Open Profiles & VCarve 7.5

[mcsteve]

Hello. I purchased a Shark Pro in December and have been having a lot of fun experimenting with different types of projects in a lot of scrap wood. I am now ready to start work on my first "real" project, an oval cribbage board that I purchased from Vector Clip 3D. I am having trouble toolpathing some open profiles with a v bit tool in the VCarve 7.5 software. Every time I select a series of profiles to calculate the toolpath the software tells me "25 open vectors selected and are being ignored".

I know it is likely just my own inexperience but how do I get the program to toolpath these open profiles? I have tried reading through the help file and must be missing it because I cannot find it. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Steve

[tonydude]

See attachments. Click on join open vectors, change tolerance number click join and see if they are joined, lf not change number again till you get it.
Joining & Closing Tools
The icons to join and close vectors are located under the Edit Vectors section of the Drawing Tab as shown highlighted with a red box in the image shown below: As with all the icons listed in this manual more expansive descriptions and examples can be found in the Help File under the Help drop down menu – Help Contents.

Join Open Vectors
Open vectors are automatically identified and closed or joined to other vectors where the end points lie within the user definable tolerance.

Tony

[tonydude]

Have you watched the tutorials on http://support.vectric.com/training-material/vcarve-pro lot of info and great tutorials.

Tony

[mcsteve]

Thanks for responding. Your suggestion tonydude to join the open vectors won't work in this case. That was actually the first thing I had tried. I am trying to create a grid pattern around a radius. I have gone back to the tutorial videos to see if I can find any reference to doing this also as suggested but have been unsuccessful so far. I'll keep looking. A visual of what I am doing might be helpfull so here it is. The division lines between each group of 3x5 holes are the open profiles I am trying to work with (shown in red).

Peg layout

[BillK]

Do you just want to carve on those lines to a certain depth? If so you can use the profile toolpath for them. Since the lines are not connected, you will have to make a toolpath for each. Fortunately you can save all ithe toolpaths nto one tap file.

[mcsteve]

Thanks Billk. I've been beating my head against the wall trying to figure this out as I really did not want to complete the project without those division lines. I've watched more than 2 hours worth of training videos "again" hoping to see a trick to this. Now I feel really stupid . I've been so caught up in trying to create this project based on the instructions that I didn't even think about applying a different process to this segment.

Prior to carving these profiles I'll be milling the project at 0.0 to ensure it has a completely level surface. I'll apply the profile toolpath, use a small bit (.0625) at a depth of only 0.09375, take it nice and slow and that should do the trick.

Thanks again
Steve

[BillK]

You're welcome. Please don't feel stupid, its part of the learning process. Not quite sure where in the timeline of understanding I learned this, but it wasn't the first week or month, lol.