open end cuts

[johno down under]

hello all, this is probably a rookies question....
Open end cuts, i have been doing a few different types of cut outs lately that require just a single line cut, but i end up getting a single cut that comes back to the start. So i am actually cutting the same cut twice that is heating up the steel and making it a wide cut.
Can someone tell me what i am doing wrong??
My drawings consist of the original line and the cut path, do i need to just use cut paths only??
Thanks for any help.
Cheers Johno

[adbuch]

Hi Johno,
From your previous post I understand that you have a Plasmacam DHC or DHC2. I have the DHC2 with Design Edge, but I think this should be the same procedure for 3.11 as well. From your description it sounds like you are cutting an open path. Are you drawing in Design Edge or importing from another drawing program? Unless your original drawing has one line laying exactly on top of an identical second line, and both lines are connected at one end - you should only have a single cut path from one end of the line to the other. Could you post your pcm file so we can take a look?

Here is an example where I purposely drew one u-shaped path on top of another identical path. The Select tool shows a total of 7 nodes for this open path. If I create a cut path and do a Cut Preview, I can see that this one has a single cut that comes back to the start as you have described.

Here is an example of the same geometry, but with only a single u-shaped path.The Select tool now shows a single open path with only 4 nodes. If I create a cut path and do a Cut Preview for this one, I can see that it only cuts in one direction, and does not come back to the starting point.

You can also see the number of nodes at the lower left hand corner of the screen (when the path is selected).

David

[johno down under]

Thankyou for explaining that to me, i had no clue at all about doing that.
The pattern that i was trying to do was the recent one on here "highland cow" I re downloaded it and did as you instructed and then changed all to cut paths and it has worked fine.
Thankyou again for taking the time to explain it to me.
Cheers Johno

[adbuch]

Hi Johno,
I just tried the Highland Cow with Design Edge. It opens fine and when converting to cut paths, everything looks fine with no double cut paths on the open paths.
David

[johno down under]

now I'm confused, when i tried it the first time i got double cuts on the open paths???
but when i did it the way you explained previously it change it and it worked, I'll try a different drawing tomorrow and see what happens.
thanks for the reply.
Johno

[adbuch]

Johno,
Post one of the drawings that was giving you problems and I will take a look.
Thanks,
David