Maximize Toolpath Efficiency with Variables and Templates
How to maximize your toolpath efficiency by using variables, formulas, and toolpath templates. This lesson applies to Vectric VCarve, Aspire, and Cut2D. However, the toolpath template features will not work with Cut2D Desktop or VCarve Desktop, they will only work with the Pro versions.
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Video Transcript:
Hello everyone. In this quick tip, I'm gonna show you how to utilize different thicknesses of sheets and make toolpaths that automatically calculate the thickness of the sheet so you don't have to manually set up toolpaths for each one. So I'll be showing you how to do this with different formulas that you can use and how to do these with toolpath templates.
And you can see for this example, I have different thickness sheets, so I have a quarter inch, half inch, one inch, and three quarter of an inch. And our end result will give us a toolpath that will automatically calculate for this. So you can see this pocket toolpath. If I preview that. In this one inch sheet, it's going exactly halfway through.
And then I use the same exact toolpath without changing anything. And if we go to the quarter inch sheet and select that pocket toolpath and preview it. It's only going an eighth of an inch, which is halfway through this quarter inch sheet. So I use the same exact toolpath without changing anything, and it was with one click of a button.
So I'll be showing you how to do that in this lesson. And also, before we get started, if you do not know how to make a new sheet with a different thickness, I'll show you that real quick. And that's, if you're using version 11 or above, you're gonna have the sheet tab, and at the very bottom, you're gonna click add new.
That will take in the data from your last used sheet, and you can give it a custom name, but also you can right click on the sheet and click edit, and you could change the size of the sheet. So the width, height, and thickness can be different from each sheet. So in this case, let's say we made a 1.5 inch thickness of a sheet.
We could type that in and we can even change the zero positions and then click okay. And this is just giving us a warning about toolpaths we created earlier. Okay, and then now you'll see we have a new sheet in there that is one and a half inches thick. So that is how you create new sheets, just in case you didn't know that part.
And one last thing before we start this lesson. I will be referencing a variable that you can use in the software, and I'm only mentioning one of them in this lesson. There are many more you can use, so if you're interested in learning those ones, I made this little document that you can print off or save onto your computer.
So I will link this document down below in the description, where you can download it for free. All right, let's get into today's lesson. So to start off, for this example, you can see I created four different sheets, and those can be found in the sheets tab if you're using version 11 or higher. And you'll see each sheet is a different thickness, so they're all the same, uh, width and height.
Just the thickness is changed. So we have one inch, we have half inch, we have a quarter inch, and we have three quarters of an inch. So for this example, we're gonna say we wanted to cut all of these shapes as a pocket, but we wanted them all to cut halfway through the material. So you could manually make a pocket toolpath for every one of these and make the cut depth different for each one.
And that's not too bad for four shapes, but if you're doing a lot of sheets, that can get very time consuming. So let's take a look at how we can speed that process up. So I'm gonna open up the toolpath tab and pin it there. We're gonna open up the pocket toolpath, and this is just for this example, but you can use multiple different toolpaths for this method.
So I'm gonna open up the pocket toolpath. I'm gonna remove the eighth inch tool, we're gonna use a quarter inch tool for this. And up here is where we are going to set our cut depth. So, like I said, we want to cut halfway through the material, and since each one of these is different, we would have to manually figure out all of those for each one.
Now there is a formula you can do in this box to make it much easier. So what you can do is use preset variables that are built into the software, and that is the letter Z. For the Z access or the letter T for thickness. Either one of those will work and you can leave it just like that, to go all the way through the material.
But since we wanna go halfway through the material, we're gonna do the divide symbol, which is the forward slash, and then the number two. So now that is the thickness divided by two, and if we click the equal sign, that will give us our number, but then that's only gonna work for this specific toolpath.
If we wanna turn this toolpath into a template that we can use that formula over and over again, we are going to instead not click the equals sign, and we'll do T divided by two and leave it just like that. And if you ever want to know the answer to the equation, just hover your mouse over it and it'll tell you the exact answer there.
T divided by two equals half of an inch. Okay, so we have our tool selected. We can set a strategy. I'll just turn the ramping off for this example, and you can give it a name, we'll just say Pocket. And then the most important part is gonna be the vector selection down here. So if we turn this into a template, this vector selector is going to help us out a lot.
So we're gonna click selector. And you'll see right now the selection is set to manual, that means you manually have to click on the items you want to cut. So instead, we're gonna open up the selector form, and this will filter our vectors and select them automatically. So we wanna do closed vectors, and we wanna do it on the layer that I set here.
You see, I set the pocket layer and all of these shapes are on that layer. So I'm gonna select that layer. And you'll see that will automatically select the object on that layer, on the sheet that we're working on. And then I also want to click associate with toolpath. That's gonna set it to automatically select anything for this toolpath.
And that will help us if we turn this into a template. So now we're gonna click close and you'll see now that switch to automatic. So now we can click calculate and you'll see a toolpath will be generated. And if we click preview, that is cutting halfway through our material. So we have one inch material, this will cut a half inch deep.
So if you wanted to, you can do that individually on each sheet. And like I said, that won't take too long with four sheets, but let's say you had 30 sheets or even a hundred sheets, that can take some time to do each one. So instead, what we would do is close this, and if you're using VCarve Pro, Cut2D Pro, or Aspire, you're gonna have these options down here to make toolpath templates.
If you're using Cut2D Desktop, or VCarve Desktop unfortunately you will not have these options. But in order to make the templates, we would just select this, uh, toolpath here and click this button here, save all visible toolpaths as a template. And then you will save these wherever you want to, this is going into the default folder here, which is fine.
We just have to make sure we can find it later. So you could click up here and then click copy. To copy that file location just in case we need it later. And we can give this a name, so I can name it, uh, pocket halfway. You can name it whatever you want, and then click save. Okay, now I'm gonna turn the visibility off for that.
And you'll see if I go to another sheet by double clicking on it. There are no toolpaths on this sheet. So all the other three sheets do not have any toolpaths. So like I said, we can manually set up another toolpath if we wanted to. But now that we have a template, we can click this button here that says , load toolpath template.
We're gonna select that template we just made. And if it didn't automatically open up this folder, you can search through it through your folders or come up here to the top and paste in that file location that I copied earlier. All right, but we got it right here so we're gonna click open, and here it's gonna ask you, would you like to apply this template to all of the sheets.
If you do click yes, if you only wanna affect this sheet, then click no. In this case, we're gonna click yes and now it's gonna make a toolpath for all four sheets. And you'll see now we have all four sheets showing up over here. So now if we look at the 3D view, you see it just created a brand new toolpath, and that's the rectangle here.
And this is cutting exactly halfway through the three quarter inch material, and that's because we set up that variable with the equation. And to figure this out, if it's going the correct depth, you can either hover over the toolpath and the third line from the bottom will tell you the max depth of the toolpath.
Which is three eighths of an inch, and that is correct. Another way you can figure out the depth is in the 3D view. If you hover your mouse over any area, it's gonna tell you the exact location of that area for the X, Y, and Z. So if you look at the very bottom of the screen, you'll see the XY location and the Z.
So if you set the Z zero to the top of the material, that's gonna read as zero, and then if you hover over the pocketed area. That's gonna say the negative three eighths of an inch, and that is exactly what we want. So now we know that's correct. And you could see if we were to switch to another one like this star, this is a quarter inch sheet, and if we go to the preview and select that one and click preview.
This one is cutting an eighth of an inch because that is halfway through a quarter inch. So as you can see, that's one of many examples you can do for creating the different templates like this. And I'll show you one last quick example. If we reset the preview. If we were to do that with a profile toolpath, instead, you could open up the profile toolpath.
We're gonna set up a toolpath for this octagon shape, and if you want to cut all the way through, you just type the letter Z or the letter T for thickness. And if you leave it like this, you could see if I hover over that, it's gonna tell me that T equals half an inch. So that's cutting all the way through this particular sheet.
But I find if you make a template with that in there, it actually removes the variable and puts a half inch in there instead. And then if you go to make a template, it's gonna save the half inch number, not the variable. So the trick around this I found is just to do T plus zero and leave it just like that.
Then the answer does not change, but now it's a formula technically where it will stay within a template. So then it would adjust for different thicknesses. But you can also cut a little bit through the material if you like to cut into your spoil board a little bit. You can do T plus 0.1 if you wanted to, and that would cut 0.01 below your material.
So that is an option as well. Then select the tool you want and set up all your settings that you want. I'll just leave it like this for this example. Then we would do the vector selector again, select closed vectors on the layer. And associate with the toolpath, and then click close, then give it a name.
I'll just say profile, and then click calculate. And this time it will give you a warning because we are cutting a little bit through the material, which is that 0.01 of an inch. That's okay. So we're gonna click okay. And now if you click preview, that will cut the shape out instead of pocketing it. And then you would just do the same thing if you wanted to save that as a template.
You would select that toolpath, go to save visible toolpath as a template, give it a name. I'll just say profile. And you can also do multiple toolpaths in one template, so you don't have to do one for each different operation. Okay, so now we would go to another sheet. And click load toolpath template, load that profile in there and click yes to apply to all sheets.
And it's gonna give us that warning that it's cutting a little bit through and that's okay. And it's gonna give you that warning for each sheet, so just click okay on each one. Okay, now if you go to any sheet and look at the preview. You could see if we turn on the visibility of that profile toolpath and click preview visible, that is gonna cut all the way through the material, so the thickness will adjust for any thickness material you have. And you can also load these toolpath templates into other jobs, it doesn't have to be just this one job.
All right, so that's a few tips on toolpath templates. If those tips helped you out, make sure you like and subscribe for more.
And you can see for this example, I have different thickness sheets, so I have a quarter inch, half inch, one inch, and three quarter of an inch. And our end result will give us a toolpath that will automatically calculate for this. So you can see this pocket toolpath. If I preview that. In this one inch sheet, it's going exactly halfway through.
And then I use the same exact toolpath without changing anything. And if we go to the quarter inch sheet and select that pocket toolpath and preview it. It's only going an eighth of an inch, which is halfway through this quarter inch sheet. So I use the same exact toolpath without changing anything, and it was with one click of a button.
So I'll be showing you how to do that in this lesson. And also, before we get started, if you do not know how to make a new sheet with a different thickness, I'll show you that real quick. And that's, if you're using version 11 or above, you're gonna have the sheet tab, and at the very bottom, you're gonna click add new.
That will take in the data from your last used sheet, and you can give it a custom name, but also you can right click on the sheet and click edit, and you could change the size of the sheet. So the width, height, and thickness can be different from each sheet. So in this case, let's say we made a 1.5 inch thickness of a sheet.
We could type that in and we can even change the zero positions and then click okay. And this is just giving us a warning about toolpaths we created earlier. Okay, and then now you'll see we have a new sheet in there that is one and a half inches thick. So that is how you create new sheets, just in case you didn't know that part.
And one last thing before we start this lesson. I will be referencing a variable that you can use in the software, and I'm only mentioning one of them in this lesson. There are many more you can use, so if you're interested in learning those ones, I made this little document that you can print off or save onto your computer.
So I will link this document down below in the description, where you can download it for free. All right, let's get into today's lesson. So to start off, for this example, you can see I created four different sheets, and those can be found in the sheets tab if you're using version 11 or higher. And you'll see each sheet is a different thickness, so they're all the same, uh, width and height.
Just the thickness is changed. So we have one inch, we have half inch, we have a quarter inch, and we have three quarters of an inch. So for this example, we're gonna say we wanted to cut all of these shapes as a pocket, but we wanted them all to cut halfway through the material. So you could manually make a pocket toolpath for every one of these and make the cut depth different for each one.
And that's not too bad for four shapes, but if you're doing a lot of sheets, that can get very time consuming. So let's take a look at how we can speed that process up. So I'm gonna open up the toolpath tab and pin it there. We're gonna open up the pocket toolpath, and this is just for this example, but you can use multiple different toolpaths for this method.
So I'm gonna open up the pocket toolpath. I'm gonna remove the eighth inch tool, we're gonna use a quarter inch tool for this. And up here is where we are going to set our cut depth. So, like I said, we want to cut halfway through the material, and since each one of these is different, we would have to manually figure out all of those for each one.
Now there is a formula you can do in this box to make it much easier. So what you can do is use preset variables that are built into the software, and that is the letter Z. For the Z access or the letter T for thickness. Either one of those will work and you can leave it just like that, to go all the way through the material.
But since we wanna go halfway through the material, we're gonna do the divide symbol, which is the forward slash, and then the number two. So now that is the thickness divided by two, and if we click the equal sign, that will give us our number, but then that's only gonna work for this specific toolpath.
If we wanna turn this toolpath into a template that we can use that formula over and over again, we are going to instead not click the equals sign, and we'll do T divided by two and leave it just like that. And if you ever want to know the answer to the equation, just hover your mouse over it and it'll tell you the exact answer there.
T divided by two equals half of an inch. Okay, so we have our tool selected. We can set a strategy. I'll just turn the ramping off for this example, and you can give it a name, we'll just say Pocket. And then the most important part is gonna be the vector selection down here. So if we turn this into a template, this vector selector is going to help us out a lot.
So we're gonna click selector. And you'll see right now the selection is set to manual, that means you manually have to click on the items you want to cut. So instead, we're gonna open up the selector form, and this will filter our vectors and select them automatically. So we wanna do closed vectors, and we wanna do it on the layer that I set here.
You see, I set the pocket layer and all of these shapes are on that layer. So I'm gonna select that layer. And you'll see that will automatically select the object on that layer, on the sheet that we're working on. And then I also want to click associate with toolpath. That's gonna set it to automatically select anything for this toolpath.
And that will help us if we turn this into a template. So now we're gonna click close and you'll see now that switch to automatic. So now we can click calculate and you'll see a toolpath will be generated. And if we click preview, that is cutting halfway through our material. So we have one inch material, this will cut a half inch deep.
So if you wanted to, you can do that individually on each sheet. And like I said, that won't take too long with four sheets, but let's say you had 30 sheets or even a hundred sheets, that can take some time to do each one. So instead, what we would do is close this, and if you're using VCarve Pro, Cut2D Pro, or Aspire, you're gonna have these options down here to make toolpath templates.
If you're using Cut2D Desktop, or VCarve Desktop unfortunately you will not have these options. But in order to make the templates, we would just select this, uh, toolpath here and click this button here, save all visible toolpaths as a template. And then you will save these wherever you want to, this is going into the default folder here, which is fine.
We just have to make sure we can find it later. So you could click up here and then click copy. To copy that file location just in case we need it later. And we can give this a name, so I can name it, uh, pocket halfway. You can name it whatever you want, and then click save. Okay, now I'm gonna turn the visibility off for that.
And you'll see if I go to another sheet by double clicking on it. There are no toolpaths on this sheet. So all the other three sheets do not have any toolpaths. So like I said, we can manually set up another toolpath if we wanted to. But now that we have a template, we can click this button here that says , load toolpath template.
We're gonna select that template we just made. And if it didn't automatically open up this folder, you can search through it through your folders or come up here to the top and paste in that file location that I copied earlier. All right, but we got it right here so we're gonna click open, and here it's gonna ask you, would you like to apply this template to all of the sheets.
If you do click yes, if you only wanna affect this sheet, then click no. In this case, we're gonna click yes and now it's gonna make a toolpath for all four sheets. And you'll see now we have all four sheets showing up over here. So now if we look at the 3D view, you see it just created a brand new toolpath, and that's the rectangle here.
And this is cutting exactly halfway through the three quarter inch material, and that's because we set up that variable with the equation. And to figure this out, if it's going the correct depth, you can either hover over the toolpath and the third line from the bottom will tell you the max depth of the toolpath.
Which is three eighths of an inch, and that is correct. Another way you can figure out the depth is in the 3D view. If you hover your mouse over any area, it's gonna tell you the exact location of that area for the X, Y, and Z. So if you look at the very bottom of the screen, you'll see the XY location and the Z.
So if you set the Z zero to the top of the material, that's gonna read as zero, and then if you hover over the pocketed area. That's gonna say the negative three eighths of an inch, and that is exactly what we want. So now we know that's correct. And you could see if we were to switch to another one like this star, this is a quarter inch sheet, and if we go to the preview and select that one and click preview.
This one is cutting an eighth of an inch because that is halfway through a quarter inch. So as you can see, that's one of many examples you can do for creating the different templates like this. And I'll show you one last quick example. If we reset the preview. If we were to do that with a profile toolpath, instead, you could open up the profile toolpath.
We're gonna set up a toolpath for this octagon shape, and if you want to cut all the way through, you just type the letter Z or the letter T for thickness. And if you leave it like this, you could see if I hover over that, it's gonna tell me that T equals half an inch. So that's cutting all the way through this particular sheet.
But I find if you make a template with that in there, it actually removes the variable and puts a half inch in there instead. And then if you go to make a template, it's gonna save the half inch number, not the variable. So the trick around this I found is just to do T plus zero and leave it just like that.
Then the answer does not change, but now it's a formula technically where it will stay within a template. So then it would adjust for different thicknesses. But you can also cut a little bit through the material if you like to cut into your spoil board a little bit. You can do T plus 0.1 if you wanted to, and that would cut 0.01 below your material.
So that is an option as well. Then select the tool you want and set up all your settings that you want. I'll just leave it like this for this example. Then we would do the vector selector again, select closed vectors on the layer. And associate with the toolpath, and then click close, then give it a name.
I'll just say profile, and then click calculate. And this time it will give you a warning because we are cutting a little bit through the material, which is that 0.01 of an inch. That's okay. So we're gonna click okay. And now if you click preview, that will cut the shape out instead of pocketing it. And then you would just do the same thing if you wanted to save that as a template.
You would select that toolpath, go to save visible toolpath as a template, give it a name. I'll just say profile. And you can also do multiple toolpaths in one template, so you don't have to do one for each different operation. Okay, so now we would go to another sheet. And click load toolpath template, load that profile in there and click yes to apply to all sheets.
And it's gonna give us that warning that it's cutting a little bit through and that's okay. And it's gonna give you that warning for each sheet, so just click okay on each one. Okay, now if you go to any sheet and look at the preview. You could see if we turn on the visibility of that profile toolpath and click preview visible, that is gonna cut all the way through the material, so the thickness will adjust for any thickness material you have. And you can also load these toolpath templates into other jobs, it doesn't have to be just this one job.
All right, so that's a few tips on toolpath templates. If those tips helped you out, make sure you like and subscribe for more.
