Scallop (3D)
Updated v2.6.0At a glance
- 3D finishing with passes a constant distance apart measured along the surface, between the points the cutter touches
- One set of rings from the floor, through the fillet, up the vertical wall—pick the walls with the fillets
- Even finish on fillets, walls and floors alike; spacing never opens up on steep areas
- Outside-in, inside-out, bottom-up or top-down; bottom-up works tall walls in flute-length bands
- Loops, or one continuous helix with no retract between rings
- Ball, bullnose, flat and chamfer mills; un-picked faces still protect the part from gouging
- Boundary overlap and passes spaced from the boundary only; smoothing and feed optimization
- Live scallop-height readout for ball end mills, slope and boundary limits, stock to leave
Scallop lays its passes a constant stepover apart measured along the part surface — between the points where the cutter actually touches — offsetting inward from the edge of the area you're machining. Because the spacing follows the surface instead of the plan view, a fillet, a vertical wall and a floor all come out with the same finish, and one set of rings runs from the floor, through the fillet and up the wall — exactly what you want on a filleted edge or a rounded perimeter that meets a wall.
Pick the faces, keep the rest safe
Click the faces to finish and they highlight blue — pick the walls together with the fillets that run into them. The rest of the part still protects the cutter, so passes never run into faces you didn't pick. Leave the list empty to finish everything the tool can reach. The slope limits are only a filter: a vertical wall is machined like any other face when it is inside them.
Order and linking
Passes can start at the edge of the picked area and step inward (outside in), or work from the inside out. For fillets that run into walls choose bottom up — the lowest ring first, climbing out of the stock the roughing left — or top down. On a wall taller than the cutter's flute, bottom up works in flute-length bands from the top, each band bottom up, so the shank never rides in uncut material, just as 3D Contour does. Choose climb or conventional and every ring runs the right way, on walls too.
Loops link each ring with the normal retract policy. Helix blends each ring into the next with no retract between them: the cutter cuts the first ring, then climbs one stepover per turn. Limit stepovers to finish just a band along an edge.
With a box or loop boundary, boundary overlap runs the passes a little past it so they blend with a neighbouring toolpath, and machine areas using boundaries spaces every pass from the boundary alone, so a wall or a slope limit inside it doesn't start a new set of rings.
Cutters
Ball, bullnose and flat end mills, and chamfer or V mills: on a face at its own angle a chamfer mill cuts along its flank, on a shallower face on its tip and on a steeper face on its outer edge. Every position is checked against the whole model, so a fillet smaller than the ball is bridged cleanly and the rings pick up again on the wall above it.
Same controls as Parallel
Stepover with a live scallop-height readout for ball end mills, slope limits, outline / box / loop boundaries with tool containment, Top and Bottom heights, radial and axial stock to leave, and stay-down or minimum-lift links between passes that clear the stock the roughing actually left, rounded link corners, smoothing, feed optimization around tight corners, contact-point boundaries, and rest finishing (from a previous operation, a tool diameter, or the stock the earlier operations actually left) — finish only the fillets and corners a bigger cutter or an earlier finishing operation left behind. See Parallel.