Important Information

Summary for 2019.1

See the PowerMill Help

What's New

Setups

Setups are entities that contain an ordered list of toolpaths, and define a number of properties for a machining operation. We have made improvements to the functionality and usability of setups in PowerMill 2019.1:
• Workplane: Specify a workplane for a setup as the common workplane for the stock, and newly created toolpaths in the setup.
• Stock: Define the stock for a setup to specify its geometry for each machining operation. Stock represents the size, shape, and orientation of the raw material, from which parts are machined.
• Clamps: Associate clamps with setups to automatically identify the model-surfaces to avoid, or ignore, when a toolpath in a setup is calculated. Clamps represent the physical apparatus used to secure the stock during a machining operation.
• Ribbon interface: Use the new Setup tab on the ribbon to help you manage, edit, and work with setups in your projects.

Probing

• Surface inspection: Create probe tools and surface inspection probe-paths to inspect parts while they are still on the machine tool.
• Inspection results: Upload the machine-generated results files to Autodesk® Drive to examine any deviations between your manufactured parts and the nominal CAD data. Alternatively, import your results into Autodesk® PowerInspect for further analysis.

Collision Checking

• Colliding toolpath sections: Keep colliding sections of toolpaths, instead of automatically deleting them, when checking for collisions between the part and the shank or holder. Colliding sections are displayed in the graphics window, and are automatically updated when you edit the tool or toolpath. This helps you identify where edits need to be made, and lets you check if your changes have corrected the colliding sections.
• Collision avoidance: Automatic tool-axis tilting is improved for transitions that use the C-axis of a machine tool. The movement from one tilt direction to another is stabilized by smoothing out the transition over a larger distance. This helps reduce sudden accelerations of the machine tool.

Turning

• Pattern Turning strategy: Create turning toolpaths that directly follow the curve geometry within a pattern. This advanced-user strategy lets you create turning toolpaths from custom curve geometry. Create modified variants of existing toolpaths by: inserting the toolpath into a pattern, editing the curve geometry, calculating a pattern turning toolpath.

Posts in the Cloud

• Improved delivery of post-processor option files: If Autodesk provides you with new or updated option files for your post-processor, the files are now stored in the cloud. This means you can access the most up-to-date files directly through PowerMill as soon as they become available.

Usability Improvements

• Vortex area clearance: The maximum stepover for vortex toolpaths is increased to 99% of the tool diameter, extending the usability of vortex to indexable tools.
• Plane-locking: Enable plane-locking to automatically position points, entered using the mouse, to lie along the principle plane of the active workplane.
• Ignore workplanes: Import CAD models without their associated workplanes. This is useful for models that contain many redundant workplanes that have no effect on the machining process.
• Merging projects: When you import one project into another, the option to treat new models as reference models now applies to the toolpaths and boundaries in both projects.
• Drilling feed rate: The Feed rate reduction page is updated to improve usability, with the options to reduce the feed rate at the intersections of holes moved onto a separate page.
• Upload to Fusion Production: Assign tasks to workcells or workstations. Previously, only workstations were available. In addition, the user interface is improved with controls to select multiple tasks.
• Stock model support for additive toolpaths: When applying an additive toolpath to a stock model, the stock is now updated to show deposited material. Previously, PowerMill treated additive toolpaths as subtractive toolpaths, resulting in material being removed from the stock model instead.
• Visualizing deposited material: When creating additive toolpaths, the type of tool that is automatically created is now tipped disc instead of ball nosed. This provides a better representation of deposited material when you animate additive toolpaths and apply additive toolpaths to stock models.

Speed Improvements

• Project loading: Loading projects that contain many toolpaths and model surfaces is now significantly faster.

NC Program Verification in PowerMill Standard

• Limited NC Program verification is now available in PowerMill Standard. It will verify all toolpaths and connections between toolpaths for tool gouges and tool collisions with the model. Advanced verification of the machine tool remains a PowerMill Premium feature.

Collision Avoidance and Collision Checking Fixes

• After collision checking, a toolpath that used a negative thickness was not split into safe and unsafe parts correctly. This is fixed.
• Automatic collision checking on a curve profile toolpath failed to remove colliding moves. This is fixed.
• The clearances used by NC program verification were not initialised to the values used in toolpath verification, which could make the toolpath appear unsafe. This is fixed.
• Automatic collision checking failed to detect colliding spans within a corner finishing toolpath. This is fixed.

Finishing Toolpaths Fixes

• Steep and shallow regions were not identified correctly when machine maximum stock was set. This is fixed.
• Steep passes failed to descend to the correct depth in a steep and shallow toolpath. This is fixed.
• Gouges were made by a steep and shallow toolpath because the shallow region was not defined correctly. This is fixed.
• Reduce the excessive time taken to calculate 3d offset toolpaths on large parts inside complex boundaries. This is fixed.
• A surface finishing toolpath included a gouging move. This is fixed.
• An optimised contant z toolpath was not ordered correctly. This is fixed.

Area Clearance Fixes

• Significant speed up in Area Clearance on parts with very large number of pockets.
• Fixed a gouge in Area Clearance when the input boundary has overlapping regions.
• Fixed a bug that would cause incomplete machining of flat surfaces in Area Clearance.
• Fixed an ordering bug in Area Clearance that could have caused the tool to crash into unmachined stock.
• Fixed a failure to recalculate a Vortex toolpath after a parameter change.
• Fixed a bug that prevented Vortex From Stock toolpath to calculate with pre-drilling positions.
• Some speed improvements in Vortex From Stock calculation.
• Improvements to the coverage of Vortex From Stock toolpaths.

Drilling and Threading Fixes

• Fixed a crash that sometimes occurred when deleting a drilling method.
• Fixed the use of tolerance in spiral profile in drilling toolpaths.
• Fix to allow rigid tapping to bottom of hole with multiple pecks.
• Fix threading when a component range is used.
• Allowed the drilling peck retraction factor to exceed 1.

Turning Fixes

• Fixed a bug that could cause some turning toolpaths to gouge the part.

Face Milling Fixes

• Fixed crash with Face Milling with a fixed angle of -90 degrees.

Toolpath Editing Fixes

• The tool axis tilted unnecessarily along skim links. This is fixed.
• In area clearance toolpaths, an incremental plunge move preceded the ramp lead in entering a pocket only when the previous cutting move was lower than the subsequent one. This is fixed.
• Toolpath statistics were not updated after loading data from the tool changed feedrates. This is fixed.
• Replaying the edit history on a toolpath to which automatic reordering had been applied resulted in a crash. This is fixed.
• Attempting to use Dynamic Machine Control to edit selected regions of a toolpath that had used automatic collision avoidance would result in a crash. This is fixed.

Stock Model Fixes

• Fixed a bug that caused the same entities to be shown referencing the Stock Model at each state.

Option files for Simulation and NC Program Verification Fixes

• An issues with the speed of simulation and verification with an option file that matches the machine tool has been fixed.
• The machine tool no longer fails to find legitimate solutions when PowerMill is working in inches and an option file with linear limits is in use.
• Associating an option file with a machine when an axis has a limit set to 0 now works correctly.
• Retract and reconfigures are reported when an option file that uses linearisation is in use.
• There is a single report for each retract and reconfigure when an option file that does not use linearisation is in use.

NC Programs Fixes

• The NC Program icon now includes a hand if the NC Program is manually ordered.
• The NC Program written status is updated when a contained toolpath is deleted.
• Adding a Setup to an NC Program that already contains several Setups is now much faster.
• Deleting a Setup that is in an NC Program is now much faster.
• Toolpaths added to a folder in a Setup are now inserted in the correct place in any manually ordered NC Programs containing the Setup.
• Fixture offsets can be added on the NC Preferences page again.

Setup Sheets Fixes

• A crash when outputting a Setup Sheet that used the {ncprogram.OptionFile} parameter when the NC Program does not have an option file set has been fixed.
• A crash when outputting a Setup Sheet that used the {setupsheets.model.file_name} parameter while a plane from the block had been added to the model has been fixed.

User Interface Fixes

• When exiting a PowerMill mode (curve editor etc), normally the ribbon reverts to whichever tab it was on before entering the mode; however, if the mode was entered from a user-defined custom tab, it always reverted to the home tab. This has now been fixed to revert to the custom tab.
• PowerMill’s user interface is now more responsive when handling very large models – the lag following a parameter change has been significantly reduced.
• A crash that occurred when closing toolbars following text entry (e.g. the spline fit toolbar within the curve editor) has been resolved.
• User defined settings were not appearing on the "File -> Info" page until another was added – this now works correctly.
• Some forms (including tool and strategy) didn't move when they were on a secondary monitor that was disconnected, meaning that it wasn’t possible to use them. This issue has now been fixed.
• The "factory default" colours assigned to different thickness sets have been modified to provide better contrast between thickness rows. Existing users of PowerMill would need to "Restore Defaults" on the colour manager to obtain the new colours.

Feature Groups Fixes

• In some cases rectangular pockets were being incorrectly rotated following recognition – PowerMill will now correctly align them to the model geometry.

Workplanes Fixes

• In the Workplane Editor, after pressing the button to set the Z-direction, the Y-direction vector was being displayed on the form, despite the graphics being correct. The issue has been fixed.

Tools Fixes

• An issue with the tool database has been resolved where a holder would not attach to a tool/shank when the Connection filter was applied.
• Tool opacity may now be controlled as a global setting via a slider on the Tool->Draw ribbon panel, or on the Right Mouse Button menu.

Setups Fixes

• The copy behaviour on toolpaths has been made more consistent, so a toolpath that’s part of a setup will remain in the setup when copied, and a toolpath not in a setup will not be placed into one when copied.
• When a setup is part of an NC program that is manually ordered, adding a toolpath to the setup now results in the toolpath being added to the NC program in a more logical position.

Shared Views Fixes

• PowerMill now allows stock models to be correctly shaded when exporting them to shared views.
• The browser shared views page now displays the correct language – PowerMill previously passed an incorrectly formatted locale string.

Additive Plugin Fixes

• The calculation of a feature construction toolpath from the medial axis failed when the feature included surfaces that overlaid the base surface. This is fixed.
• Start/and end points on a feature construction offset toolpath were not rotated. This is fixed.
• Strings within the Additive plugin were not localised. This is fixed.
• Reading in template projects became excessively slow when the Additive plugin was enabled. This is fixed.
• The deposition within the upper layers of a feature construction toolpath were incomplete for a shallow feature. This is fixed.

Robot Plugin Fixes

• The Robot Plugin will not re-setup collision detection multiple times when loading a robot.

CER Report Fixes

• The calculation of a toolpath from an embedded pattern no longer results in a crash.
• When attempting to convert a toolpath to additive without having specified a level or set for the base no longer results in a crash.
• Fixed crash that occurred when recalculating a Rest Area Clearance toolpath after changing the “Detect material thicker than” threshold.
• Fixed crash when interrupting an Area Clearance calculation, using automatic stock collision checking.

General Fixes

• Restored the white background in the snapshot mode.
• Calculate correct cylinder block around a selection of several models.
• Improvements to the creation of features from surfaces.
• A speedup has been made to reading in projects, where the user interface was being updated unnecessarily.
• The model wireframe style options (e.g. dashed) now work again as they used to in a previous version.
• A crash that occurred when attempting to run a macro whilst it was already running (e.g. by clicking the macro in the Explorer) has been fixed.
• More significant speedups were made to project reading, to reduce inefficiencies fixing up thickness sets.
• A crash and data loss relating to storing "live text" meta-data within patterns has been resolved.
• When importing an archive project via the "File -> Import" page, PowerMill was incorrectly closing the current project and opening the archived one – this has now been fixed so that it imports and merges the project, as expected.
• Projects containing very large models were taking a very long time to close – the time taken to close has been dramatically reduced.
• A crash that occurs when accessing the strategy rest page following an imported 2018 template has been resolved.
• When items are renamed in the Explorer, they are now less likely to "collapse".

Summary for 2019.0.4

General

• Sped up loading a project containing many hole features.

Toolpath

• Fixed a crash calculating some vortex toolpaths.
• Fixed an automatic collision checking against stock bug that caused some rest material to be left unmachined.
• Fixed a crash when calculating an embedded pattern toolpath.
• Fixed a case where point redistribution on a 5 axis toolpath resulted in gouges.
• Fixed a bug that caused spikes within 3D offset toolpaths defined from a pattern.
• Fixed a case where collisions were still present, within the internal corners of a model, after using automatic collision avoidance with a non-spherical tool.
• Fixed a case where point redistribution in a raster toolpath resulted in gouges in vertical segments.
• Fixed a bug in the collision checking of 5 axis toolpaths that could cause collisions to go undetected when a negative thickness was used.

NC Programs

• Fixed the cutfile output for profile drilling of a compound hole.

User Interface

• Fixed a bug that caused the option for automatic collision checking in finishing toolpath strategies to be disabled when a non-vertical tool axis was used.

Tool Database

• The tool database is now significantly faster performing searches, especially when it contains many tools.

Shared Views

• Fixed a bug that prevented users in certain locales from uploading to Shared Views with all the colours intact.

Additive Plugin

• Fixed a problem importing Netfabb toolpaths in locales that use different decimal separators.
• Fixed a bug that could affect the positioning of raster surface coating toolpaths that were defined on a planar base using a workplane.

Summary for 2019.0.3

General

• Resolved numerous issues caused by a number formatting bug in a Microsoft Visual C++ runtime library. The installer for 2019.0.3 will replace the runtime library with a version that works correctly and some changes made to avoid the bug have been removed to avoid unwanted side effects.
• Fixed an issue where some users couldn't export to the tool database.

User Interface

• The "Include in NC program" menu option in a setup toolpath no longer fires an error.
• Fixed an issue where values on the feeds and speeds form were a 1000th of the expected value.
• The explorer tree should no longer scroll unnecessarily.
• Fixed a bug in the curve editor that was causing crashes when sub-modes were closed out of sequence.
• Fixed a crash in the entity input dialog when selecting a setup and a setup exists that contains toolpaths.

Toolpath

• Fixed a large gouge in some 3d offset centreline toolpaths.
• Fixed a crash in tool axis editing when using large blend distances.
• Some speed improvements have been made to the calculation of feature construction raster style toolpaths with a cylindrical base surface.
• Fixed various failures in automatic collision checking.
• Attempting to use a non vertical tool axis in combination with collision avoidance using the automatic tilt method will now give an error message.
• Fixed a bug calculating arbitrary surface feature construction from a drive curve where higher layers were offsetting from the boundary instead of the drive curve.
• Fixed a case where automatic collision avoidance was leaving small collisions in a toolpath.
• Prevent some unnecessary tool axis motion at the end of toolpath segments.
• Fixed a case where collisions remained after automatic collision avoidance.
• Fixed a fragmented toolpath calculated with collision avoidance and tool axis limits.
• Fixed a crash when calculating a swarf toolpath on an annulus with a tool axis aligned towards the z axis.
• Fixed a crash when cancelling the calculation of a Steep and Shallow toolpath.
• Improve the ordering of constant z toolpaths with arc fitted corners.
• Fixed a bug that prevented the calculation of certain rest boundaries.
• Prevent unsafe approach outside moves from being included within a toolpath.

Stock Model

• Fixed a bug where a stock model could move out of position after a project was saved.

NC Program

• Fixed a bug where an incorrect drilling depth was sent to a cut file for duplicated holes.
• Copies of NC Programs containing setups are now expandible in the setup view, and will no longer crash when expanded in the non-setup view.

Additive Plugin

• Fixed the additive plugin causing significant slowdowns when loading or closing projects with large numbers of entities.

Electrode Machining Wizard

• NC files no longer need to follow a specific naming convention when used with the Electrode Wizard in the MPP workflow.

Summary for 2019.0.1

General

• Fix a problem where projects could become corrupted when saved on certain machines using locales which have a comma as the decimal separator.
• PowerMill Modelling should now run correctly without reporting licence acquisition errors.

User Interface

• Fix a crash when changing a turning tool name from the toolpath strategy workpage.
• Fix a crash resulting from certain string manipulations when in a multibyte locale.
• Fix a bug in Groups in the Explorer where selecting an entity would expand its node.
• Fix a bug which prevented the selection of macros in the Explorer.

Toolpath

• Vortex 'from stock' toolpaths now compute on Windows 7.
• Fix a failure to calculate duplicated Area Clearance toolpaths with step cutting enabled.
• Fix a bug that caused excessive stock engagement when rest roughing with a reference toolpath.
• Fix crashes in 3D Offset Centreline calculations.
• Fix some bugs in automatic collision avoidance.
• Fix a crash during rest roughing toolpath calculation.

Installation

For further information about Autodesk PowerMill Installation please visit Product Installation.

Further Information

For further information about Autodesk PowerMill and its system requirements please visit PowerMill Overview.

Thank You...

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 manufacture. Autodesk also thanks you for your continued support and feedback regarding the content of this update release.

Respectfully,

Autodesk PowerMill Product Team