About Surface Milling

Use Surface Milling to mill horizontal or slanted surfaces. The selected surfaces must allow for a continuous tool path. There are several methods of defining the cut and generating the tool path:

Straight Cut—Mill the selected surfaces by a series of straight cuts. For 3-Axis NC sequences, you can also remove material in depth increments.
From Surface Isolines—Mill the selected surfaces by following the surface u-v lines.
Cut Line—Mill the selected surfaces by defining the shape of the first, last, and some intermediate cuts. When the system generates the tool path, it gradually changes the shape of the cuts according to surface topology.
Projected Cuts—Mill the selected surfaces by projecting their contours on the retract plane, creating a "flat" tool path in this plane (using the appropriate scan type), and then projecting this tool path back on the original surface(s). This method is available for 3 Axis Surface Milling only.

Depending on the selected method, you have to define the cut by specifying appropriate parameters and geometric references.

When you redefine a Surface Milling NC sequence, you can change the Cut Type (that is, select a different method of defining the cut and specify the new parameters and references) and produce a different tool path.

Certain manufacturing parameters have different values available for different Cut Types. If you change the Cut Type and the parameter value that you have previously specified is not available for the new Cut Type, the system sets this parameter to a value that is the default for the new Cut Type. If, however, a parameter value is available for both the old and the new Cut Type, the system does not change it. For example, if you redefine from Cut Line to Straight Cut and the SCAN_TYPE value is TYPE_SPIRAL, the system changes it to TYPE_1 because TYPE_SPIRAL is not available for Straight Cut. If, however, the SCAN_TYPE value is TYPE_ONE_DIR, the system retains this value.