Design Software Tools Provide Flexibility

CNC Software offers Mastercam Design X7, a suite of design tools that includes 3D surfacing and solids for simplified, flexible design work. According to the company, the software streamlines modeling and editing geometry while supporting advanced geometry creation, including NURBS curves and surfaces, 2D and 3D associative dimensioning, surface extension, blending, trimming, splitting, variable filleting, solid and hybrid modeling, and more.

Enhancements to X7 include a “modify solid feature” function which enables the creation of bodies and/or removal of features from solid models without any operation history. The user can select the face of any feature on the solid model, including bosses and open pockets, and the program will recreate the feature in a new, independent solid body, leaving the original solid unchanged. It also can eliminate the feature by modifying the original body.

The new “modify solid fillet” function quickly changes the radius of fillets in solid models that do not have any operation history. Changes can be applied to sets of tangential fillets or fillets with matching radii. The “solid hole-axis” function creates axis lines for circular holes in solid bodies, with or without history, using current system attribute settings such as line size and color. Related geometry points and circles can be created using the options in the dialog box.

New controls also have been added to the Xform Project dialog for projecting onto a surface, which is said to be particularly useful when working with small parts. The program now prompts the user to increase the default tolerance to attain the best results. Blending splines can be projected, or users can match the number of source geometry pieces to the number of projected entities.