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Stl part - Customize Twisted Rotations

Stl part - Customize Twisted Rotations

You can get this dialog box pressing the 'Customize Twisted Rotations' button located in the 'Cut Stl Part'  page.

Using this feature You can then create in automatic way a number of NOT equispaced  and not costant rotations, to cut the part in a faster and better way. Using this feature for each cut the rotation angle will change to perform the best possible cut!

For example You can can see here below the Blue part cut by 16 standard equspaced rotations.
The central 2D picture shows a selected section along the Part Z height.
The Gray Region shows the section of the STL part, the Green Regions show the material that cannot be cut using these rotations. 

In the below image you can see the result after we pressed the 'Optimize Rotations using below settings' button.
We asked for 3 rotations on Large faces and 2 rotations for rounding cuts.
The result is just 7 rotations and almost zero Green regions.
In this way the cut will require less than Half the time, and the result won't require further sanding!

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

Left side: the parameters and commands

Actual section: You can select here (or moving the Vertical cursor placed just before the 2D preview) the actual XY section.

Show all sections: Enabling this option also the other section will be rendered as light gray in the 2D Picture.

Show Cut section (Green): Enabling this option the part of uncut material (after the cut is applied) will be rendered as Green. The better the rotations settings, the lower the Green Area.

Optimize Rotations using below settings: Pressing this button the application will automatically generate a set of Optimized rotation. You can specify:

• the Number of large Twisted Faces on the Part: this refers to the number of large faces in the Stl Part. They can have a different angle along the Z height, looking often to the eye as Twisted. The application will apply a different angle along every single cut, similar to the way  a 'Cut TwistRot Part' can be. As you can see the number of these face in the Blue Stl part is 3, as every section is similar to a triangle.
• Max. number of rounding cuts (for corners): Once you set the number of large Twisted faces, you must see what happens among them. In this case you can see also rounded corners, so you can decide the max number of rotations you want to apply for each rounded corner. Here we decided for 2. If no cuts are required (for example as for the sharp corner), no cuts will applied.

Consider Actual Section as the most significative one: you can also specify which section is for you the most significative one by selecting it and applying this option. If not the application will preprocess the full Stl part to find what it assume to be the most significative one.

Manual rotation management:

The only option here is to delete some undesired rotation. Applying manually the rotations if far too complex to be viable, as you should speficy the right angle for each section of each rotation.

To Delete a rotation you can use the 'Delete selected Rotation' button, or enabe the  'Delete picked rotation' action and double click on the rotation you want to delete

Middle side: the 2D preview

The 2D Preview can show two types of View:

1. Show Section. This is similar to what you see in the 'Customize Rotations' dialog.
   I think the better thing is to explain what you can see here by colour and type.
• Gray Region: the XY section of the original STL part.
• Green Region(s): the local section of uncut material. The better the rotations settings, the lower the Green Area.
• Thin Red lines: the Rotation angles.
• Thick Red line: the selected Rotation angle.
• Thick Blue line: the hotwire for the selected Rotation angle
• The cartesian axes as thin fixed black lines.
  
2. Show graph Rotations angles. In this view you can see a Cartesian graph with the Rotation angle in X and the z Height in Y.
   The most important use here will be to check if the rotations angles varies smootly along the Y axis. If not probably the number of large twisetd faces is wrong, or the application is not smart enough to get a good result (Sorry...).
   I think the better thing is to explain what you can see here by colour and type.
• The thick Blue lines show the angles of the large twisetd faces
• The thin Blue lines showthe angles of the rounding cuts
• The Red line the Actual Rotation
• The dotted Red horizontal line the z value of the Actual section.

You can see here below the way a GOOD graph Rotations angles can be:

Pressing the 'Fit to screen' button you will maximize the drawing to the 2D preview window size.

Right side: the 3D preview

You can see here the 3D Preview of the Stl part.
You can also see a transparent Cyan rectangle indicating the actual XY section.
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.

Pressing OK you will go back to the 'Cut Stl Part' page, with the new rotations setting.

Pressing Cancel you will go back to the 'Cut Stl Part' page, with the old rotations setting.