The "Simulate" button allows you to see the exact toolpaths your machine will take when carving your project. The red lines show the movement of the spindle between sections, and the blue lines indicate the passes carving out your material.
Select "Hide Material" to see a clearer visualization of your project's toolpaths. You can move the 3D pane around to see the passes your machine will take. This also helps you clearly see any parts of a design that may not carve out due to your bit being too large (indicated by the red coloring).
There are various reasons why animating your toolpath is beneficial. Viewing your machine’s carve course allows you to see the sequence in which your machine carves various parts of your design. Sometimes it’s difficult to understand what parts of the project are carved first from viewing a picture of the toolpaths. This feature is also great for determining where to place your clamps because you can see your machine’s rapid movements more clearly.
To access the toolpath animation panel, click the “Simulate” button and generate your toolpaths. The toolpath animation panel will appear at the bottom of your screen.
Use the panel controls to control the animation. Click the play button to get started. When an animation is playing, a pause button appears. The pause button allows you to stop the animation in case you want to take a closer look at the toolpaths.
You can also speed up the animation or slow it down. This is helpful when trying to get a quick visualization of the machine’s movements between toolpaths.
Don’t want to wait around for the full animation to play? You can use the slider to scrub the animation. Scrubbing allows you to control the animation manually by moving the slider back and forth at your preferred speed. To scrub the toolpath animation, click the handle in the slider and drag it back and forth. You can do this while the animation is paused…
...or while the animation is playing.
While using the animation toolpath panel, you can still zoom and pan in the preview pane—even if the animation is playing.
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