Integrated BIM tools, including Revit, AutoCAD, and Civil 3D
Professional CAD/CAM tools built on Inventor and AutoCAD
Any referenced datasets can be downloaded from "Module downloads" in the module overview.
Transcript
00:09
In the last lesson, we created features from dimensions and from curves.
00:13
However, in this exercise, we'll be recognizing 2.5D features directly from our model using FeatureCAM's feature recognition.
00:23
So in this case, we won't need to create any geometry or curves, and we won't need to step through the wizard and enter in dimensions.
00:31
Let's start by creating a face feature.
00:33
I'll open up the new feature wizard, which again can be found in the Home tab in our part program section, or in the features in Manufacturing section.
00:44
Select face in the from dimensions section and we'll start by defining where we want our face feature to be located.
00:51
As you may recall, we placed our setup on the face of our model as opposed to the face of our stock.
00:57
So, we actually want to be facing down to Z equals zero in this case.
01:03
Had we placed our touch off point on the face of the stock, we would want to enter a negative 0.025 in this box.
01:11
But again, in this case, we'll leave it a 0.
01:13
We can see that FeatureCAM has automatically calculated the thickness that will be milling off on the face of this part at 0.025 inches.
01:21
And we can move through the wizard until we have our finishing operation created, and we'll just select "Finish" and "OK".
01:29
With the top of our model faced off, next, let's mill the perimeter of our solid model.
01:35
To do this, we'll open up the new feature wizard and we'll machine the outside perimeter of this model by using a boss feature.
01:42
As you may recall, in the last exercise, we used a pocket feature where we milled out the inside of a given profile.
01:49
Boss features are the exact opposite of pocket features.
01:53
Rather than milling on the inside of a determined profile, we'll mill on the outside of a determined profile.
01:59
Notice that as we click on any of the features in the new wizard, this AVI is updated to give us a good visual representation of what feature we're selecting.
02:08
So I'll select box, and to use feature recognition rather than stepping through the wizard at this point, I first need to select extract with feature recognition.
02:18
By doing this, I'm telling FeatureCAM that we want to recognize the features off of this solid model.
02:25
When using feature recognition to recognize a feature of the model, there are a few different methods we have to extract features.
02:32
Selecting side surfaces of that feature, a horizontal surface, automatically recognizing, chaining a feature from curves, or using a horizontal section.
02:44
Let's recognize this boss feature by using the second option, use horizontal surface.
02:50
With that, I'll press "Next".
02:52
I'm going to rotate to the bottom of this model.
02:55
Select that horizontal surface since it defines the entire perimeter, use the green plus button to add that into our window.
03:03
Press "Next" and define the top and bottom of this feature.
03:08
Just like earlier when we defined our Z location clicking on the blue parameter, when we see these cursor icons, that also means that we can pick parameters off of the actual model.
03:18
So, I'll select pick Z location for the top, I'll select the top edge of the solid model, and then I'll do the same picking the Z location for the bottom of the solid model.
03:34
As we can see, FeatureCAM has calculated that we have a 1 inch height to the solid model.
03:39
With that, we'll select "Next", leave the default strategies and FeatureCAM has created the necessary roughing and finishing operation to machine the perimeter of this model.
03:51
We’ll press "Finish" and "OK" and move on to creating new features.
03:57
With our top faced off in the perimeter of our model machine using a boss feature, let's machine this pocket feature in the middle of our solid model.
04:07
So as you may expect, we’ll open up the new feature wizard, we'll select pocket and extract with feature recognition.
04:15
For this pocket feature, let's again use the use horizontal surface, except this time, I'm going to show you a little trick.
04:22
Just like last time, we're going to select the bottom face of this pocket to give us the profile, but also I want to select one of the side faces.
04:31
By doing that, you'll notice when I press "Next", FeatureCAM looks at that horizontal face, defines the perimeter that we'll be machining inside of, and then it looked at that side face that we selected and use that to define the top and the bottom of our feature.
04:47
So with that, we can move through the wizard, verify the dimensions, the strategies, and "Finish", "OK", and we've created our pocket feature.
04:58
Next, let's do the holes.
04:59
So again, new feature wizard, hole, extract with feature recognition.
05:05
And you'll notice the options are a little bit different with holes.
05:09
With holes being so simple, FeatureCAM knows that we're just looking in the Z and gives us some limited options.
05:15
We can either extract a single hole at a time or recognize and construct multiple holes at a time.
05:20
We also have the ability to make sure all holes start at the same Z height, merge disjointed holes, or exclude holes with a diameter greater than or smaller than whatever we enter.
05:33
Some of these options may not make immediate sense to you.
05:36
I want to point you towards the Help button in the lower right hand corner of any FeatureCAM window.
05:43
As I select Help, it's going to open up our HTML based help file to this exact page giving me a description of what each one of these parameters does.
05:54
I highly, highly suggest that if at any point you don't know what a given parameter is, use the Help function.
06:01
There are very helpful descriptions and diagrams explaining exactly what a given page means in FeatureCAM.
06:09
So moving on, we'll just select recognize and construct multiple holes.
06:14
And as I press "Next", you can see all of these holes in the graphics window have been recognized.
06:23
As I press "Next", you can see that FeatureCAM has recognized quite a few holes here, but if you look closely, it's even recognized different types of holes all at the same time.
06:33
Here we have a counterbored hole and to the rest of the part we have a lot of plane holes.
06:39
With all these holes recognized, I can now select which ones I would like to be machined
06:44
by either single selecting each hole until it's highlighted red, or in this case, I'm just going to simply select all.
06:53
With all the holes selected, we’ll press "Finish" and we can move on to machining some of these open profiles on our part.
07:00
Now in FeatureCAM, when we're creating a pocket or a boss, we're telling FeatureCAM to either machine inside or outside of a closed profile.
07:10
In some cases, we’ll have open profiles like we do in this part.
07:14
To machine these, we'll use what's called Side Features.
07:19
Side features will work on both open and closed profiles in FeatureCAM.
07:24
So really, if we wanted to, we could have machined this pocket and the boss using the side features.
07:31
So let's select side and extract with feature recognition.
07:35
And rather than using horizontal surface, this time, let's use select side surfaces to select exactly which faces we would like to machine.
07:45
Let's start by rotating and selecting all the faces that make up this open profile.
07:51
I'm just holding "Ctrl" while I select these.
07:54
I'll hit the green plus button to add those into the feature, then I'm going to do the same on this side.
07:60
Let's create this side feature at the exact same time.
08:04
So with all these selected, let's press "Next", and the next option is a new one that we haven't seen before.
08:10
Since we're machining an open profile, all we've done is tell FeatureCAM we want to machine along these faces.
08:16
But just by defining a face, FeatureCAM could take that to mean two things.
08:21
We could machine on the left side of this face or the right side of this face.
08:26
And same with our other side feature.
08:28
So here, we can toggle which direction indicated by the arrow that we would like machined.
08:34
This left side feature looks fine, we'll be machining the outside of this open profile.
08:40
And this right feature also looks like it's machining the outside.
08:44
So that looks good, we'll press "Next".
08:46
FeatureCAM has correctly calculated the top and bottom since we've selected side faces, looks like the depth is okay too.
08:54
Again, we can also add a draft angle, chamfer, bottom radius at this point, but we'll leave it as it is.
08:60
Confirm our strategies, we'll be climb milling and rough and a finish pass, and we can finally press "Finish" and "OK" and move on to programming our final two features.
09:11
It looks like all that we have left after machining the outer profile, the face, the pocket and these two side features is this keyway slot, and this keyway slot.
09:21
To machine these, let's just use the side feature again.
09:25
We'll open up the new feature wizard, side, and we could select the horizontal face or the side surfaces like we have in the past, but this time, let me show you this Automatic Recognition option.
09:37
So right now, I've told FeatureCAM, I'm looking for side features and I want you to automatically find every side feature you can.
09:45
Notice that it actually found the side features that we already created, as well as the outer profile of this part.
09:51
This is really helpful.
09:53
But in this case, we just want to select this keyway right here.
09:57
And it looks like it didn't grab the other one, so we'll have to do that by hand.
10:01
So I've just clicked on that single keyway area that we have left to machine.
10:06
It's highlighted red, which means it will be created as a feature.
10:09
So I'll press "Finish", "OK" and I'll finally just create a feature for this last keyway slot.
10:16
New feature wizard, side feature, extract with feature recognition, select side surfaces, I'll make sure to select this side surface as well as this one by Ctrl selecting them, add them into the feature, make sure that we're machining on the correct side, confirm our top bottom, dimensions, strategies, "Finish" and "OK".
10:43
So as you may notice, using feature recognition is really quick and easy when we're recognizing features off of a solid model.
10:51
Once you've created a few features using feature recognition becomes pretty quick and easy to use.
10:57
At this point, we've recognized all of the features off of this solid model
11:01
and we're ready to move on to the simulation and revision part of our workflow process.
11:06
I would definitely recommend working through this exercise a couple times, so you can really get comfortable with recognizing features off of a solid model.
Video transcript
00:09
In the last lesson, we created features from dimensions and from curves.
00:13
However, in this exercise, we'll be recognizing 2.5D features directly from our model using FeatureCAM's feature recognition.
00:23
So in this case, we won't need to create any geometry or curves, and we won't need to step through the wizard and enter in dimensions.
00:31
Let's start by creating a face feature.
00:33
I'll open up the new feature wizard, which again can be found in the Home tab in our part program section, or in the features in Manufacturing section.
00:44
Select face in the from dimensions section and we'll start by defining where we want our face feature to be located.
00:51
As you may recall, we placed our setup on the face of our model as opposed to the face of our stock.
00:57
So, we actually want to be facing down to Z equals zero in this case.
01:03
Had we placed our touch off point on the face of the stock, we would want to enter a negative 0.025 in this box.
01:11
But again, in this case, we'll leave it a 0.
01:13
We can see that FeatureCAM has automatically calculated the thickness that will be milling off on the face of this part at 0.025 inches.
01:21
And we can move through the wizard until we have our finishing operation created, and we'll just select "Finish" and "OK".
01:29
With the top of our model faced off, next, let's mill the perimeter of our solid model.
01:35
To do this, we'll open up the new feature wizard and we'll machine the outside perimeter of this model by using a boss feature.
01:42
As you may recall, in the last exercise, we used a pocket feature where we milled out the inside of a given profile.
01:49
Boss features are the exact opposite of pocket features.
01:53
Rather than milling on the inside of a determined profile, we'll mill on the outside of a determined profile.
01:59
Notice that as we click on any of the features in the new wizard, this AVI is updated to give us a good visual representation of what feature we're selecting.
02:08
So I'll select box, and to use feature recognition rather than stepping through the wizard at this point, I first need to select extract with feature recognition.
02:18
By doing this, I'm telling FeatureCAM that we want to recognize the features off of this solid model.
02:25
When using feature recognition to recognize a feature of the model, there are a few different methods we have to extract features.
02:32
Selecting side surfaces of that feature, a horizontal surface, automatically recognizing, chaining a feature from curves, or using a horizontal section.
02:44
Let's recognize this boss feature by using the second option, use horizontal surface.
02:50
With that, I'll press "Next".
02:52
I'm going to rotate to the bottom of this model.
02:55
Select that horizontal surface since it defines the entire perimeter, use the green plus button to add that into our window.
03:03
Press "Next" and define the top and bottom of this feature.
03:08
Just like earlier when we defined our Z location clicking on the blue parameter, when we see these cursor icons, that also means that we can pick parameters off of the actual model.
03:18
So, I'll select pick Z location for the top, I'll select the top edge of the solid model, and then I'll do the same picking the Z location for the bottom of the solid model.
03:34
As we can see, FeatureCAM has calculated that we have a 1 inch height to the solid model.
03:39
With that, we'll select "Next", leave the default strategies and FeatureCAM has created the necessary roughing and finishing operation to machine the perimeter of this model.
03:51
We’ll press "Finish" and "OK" and move on to creating new features.
03:57
With our top faced off in the perimeter of our model machine using a boss feature, let's machine this pocket feature in the middle of our solid model.
04:07
So as you may expect, we’ll open up the new feature wizard, we'll select pocket and extract with feature recognition.
04:15
For this pocket feature, let's again use the use horizontal surface, except this time, I'm going to show you a little trick.
04:22
Just like last time, we're going to select the bottom face of this pocket to give us the profile, but also I want to select one of the side faces.
04:31
By doing that, you'll notice when I press "Next", FeatureCAM looks at that horizontal face, defines the perimeter that we'll be machining inside of, and then it looked at that side face that we selected and use that to define the top and the bottom of our feature.
04:47
So with that, we can move through the wizard, verify the dimensions, the strategies, and "Finish", "OK", and we've created our pocket feature.
04:58
Next, let's do the holes.
04:59
So again, new feature wizard, hole, extract with feature recognition.
05:05
And you'll notice the options are a little bit different with holes.
05:09
With holes being so simple, FeatureCAM knows that we're just looking in the Z and gives us some limited options.
05:15
We can either extract a single hole at a time or recognize and construct multiple holes at a time.
05:20
We also have the ability to make sure all holes start at the same Z height, merge disjointed holes, or exclude holes with a diameter greater than or smaller than whatever we enter.
05:33
Some of these options may not make immediate sense to you.
05:36
I want to point you towards the Help button in the lower right hand corner of any FeatureCAM window.
05:43
As I select Help, it's going to open up our HTML based help file to this exact page giving me a description of what each one of these parameters does.
05:54
I highly, highly suggest that if at any point you don't know what a given parameter is, use the Help function.
06:01
There are very helpful descriptions and diagrams explaining exactly what a given page means in FeatureCAM.
06:09
So moving on, we'll just select recognize and construct multiple holes.
06:14
And as I press "Next", you can see all of these holes in the graphics window have been recognized.
06:23
As I press "Next", you can see that FeatureCAM has recognized quite a few holes here, but if you look closely, it's even recognized different types of holes all at the same time.
06:33
Here we have a counterbored hole and to the rest of the part we have a lot of plane holes.
06:39
With all these holes recognized, I can now select which ones I would like to be machined
06:44
by either single selecting each hole until it's highlighted red, or in this case, I'm just going to simply select all.
06:53
With all the holes selected, we’ll press "Finish" and we can move on to machining some of these open profiles on our part.
07:00
Now in FeatureCAM, when we're creating a pocket or a boss, we're telling FeatureCAM to either machine inside or outside of a closed profile.
07:10
In some cases, we’ll have open profiles like we do in this part.
07:14
To machine these, we'll use what's called Side Features.
07:19
Side features will work on both open and closed profiles in FeatureCAM.
07:24
So really, if we wanted to, we could have machined this pocket and the boss using the side features.
07:31
So let's select side and extract with feature recognition.
07:35
And rather than using horizontal surface, this time, let's use select side surfaces to select exactly which faces we would like to machine.
07:45
Let's start by rotating and selecting all the faces that make up this open profile.
07:51
I'm just holding "Ctrl" while I select these.
07:54
I'll hit the green plus button to add those into the feature, then I'm going to do the same on this side.
07:60
Let's create this side feature at the exact same time.
08:04
So with all these selected, let's press "Next", and the next option is a new one that we haven't seen before.
08:10
Since we're machining an open profile, all we've done is tell FeatureCAM we want to machine along these faces.
08:16
But just by defining a face, FeatureCAM could take that to mean two things.
08:21
We could machine on the left side of this face or the right side of this face.
08:26
And same with our other side feature.
08:28
So here, we can toggle which direction indicated by the arrow that we would like machined.
08:34
This left side feature looks fine, we'll be machining the outside of this open profile.
08:40
And this right feature also looks like it's machining the outside.
08:44
So that looks good, we'll press "Next".
08:46
FeatureCAM has correctly calculated the top and bottom since we've selected side faces, looks like the depth is okay too.
08:54
Again, we can also add a draft angle, chamfer, bottom radius at this point, but we'll leave it as it is.
08:60
Confirm our strategies, we'll be climb milling and rough and a finish pass, and we can finally press "Finish" and "OK" and move on to programming our final two features.
09:11
It looks like all that we have left after machining the outer profile, the face, the pocket and these two side features is this keyway slot, and this keyway slot.
09:21
To machine these, let's just use the side feature again.
09:25
We'll open up the new feature wizard, side, and we could select the horizontal face or the side surfaces like we have in the past, but this time, let me show you this Automatic Recognition option.
09:37
So right now, I've told FeatureCAM, I'm looking for side features and I want you to automatically find every side feature you can.
09:45
Notice that it actually found the side features that we already created, as well as the outer profile of this part.
09:51
This is really helpful.
09:53
But in this case, we just want to select this keyway right here.
09:57
And it looks like it didn't grab the other one, so we'll have to do that by hand.
10:01
So I've just clicked on that single keyway area that we have left to machine.
10:06
It's highlighted red, which means it will be created as a feature.
10:09
So I'll press "Finish", "OK" and I'll finally just create a feature for this last keyway slot.
10:16
New feature wizard, side feature, extract with feature recognition, select side surfaces, I'll make sure to select this side surface as well as this one by Ctrl selecting them, add them into the feature, make sure that we're machining on the correct side, confirm our top bottom, dimensions, strategies, "Finish" and "OK".
10:43
So as you may notice, using feature recognition is really quick and easy when we're recognizing features off of a solid model.
10:51
Once you've created a few features using feature recognition becomes pretty quick and easy to use.
10:57
At this point, we've recognized all of the features off of this solid model
11:01
and we're ready to move on to the simulation and revision part of our workflow process.
11:06
I would definitely recommend working through this exercise a couple times, so you can really get comfortable with recognizing features off of a solid model.
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