field and at the same time, you have a tool database with parameters that do not work. What’s the point of even having a tools database if you don’t write the code to automatically adjust parameters? As well, I now have to create a design log and carve log so that I can compare actual results. This adds more to my and I’m sure others workflow.
If you don’t want to support the software then dump it and only focus on machines. I certainly hope support for your machines is much better.
Since last June when V7 was released, there have been 56 updates.
I don’t think CC was ever meant to be a “One Stop Shop” solution to do everything you might do on your machine. It’s a very basic software meant to introduce newcomers to CAD/CAM & get them started making simple project to get some experience under their belt.
I would expect a free or $120/yr software to have limitations. However, I’ve seen a bunch of people here do some pretty amazing things with it.
Perspective helps too. If you look at some of the big players in the CAD/CAM world: NX, SmartCam, WorkNC, MasterCam… You’ll see that $120/yr is really inexpensive.
Machines is Carbide 3D’s bread & butter. Controller software (Carbide Motion) is secondary. And CAD/CAM falls below that. Many machine builders don’t offer any kind of programming software other than what’s on the controller, and that’s usually extremely basic.
Does that mean we shouldn’t complain or submit bugs? No, not at all. I do it all the time, and so do most others here. But to act entitled to a perfect bug free software that does everything you want for free or cheap is a bit unreasonable. I wish there was a software that would catch all my mistakes too! There isn’t. I’ve seen a bunch of machines in shops with signs that say, “This machine doesn’t think… That’s your job!”
I concur. I have many years of experience with CATIA which costs many thousands of dollars, is still buggy and fixes/releases are way slower.
I bought a used Pro and started with the free CC. Other than purchasing a Bitsetter Carbide 3D got nothing from me and I expect it is a similar situation for a lot of people on this forum. However given their quick updates, the new inlay feature, planned tiling feature and the excellent responses on the forum especially from. @WillAdams i decided to pony up and pay for the Pro subscription.
Your complaint about the stepover not translating through from the database is valid, the attitude is a bit much though. It’s an annoyance and I would rather have time spent on new functionality than addressing that issue.
It would be nice to have it addressed in one way or another though. Either let it translate through or remove it from the database. I personally have not had this experience yet, but thanks to your post I know to be on the lookout for it.
First of all Tod, I would like to address the statement you made about being “Entitled”. I’ll use a Canadian Definition, since it seems like the American Definition is misunderstood.
A feeling that you have the right to do or have what you want without having to work for it or deserve it, just because of who you are.
I’m assuming you are a user and not a principal at Carbide, but just after 2 weeks of struggling with a couple of issues, instead of offering resolutions, or asking more questions to resolve the issues, all I have received is absolutely zero feedback other than an insult.
Even you couldn’t offer a solution, or even say, nice bowl, but I don’t understand the issues, could you further explain. Now me expecting that from you might seem entitled, but since I paid for a piece of software regardless that I paid, $1, $120 or $1200, you expect some level of support even if that comes from a forum.
Smart people are curious people and curious people ask questions.
I should clarify, as well. I did get one resolution @WillAdams and that was to buy another piece of software after I already paid for one. One that by all accounts talks a big talk on the website.
You offered a solution when you modelled my one design on NX. As you mentioned it was very expensive. If I demanded to get that software for the same price as CC Pro or even free just because I feet I should then that is “Entitled”
I don’t want a pissing match here. I complemented the software by stating, “This could be such a better piece of software” that also implies it’s good, but could be a contender, only if the owners who are all “Engineers” actually understood “Marketing”
Customers buy when they feel they are supported.
I feel this is the most supported product I have ever purchased, I did not buy the pro software but I did buy a machine, as for the software they allow you to try it for free before you buy it, if you don’t like it you are free to buy something else with the features you want not something meant for basic starting out and expect it to do what a high end program does.
Out of curiosity, what was your problem with Easel that made you try Carbide Create?
14 days isn’t enough time to understand the functions of a product they’ve never tried especially 3d.
Perhaps I chose the wrong word??
My first 2 replies in this thread, at least were intended to be helpful & supportive.
Then you decided to vent your frustration with snarky hyperbolic comments like,
Lots of things have gotten fixed. And some things haven’t.
So what’s the right word for, “I think my bug is more important than all of the others.” ??
People are funny that way. They tend to cease to be helpful when someone gets snarky.
The bowl does look awesome! Beautiful piece of wood.
The reason you can’t see a whole 3D model is because the 3D data is not created or stored that way.
The 3D modeling tools are really image editing tools. They create a height map which can’t show the back side. At the end all that is stored is a grayscale image. Also the reason the components don’t show all of the parameters that went into creating them. It’s just the way it works.
It would be really cool if they made it a little smarter & stored the parameters so the image could be recreated by changing them.
If you have a 3/4" piece of stock, and you cut your bowl pocket out at 1/2" deep, you should have 1/4" left. Did you set the “Limit Height” or “Scale Height” on the bowl shapes before subtracting them?
A clever (Will Adams) solution is to create a dummy component using the “Equal” or “Min” merge type at a known height to measure the bottom of the pocket. In my example, creating it at 0.240 should show it completely below the bottom of the bowl. creating it at 0.260 should show it just above the bottom surface.
As for the stepover not being used. It struck me as something I’d questioned before, so I went & tried it with every operation type. I set the 3D stepover in the tool to an unrelated number. So for a 1/2" tool I used 0.290 (or something not a simple factor of tool size). Then I selected that tool in all the operations. The stepover in the operation dialog did not appear to be related to the 3D stepover in the tool in any way. I could only conclude that it was being ignored entirely. It did strike me as odd that there was a 3D stepover but no 2D stepover?? Although I haven’t given it a 2nd thought in the year & a half I’ve been using it. I just enter the stepover in the operation dialog.
We don’t want marketing people writing software. I don’t think that would end well.
Customers get supported when they ask nicely.
I have to agree, customer support here is top notch. I’ve had software where you can’t even contact the company, and support only came from other users who had the same struggles & figured it out.
The reason is that I could only import an stl file and not take a 2d flat image and turn it into a 3d carve…, unless I’m missing something. I like easel, still had some challenges, but their forum has a group of people that faced similar frustrations and actually make recommendations for workarounds.
When people ask for work-arounds, if there is one, we gladly help with them.
in addition to workarounds, I find that bugs do get fixed almost always [*], if you describe them precisely enough.
With that I mean, I try to make it into a “to reproduce this, do these steps” followed by a “step 1” “step 2” etc list. Including “what I expected” vs “but instead this happened in step 5”.
I don’t know for sure this is the format the Carbide3D crew likes, but it’s the format I like in my dayjob, since it is 1) precise and 2) includes enough context to understand the problem
(as a reporter, it’s easy to think you are clear, but you have a bunch of base context/assumptions that the other side may not know… by turning it into basic steps you get both sides on the same page)
[*] sometimes an issue is a “taste” thing where you can argue what the right thing is… and as a software engineer, I know how hard it is to balance a wide userbase, and the Carbide3D crew has to balance a lot of things… and sometimes I learn better ways of doing things from this.
Edit: an example of a report: Bugreport [754] Engraving: Changing feedrate changes stepover
I quickly traced your image and made this model 3/4" thick with 1/2" depressions.
And here’s the “gage block” I created to sanity check the depth.
I actually had to make it 0.300 to get flush with the bottom of the pocket, so although I asked for a 1/2" deep pocket, I actually got 0.450 deep.
I suggest you spend more time on the forum, as what I find most useful/valuable/amazing about it is the abundance of knowledgeable, useful and well thought-out solutions that people have taken the time to post in response to my frequent questions.
Hey guys…let’s be fair here. Carbide has already acknowledged weaknesses in the modeling features of the software. They have already stated that they’re working on (or soon will be) an overhaul for those screens - which will include better terminology, editing of components, deeper functions, a more consistent user experience, and real documentation. I, for one, am ANXIOUS to see it.
I’ve been around long enough to know that the general advice on this forum to the NUMEROUS folks who’ve been confused by the current implementation of modeling is: “Research more…look at these 50 videos…ask on the forum…Trial and Error for a while…or the worst solution: Buy something else”. This advice is well-intended, but actually just causes more frustration. Not everyone wants to - or has the time to - trial and error to learn software; much less software features that you paid for.
I think that the right answer here is: "Yes…You are not alone. It is recognized that there are numerous problems with the modeling interface that make it confusing to use (and sometimes buggy)…yes, the interface is completely different than the rest of the product and therefore counter-intuitive at times (as if someone else has written it)…and yes, the documentation is either distributed over several sources or just inadequate…These shortcomings cause many of us to have to trail-and-error solutions - if we have the time to do so - and possibly ruin some pretty nice wood, trying.
However…Carbide recognizes the shortcomings and is addressing them. Stand by.
In the meantime, if you can’t wait - or don’t want to - here are other software options …
I think that’s the honest and fair answer. It’s not @budnikasr 's unique problem / fault here…he is far from alone in his frustration.
[EDIT] @budnikasr Robert: BTW: Nice bowl!
