Draw a contour
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A free contour is an outline milled out of a face. Instead of typing its corners, you can draw it on the face or import it from an SVG file.
Draw on a face
Section titled “Draw on a face”For a shape of your own, draw it. The 2D drawing turns into a flat, to-scale view of one face with drawing tools, the way a vector drawing program works. On a phone it fills the screen.
- Select the part. In the 2D drawing, click the pen button in the corner, or in Add pick Draw beside Free contour. In the fitting workspace you can also search for it under View > Fitting commands.
- Click the face you want to draw on, in the 2D drawing or on the part in 3D. When the drawing shows one face, that face is used.
- Draw the outline:
- Pen (P): click for a corner, drag for a curve. Press B to make the next side an arc that continues the one before it. Hold Shift to keep a side at 15° steps. Type a length and press Enter to place the next corner exactly.
- Curvature (Shift+P): click points and the line runs smoothly through them. Alt-click places a corner.
- Rectangle (R) and Circle (O): drag, or type a size such as
60x40orØ40and press Enter.
- Close the outline by clicking its first point, or press Enter.
- Set Depth or Through at the bottom and click Add.
Points snap to the face edges, the centre line, the beam ends, other processings on the face and the outline’s own points. Hold Cmd (Ctrl on Windows) to place freely. Scroll to pan, pinch or Cmd+scroll to zoom. Undo and redo work inside the drawing, and the whole drawing becomes one step in the part’s history when you add it. Esc steps back; pressing it twice discards the drawing.
To make a contour deeper or shallower, drag the arrow on it in the 3D view.
To change a contour later, open its card and click Draw shape. With Points (A) you drag corners, handles and sides. Dragging a straight side bends it into an arc; with Alt it slides instead. Double-click a side to add a corner, Alt-click a corner to switch it between sharp and smooth, and give selected corners a Rounding in the panel that appears.
Curves you draw are cut as arcs that follow the curve to within 0.01 mm, so the machine mills them in one smooth pass. Circles and arcs stay exact. The drawing is kept with the contour; changing the corners in the card’s list turns it back into plain corners and arcs.
A rectangle drawn square to the beam and not right through goes out as a plain mortise or notch, and one turned in the face goes to BVN and BVX as a turned housing. How each machine file takes other shapes is under Machine export.
Draw a joint’s outline
Section titled “Draw a joint’s outline”In the joint designer, an Outline cut has Draw on its card. It opens the same drawing on the cut’s face, centred on the joint. The other part’s sides are drawn on it. A corner you place on one of them, or on an edge of the face, follows that size, so the joint still fits where the parts are wider or narrower. Click Add to keep the outline, or press Esc twice to leave it as it was.
Import an SVG
Section titled “Import an SVG”- In Add, click SVG beside Free contour, or use the import button in the drawing tools.
- Choose a file, drop it, or paste the SVG code.
- Set the width (the height follows), the face, and where it goes along the part. It is centred across the face unless you set a position.
- Check the preview, then click Add.
Every closed shape in the file becomes its own free contour. Several are added together and grouped. Circles and arcs stay exact; other curves are followed with arcs within the tolerance you set. The import tells you what it left out and why: open lines, text (convert it to outlines first), images, and shapes that lie inside another, because a free contour has no holes. Import a hole as a shape of its own.
To design a shape for import, draw it in Popcorn Editor, export it as SVG and import it here. A file that names no unit is read at 96 pixels per inch, and the import says so.