Thanks Rich

OH BOY a gaggle of rich's, (;-)

Let me see if I understand what it is you need to do. ARE you trying to take a line that is made up of many points and create one line with a beginning point and end point eliminating the point in between? 

A drawing woul d be a great help. It can be of anything, create one to show what you mean.

Not many CAMS rework "your" drawing entities they work with how you draw it.   With CAD, don't always believe the snaps snap true, most have a tolerance setting and it gets as close as the tolerenace setting says to.(;-) SOme can only get close at best.

(;-0 TP

Hey guys

So, here is a crude representation of the problem as I see it and how I want it to be...


Thanks
PS - The correct term is a "Herd of Rich's" 

Most times when I see what you describe I can trace it BACK to a bad drawing. Repair the drawing and the problems go away(;-) I have never seen Lcam break a chain where there was no problem. But I have probably not seen everthing in Lcam(;-) If the drawing is really inmportant I usally Join the parts as a polyline that issues a very tight tolerance (.000) and insures a joined Chain.

ALSO you can repair the chains in LCAM(move or join), you can reorder the chains as well if you do not like the order.

I just tested it so I know it works HERE.

(;-) TP

Britishrich,
You can't join enties which are not in the same chain.    There is a setting in the SETUP MENU, connection line tolerance that you can set. If you go up in the tolerance ( like .001 to .3)  it will then use that setting when importing, to think that any line within that distance should be connected so it will include it in the created chain.

See attached PDF and file to fool with.

Now this is a double edged sword, since if you have a lot different machining on your drawing, it can cause problems elsewhere. But then you wouldn't do that because you would set up your drawing based on how you want to machine the piece ( in the manual ).

Now just before you go off to try that $1500 Mill program, well i did with this drawing, and it failed bitterly, becuase it's "importer" didn't know what to do with them either. Of course it sends you off to the CAD program to define what you want, split it up, or fix it up.

Hope this helps,
The poor RICH 

I know my CAD is as "snapped" as it is capable of and I have messed with the tolerance no end, so what I have is as goos as it's getting then.

To Vmax's comment please see he rest of the thread to see my "success" with joining LOL

Thanks

EVEN IF the cad does not do well, IN Lcam you can fix  most simple things that are not critical to the part. Now iIF the part tolerance does NOT allow fudging then it must be corrected in CAD and then brought back in to post.

Sorry but that is just the way it works, (;-) TP

Rich,
Are the two lines /entities ,part of the same chain ( the shape which is made up of the individual lines / entities) ?
Yes   or   NO?

RICH

Rich, No.
That is the problem. What LCAM is determining as a chain does not agree with what I think is a chain and what my CAD is telling me should be a chain.

Vmax, I appreciate the input but we seem to be going round in circles a bit on the CAD part. My CAD is as tight as the program is going to allow me to get it (I do not have access to snap tolerance settings etc). Therefore there is nothing for me to go back and fix (or at least it's not possible for me to).

I did re-do my CAD since I started this thread and that did help a lot, but not 100%.
Thus resulting in my conclusion that this is as good as I can get it, and the CAD is likely the culprit if LCAM is as infallable as this thread suggests.

Where you say "you can repair the chains in LCAM(move or join)"
How do you JOIN chains? I think I asked that before after Rich mentioned it but I don't see an anwser anywhere about HOW to join chains in LCAM and that IS what I would like to do.

I have tried tolerances in LCAM from 0.0001 to 0.01.
So it seems I have exhausted all venues with my current set up, esp as Rich is now going to remind me again that I cannot join entities from separate chains (see, I am paying attention Rich LOL)



Thanks

Have you downloaded the manual ?

IF you will provide a simple dxf of an example of what you consider as a problem  then I will take it and use it as the example to see if Lcam can do exactly as you want.

It works here as best I can understand what you want(;-) I have taken broken chains and reconnected them in several different ways.

(;-) TP