CAM for CNC code for cutting trispokedovetiles (3-spoke dovetailing tiles)

[Neale]

Absolutely right, Peter - I had not tried this particular dimension change (I had just fiddled with Hex_spacing to change the proportions). I've had a closer look, and what seems to be happening is that as you reduce that parameter, F360 starts to modify the drawing to suit. However, it can make these changes in a non-obvious order, and depending on how things have been set up, the intermediate stages while it is applying changes and recalculating dependent features get distorted. It tries to redraw the large arcs, for example, with the new parameter-based dimension, then puts the fillets back in. But at this point, it has not yet moved the other line to which the fillet connects, so it starts drawing the corner fillets in the wrong direction. Make smaller incremental changes, and it manages to get the thing right at each stage.

F360 is most definitely history line-based so things get applied in the order in which they were created. It might be possible to redraw this shape so that the ordering is better but as F360 does not display this level of detail in a sketch, it's very difficult to track back exactly what happened. And that sketch had quite a lot of add/delete/change operations, so it's anyone's guess what's actually behind it.

That has been a really instructive little episode and I shall remember this "feature" in case it comes up again! Just goes to show that you always need your work examined by a third party to find the errors you would not even have looked for yourself

I started this exercise as an excuse to play with F360 and I have learnt more than I expected.