Toolpaths

• Speed up of rest area clearance with stockmodels.
• Fix a crash when calculating a disc profile finishing toolpath with a drive curve.
• Toolpath edits that can output an indeterminate number of toolpaths can no longer be replayed.
• Fix a crash calculating chamfer milling toolpaths when using a triangle model block.
• A toolpath's internal thickness sets are no longer updated when it is activated.

NC Programs

• Fix a crash when aborting the post-processing of an NC Program.

General

• Fix a crash when raising an error from the tool database.

Toolpaths

• Fix a major bug with workplane angles not output in 3+2 toolpaths.
• Area clearance toolpaths involving flat extensions now more reliable.
• Fix a potential crash in centreline toolpaths (detected via Customer Error Reporting).

Toolpaths

• Ctrl+P shortcut now works as expected.

Vericut Plugin

• The list of workplanes wasn't correctly updated after a workplane was created, edited or deleted in PowerMill.
• A global workplane has been added, which defaults to PowerMill's transform when no workplane is active.
• Various options are now set to default values instead of empty boxes.
• Work offsets are now correctly set.
• Simplify the user interface for block selection to make it less confusing.
• Simplify the user interface for setting a stock transition workplane to make it less confusing.
• The version was updated to 2018.0.15

Toolpaths

• External thread milling now orders cutting passes from outside in rather than from inside out.
• Reduce the amount of memory consumed when calculating centreline toolpaths.
• Fix a crash when calculating a clone of a toolpath which was limited to a boundary and was subsequently deleted.
• The `Turns` parameter for external thread milling can now be set to values less than 1.
• Fix a potential crash in corner machining (detected via Customer Error Reporting).
• Fix a crash and a failure to calculate toolpaths using automatic collision checking and negative thickness.
• Fix a crash when calculating pattern finishing and surface projection toolpaths with a user-defined tool axis and flat bottomed tools with no radius component.

NC Programs and Simulation

• Better determine when multi-axis connection moves between toolpaths in an NC Program should be output.
• Fix a crash when simulating an NC Program with a workplane at the end and tool changes set to occur before connections.
• The simulation of drilling toolpaths now respects the toolpath's orientation vector.

Models

• Child items in hierarchical models should inherit their parent's attributes.
• Do not offer to reimport models when batch processing.
• Fix a bug where reference models were being read back as machinable models.

Drilling Methods

• The 'Select by' list will no longer show duplicate entries due to the fact that they match multiple criteria.

General

• Fix stability issues relating to progress updates (detetected via Customer Error Reporting).
• Fix some untranslatable strings in the user interface.
• Further work to speed up opening of strategy dialogs.
• Fix an issue where a tapping tool was losing precision after entering its pitch value through the user interface.
• Ensure that the Tool.Status parameter accurately reflects the status of the tool as displayed in the user interface.
• Fix a bug where the F3 keyboard shortcut was always reverting to plain model shading, rather than remembering the last known shading type.

Shared Views

• Fix a sign in issue.

ViewMill

• Ensure that the view is refreshed correctly when simulating a milling toolpath after a turning toolpath.

NC Programs

• Ensure that connections are displayed correctly when a toolpath has a fixture offset applied to it.
• Fix a crash when the tool list dialog is raised for an NC Program which contains non-toolpath items before toolpaths.

Toolpaths

• Make feedrate editing correctly handle thickness.
• Ensure that expressions are retained when cloning a toolpath created in a higher product tier.

Hole Feature Sets

• The Edit Holes form now has buttons to set the top/bottom of a hole to the top/bottom of the block.

General

• Add Customer Error Reporting to PowerMill.

User Interface

• Fix the hole feature set instrumentation button on the ribbon so that it undraws instrumention when it is toggled off.

Toolpaths

• Centreline segments in optimised constant z toolpaths will now be consistently ordered at the end of the toolpath, even when the spiral option is active.
• Speed up rest roughing calculation in certain scenarios.
• Fix a potential crash when calculating feature pocket area clearance, feature pocket profile or feature finishing toolpaths within a boundary.

Simulation

• Improve the handling of very short arc moves in toolpaths during verification.

Shared Views

• Shared views will no longer crash if you try to create a share when you don't have write access to the project directory - it will display an error message instead.
• Fixed an issue where model components in an invisible set were being output to Shared Views.

NC Programs

• Fix an issue where the summary pages of a setup sheet would go missing.
• The "Toolpath List" button has been removed from the ribbon. This functionality is now only accessible from the NC Program Settings form.
• Drilling of holes of different diameters will be output in the same cycle (this excludes profile, helical and threading cycles).

General

• Improve the overall stability of the product.

Shared Views

• This update includes a new feature, Shared Views, which allows collaboration on a representation of a project within a web browser. Using a link provided by you, anyone can view and comment on a Shared View without needing to have an Autodesk product installed. Shared Views is only available to subscription users.

User Interface

• Prevent the calculation queue dialog from disappearing after reading in a project.
• Update the principal editing plane when changing the view using the View Cube.
• Provide an option to disable warnings about out-of-date models.
• Make snapping to toolpaths more robust.
• Ensure that measuring a diameter returns the correct result.

Toolpaths

• Don't automatically load feeds and speeds from the active tool if a toolpath template already contains a tool.
• When cloning a toolpath also clone it's editing history.
• Fix thread milling to avoid causing gouges of tapered hole features.

Turning

• Numerous turning bug fixes.

Features

• Ensure that features sent from PowerShape are imported using the correct workplane.

Simulation

• Improve the detection of potential gouges by rapid moves in stock simulation.

Machine Tools

• Allow the use of scientific notation in MTD files.
• Cyrillic characters can now be included in MTD files if the file is saved in UTF-8 format and the file's header specifies the correct encoding (<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>).

Posting

• Make NC program writing more tolerant of drilling cycles where a hole start point is not exactly in the centre of the hole.

General

• Improve the overall stability of the product.
• Fix a crash when editing a renamed boundary.
• Speed up area clearance toolpaths.
• Fix crash on importing a drilling toolpath template.
• PowerMill no longer crashes when importing a missing model from a project.
• Fix a localisation issue for the tool database.
• Old projects will now have their thickness sets populated correctly for toolpaths and boundaries.
• The smart selection tool now removes surfaces from any existing sets they belong to.
• Fix a bug that stops entities being saved, if they have been saved as an archive project.

Fusion 360 Production

• A new feature that allows PowerMill part information to be uploaded to Fusion 360 Production.

User Interface

• Correctly show a changed value in user defined settings.
• Fix an incorrectly raised Command Error when editing stock models.
• The level drawing ribbon button is now syncronised with the explorer tree.

Features

• Can now create a toolpath from a planar base model using outside offset.
• Fix fragmented raster toolpath segments in feature construction toolpaths.
• Feature construction toolpaths were being created incorrectly when the base model is a cylinder and it is not being created in the world workplane.
• Prevent incorrect warning about toolpath sections not being within the specified stepover range.
• Add new tool axis option; towards previous layer. This means that the tool axis will point towards the closest point on the corresponding offset of the previous layer.

Turning

• Remove unimplemented parameter "Turning feed rate reduction".

Posting

• Correctly process DuctPost programs which contain newlines.

Plugins

• Fix PowerMill crash on exit when using the Vericut plugin.
• Update the Robot Plugin to version 11.0.11.
• Update the Simulation Analysis Plugin to version 2.2.0.3.
• Update the NCSIMUL Plugin to version 3.0.0.11.
• Update the Vericut Plugin to version 2.0.12.

Ribbon interface

• Ribbon customisation now supports custom icons.
• A Redo Migration button has been added to the ribbon customisation dialog to re-import toolbar customisations from previous versions of PowerMill.
• Add a right-click menu to raise or lower toolbars and docked windows.
• Usability and bug fixes.

User interface

• Support multiple monitors when remembering dialog positions.
• Fix problems with toggling keyboard shortcuts.
• Make user-defined right-click menus written in XML work again.
• Reinstate the 'convert holes to pockets' menu option.

NC Programs

• Make sure that connection issues are indicated in the verification status.
• Reinstate verification warnings where the shank/holder clearances are set higher than those of a toolpath and the "Keep existing toolpath clearances" option is enabled.
• Fix various issues when displaying, verifying and saving NC programs containing text blocks.

Toolpaths

• Continue drilling cycles when the orientation vector is constant.
• Prevent the threading of multiple components within a single compound hole.
• Fix a crash when editing the spindle speed on a toolpath containing a leadin or leadout extension.
• Fix a problem in collision avoidance when a non-zero thickness is used.
• When reading a reference model, set that model as a reference in all current toolpaths.

Machine Tools

• Make the error messages displayed when reading in an invalid MTD file more helpful.

ViewMill

• Improve quality and performance.
• Fix a crash when loading a block containing degenerate triangles.

Localisation

• Several language translations have been updated.
• Reference help is available in additional languages.

General

• When recovering a project also try to recover the folder structure.

General

• This Hot Fix contains changes to the programs installation and registry entries to allow further updates to be applied.
• If this Hot Fix isn't applied, then users will be unable to receive further updates through the Autodesk Desktop App.
• When the Hot Fix has been applied and the program is running the 'Help > About' dialog will display 'Version: 2018.0.2.1212103'.

General

• This Hot Fix contains changes to the programs installation and registry entries to allow further updates to be applied.
• If this Hot Fix isn't applied, then users will be unable to receive further updates through the Autodesk Desktop App.
• When the Hot Fix has been applied and the program is running the 'Help > About' dialog will display 'Version: 2018.0.1.1212103'.

We thank all our customers who identified these issues and reported them to Autodesk. These reports give us the opportunity to improve the product and provide you with the best solutions for modeling for manufacture. Autodesk also thanks you for your continued support and feedback regarding the content of this update release.

Respectfully,

Autodesk PowerMill Product Team