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We pushed out a feature recently that will help identify areas that won’t be carved correctly while you are designing. The specifics of how we identify “uncarvable” areas are actually pretty cool, we wrote up a blog post on the nitty gritty of how it works.
Basically it was all too easy to create a design like this, where the bit was too big to carve lots of the design and you could only know by inspecting the toolpaths:
Now you’ll see a warning in the 3D preview whenever a part of your design won’t carve correctly that looks like this:
You’ll also see a warning during the walkthrough where you can try different bit sizes and see how they affect the carvability.
Let us know how this feature is working for you. Some of it involves choosing a threshold for how much of the design is lost before showing a warning. It would definitely help to get feedback on if you are seeing these warnings too much, not enough, or just right!
I know this would be part of a much bigger task, but something that would be quite helpful as well would be to give a warning when the material thickness exceeds the carvable depth of the bit.
So, If I’m using a 1/16" bit that has a 3/8" carvable depth to it, but I’m trying to carve material that’s 3/4" deep, it should generate a warning if I try to carve deeper than the bit allows.
Sorry this is only mildly related but here it goes…
I am having similar trouble with the lines of shapes being too small to cut with a bit. It seems like it wants me to use a 1/32s bit for a lot of stuff. Maybe I am missing it, but is there a way to make a shape and tell it that I want the width of the line to be 1/8 of an inch? For example, if I am cutting only around the outside, who cares how big the bit is, as long as it cuts the outside of the line. I’ve looked everywhere for a setting but can’t find it. Thanks!
