I’m creating a large pocket work in CC and want to use a large bit for the large pocket but it has some small areas wherE the bit is too big to get it. I can get to them with a smaller bit but it wants to cut the whole piece again with the smaller bit.
Is there a way to not have it overlap what it already cut out with the larger bit and just get the small pieces or am I stuck using the smaller bit to begin with and having it take 3x as long?
Yes, this is very common in CAM software, it’s called REST Machining, but unfortunately CC does not have his function. I use Fusion 360 for this.
EDIT: I am hoping that someday in the future that after you spend all that time designing your part and then finding out that the CAM will just not work (like in your case), that we’ll be able to save it as a file (2D DXF, SVG) that is importable into another CADCAM project. Rather than having to completely redraw the project.
When I’ve needed to do that sort of thing in Carbide Create (and MakerCAM before it) I would use a path operation to work out how much material would be removed by the larger bit, then use that additional geometry to calculate the toolpath for the smaller bit.
Ok thanks. I have Catia but it’s overkill for what I need at the moment but I’ll use that in the meantime.