Facing
Updated v2.4.9At a glance
- The first op on raw stock with zero picking—it already knows to cut the whole stock top
- Every pass runs off the stock before it turns—soft tangent turnarounds in open air, never in the cut
- High feed in air speeds up the moves that aren't cutting, and re-stamps instantly when you change it
- Raster at any angle, zig-zag or one-way, stepover by percent or exact width; or spiral it with Dynamic
Facing flattens the top of your stock — the first thing you do to raw material to get a clean, square reference surface. Add a Face operation and it already knows what to cut: the whole stock top, straight from the setup's stock block. Set the depth (it defaults to facing down to the model top) and click OK — no boundaries to trace.
Face the whole top, or just a region
Leave it on stock top for the classic skim, or switch to picked boundaries to face just a region, with nested loops standing as islands exactly like Pocket.
Turnarounds in open air
When the boundary is the stock outline, every raster pass extends past the material by the tool radius plus a clearance — so the cutter has fully left the stock before it turns. Round stock, rectangular stock, any pass angle: the passes stay clean parallel lines, and every row change — including the first and last — turns with a soft tangent semicircle out where there's nothing to cut. Only the straight middle of each pass is in the material.
Because those extensions and turnarounds never touch metal, they can run faster: High feed in air (on by default) gives them their own rate. Toggle it or edit the rate and the toolpath re-stamps in place instantly — no regeneration. The entry eases in too: the plunge blends into the first pass through a small tangent arc instead of a square corner, and the last pass curves up into the retract the same way. Cutting one-way instead of zig-zag? Every per-row retract and re-entry gets the same rounded treatment.
Raster like a machinist
Clean parallel passes at any angle, zig-zag back-and-forth or one-way cutting, and a stepover you set by percent of tool diameter or an exact width — the two stay linked. Where a picked-boundary pass has to hop an island it lifts, clears, and re-enters; everywhere else it stays down and keeps cutting. A face mill wider than the stock just works — one pass through the middle.
Overhang, spiral & skim
An edge overhang adds extra run-past beyond the automatic air clearance for an extra-clean rim. Prefer a continuous path? Switch the strategy to Dynamic and the same high-speed engine as 2D Dynamic faces the region in one unbroken spiral: the cutter drops in a straight plunge just off the stock edge — never boring down into the middle of the plate — and morphs inward from the rim, hanging off the edge wherever a lap needs it. The path gets the same smooth → arc-fit → simplify finishing as 2D Dynamic, so the spiral posts as clean arcs, and the Face dialog carries the same Advanced controls to tune it — plus the Keep tool down option, which stops the cutter retracting to clearance for long jumps it could have flown across at cutting depth. Face in multiple depth passes, keep a skim allowance with axial stock to leave, or take a zero-depth pass to just kiss the surface — and if every pass would sit at or above the stock top, Facing now tells you there's nothing to face instead of quietly skimming air.