I have a police badge I’m trying to cut out on a piece of stock 18” x 32”. The badge is roughly 13” x 13” this makes the small inner detail 4”x4” roughly. When I have the stock set to 18” x 32” the small inner detail is very spotty as seen on the right in the attached image. I did a vcarve with a 60 degree bit and it came out as bad as the simulation view looks in the image. But if I set the stock size to 5” x 5” the inner detail is perfect as seen on the left in the attached image. And the vcarve turns out great. Note, I did not change the size of the vector image or the toolpath the only thing I changed was the stock size (width and height)…. Is the SVG I have bad? Or possibly a program issue?
My guess is that when you increase the size of the picture, it increases the size of the line. So the pocket (probably not the right word) created by the toolpath isn’t big enough for the bit to hit every time. Do you have the simulation with the toolpaths? That might help understand what is happening.
I just tried this with a job I was working on, and the simulation definitely looks better when the stock size is close to the size of the detail being cut. I increased the stock so it was ~10x bigger than the toolpath and the simulation looked very choppy.
However, I output G-Code in both cases and they are identical. (other than the comments that define the stock size for CM).
I had the same problem. I had suggested a Hidden Line display ( which I think is still valid).
But I think the real issue is that the Simulation calculates the display based on the original stock size and does NOT recalculate the display on a zoom, so the display looks pixelated.
The fix is to recalculate the display ( scene graph) on each zoom/pan event.
The speed of the simulation generation is not too quick if you do not have a graphics card, it maybe a bit painful.
I did a copy of just the small detail and placed it in the work area. Stock size is set at 5" x 5" and the simulation looks good. Once increased to 32" x 18" it changes.
Performance is a balancing act — a level of detail which will work at 25 sq. in. will slow things down to a crawl at 576 sq. in. — moreover, the architecture of the program now has to consider that some folks are doing full 4x8 sheets, 4,608 sq. in.
Turn it around, and instead, consider that when working with a large-scale project one has the option of reducing the stock size and inspecting sections with a 3D preview with finer detail.
I know that all CAD systems encounter the same issues, but they re-render the scene based on the geometry within the view frustum. That re-rendering happens with zoom/pan and view re-orientations.
I had historically had to zoom very tight into areas looking for non-coincident lines and arcs or overlapping faces/bodies from user models.
Your solution is valid, but not optimal
