Creating a Series of Cross Sections Through a Surface Model

SURFCAM can automatically create one or more cross sections through a complex surface model from any orientation. Separate Splines will be created for each surface encountered. The resultant Splines can be chained together to form a machining boundary or a single Spline.

The procedure is as follows:

1. Set your active color to something different that the color of the spline you wish to approximate.
2. From the Status Menu set the Cview you wish to be used. Note that you will be prompted for two locations to set the slice direction (much like the 3ax Planar toolpath generator), and you will be prompted for an offset direction to start the slicing process.
3. From the Main Menu select Create-Spline CrossSection.
4. Set the dialog box entries as shown below:

In our sample below we’ve used the Valve.dsn in the \Samples\ folder, set our Cview to 2 (Front View), a .25 increment, picked the bottom front corners to set the slicing direction, and clicked above the model to tell SURFCAM the step-over direction.