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Stacked parts

Stacked parts

You can get this dialog box pressing the 'Cut Stacked parts'  link located in the Startup dialog

You can use this if you own a Cnc machine with an added rotary axis. If you press ' Cut Stacked parts' link  the following dialog will appear:

Stacked parts are a set of one or more 'TwistRot Parts' and/or 'Stl Parts' stacked on the Z (vertical) axis.
In the most common case you will cut just one single part, but you can create a complex set of stacked parts and cut them all in one shot.

The cut will be performed cutting one part at a time, from the first to the last of from the last to the first.
You can cut them using a Rotary table (vertical rotation axis) or a Lathe type (horizontal rotation axis) cnc foam cutting machine.

In the left side of the dialog you can see the controls to setup your Stacked parts.
In the right side the 3D preview of the Stacked parts.

Now we will explain in deep every single part of the dialog.

Left side: the parameters and commands

Parts list (top first):

You see here the list of the Stacked parts. The first in the list is the topmost. You can also see some applied parameters and the part colour.

Command Buttons:

You can see here the command button to add, modify, delete or move up/down the selected part.
By default the part will be stacked with 0.0 offset, so that the parts are touching each other. Of course you can modify this setting, see the below controls.

Selected Part settings:

When you select a part in the list, you can see here the related parameters and settings.
You can change them, then press the Apply button.

• Name: the name of the part, by default its file name, if loaded by an external file.
• Part colour: the colour of the part, click it to modify
• Z offset: the distance of the selected part from the below part. Default = 0.0
• Z axis angle: The rotation applied to the part along the z axis. Default = 0.0
• X-Y scale factor: You can scale the width of the part applying here a scale factor.
• Z scale factor: You can scale the height of the part applying here a scale factor.
• Mirror Top-Down: you can mirror the part Up/Down
• Rotate Top-Down: you can rotate the part to have it up down. The effect can be different from the Mirror option, if the part has no symmetry around the Z axis
• Info: you can see some info about the size and placement of the part

Other command Buttons:

• Lathe type cutting  - Open the  'Cut by Lathe' dialog, where you can create the right GCode to the stacked parts using a Cnc Foam cutting machine with Lathe type rotary axis
• Rotating Table type cutting  - Open the  'Cut by Rotating Table' dialog, where you can create the right GCode to the stacked parts using a Cnc Foam cutting machine with Table type rotary axis
• Cancel - Close the dialog 

Right side: the 3D preview

You can see here the 3D Preview of the Stacked parts. Consider also that you can customize it by the '3D Preview' menu.
The optional grid can be customized by the '3D Preview' menu.
You can make measurements on the 3D preview selecting the Orthogonal view and some predefined Top-Side-Front view.

The menu

Using the supplied menu you can control all the advanced settings.

File menu:

• Open: Open an existent Stacked parts file 
• Save: Save the actual Stacked parts
• Save as...: Save the actual Stacked parts with a new file name

3D Preview menu:

• Select Part colour: you can change the part colour
• Grid settings and Background colour: you can change the background colour and grid settings
• Show original STL file: for Stl parts, show the solid as the Original Stacked parts, ignoring the cut result. 
• Show real final part: for Stl parts, show the solid as close as possible as the shape it will get after the cut. If the cutting paths have some concavities (up/down movements change), this preview can differ from the final part. But this is a bad condition, if possible avoid it.
• Apply Smoothing: Apply smoothing to the parts surface. The process time can be slower when enabled.

I suggest also to take a look at this page, to better understand some important concepts of devFoam: DevFoam FAQ and important concepts