A series of new and enhanced items in the latest release of Alphacam software (www.alphacam.com) provides improvements to automation, machining and feature extraction. Alphacam 2016 R2 also contains a range of general enhancements, along with new user interface commands for faster and simpler ways of working.

For instance, Alphacam Clipboard allows entities to be cut, copied and pasted in the drawing area between different versions of the software open on the same PC, while an additional option has been added as the entry type for pre-drilled holes in waveform roughing operations.

A new technique has also been added for extracting contours in work planes — by “selecting faces to create the work plane for the extraction direction”.

Feature extraction has also been enhanced using an updated algorithm for finding contours. Moreover, some machining dialogues now have a new tab containing specific options for either 2-D or 3-D lead-in and lead-out paths, and there is an option to save and open user-configured lead settings, in addition to the defaults.

Another option defines ‘tool angle direction entry’ into a part when machining features such as grooves and slots (selecting ‘Sloping/Ramp Angle’ in the ‘Lead-In/Out’ dialogues accesses this function).

Meanwhile, a new surface-machining pattern has been added to the five-axis cycle. Flowline creates a tool-path aligned to either the U or V direction of the machining surface; as a result, the user can determine the tool-path’s style, choosing the direction of the surface parameter lines. Calculation is fast, as only a single face is required.

A number of updates to Automation Manager include changes to job settings, machining order, layer mapping, and added support for nesting small parts in defined zones. With regard to how Alphacam 2016 R2 handles geometry, new ribbon-bar command buttons have been added to the Parametric Sketcher dialogue, allowing users to associate an image with parametric sketches (.aeps) and variables (.aepsvars).