Facing
Updated v2.4.7At a glance
- Face operation skims a layer's closed outer contours flat — same-layer holes become islands
- Raster (zig-zag) or Dynamic (spiral clear) facing styles with overhang past the edge
- Facing tool surfaces the spoilboard, the sheet, or a drawn region — no imported geometry needed
- Machine-bed path sets up an absolute 0.020" spoilboard skim out of the box
Facing skims a surface flat. Router has two ways in: add a Face operation to any layer to
face the inside of its geometry, or use the Facing tool in the toolbar (shortcut g) to
face the spoilboard, the whole sheet, or a region you drag out — without importing any geometry
at all.
The Face operation
Assign Face to a layer in the OPERATIONS list and Router fills the inside of the layer's closed outer contours with a skimming pass. Closed holes on the same layer are kept as islands the cutter steers around. The boundary is grown outward by Overhang — half the tool diameter by default — so the cutter runs clean past the edge instead of leaving a ridge.
Choose a Facing Style per operation. Raster (zig-zag) covers the area in parallel passes with direction control (zig-zag, one-way climb, or one-way conventional), pass angle, stepover, an optional perimeter pass, and peck plunge entry. When the direction is Both, Arc Joins (on by default) round each row transition into a tangent semicircle — the machine carries its speed through the turn instead of stopping in a sharp corner, and the joins post as true arc moves. Dynamic (spiral clear) is the same high-engagement adaptive clearing the Pocket operation uses — the right choice when you're hogging proud stock rather than taking a light skim.
New Face operations default to a light 0.020" skim below the top of the material; heights and multi-pass stepdowns work like every other operation when you're taking more. Face supports face mill, flat endmill, and bullnose tools from your machine's tool library.
The Facing tool
The Facing tool creates a facing region directly on the sheet — it commits a region part and creates its Face operation automatically, so feeds, style, stepover and depths are all edited in Operation Parameters like any other operation, and the region previews, simulates and posts like any toolpath. Three ways to pick the area:
- Machine — the full bed extents, with an optional inset from every edge. This is the spoilboard path: it assumes you zeroed Z on the spoilboard surface and sets up an absolute 0.020" skim — jog, zero, generate, post.
- Sheet — the active sheet's extents, with a signed offset: positive runs past the edge, negative pulls in.
- Draw — drag a marquee right on the canvas, grab its corners to adjust, drag inside to move it, or type exact X / Y / Width / Height values.
Facing regions draw as a dashed outline, never auto-nest, never trigger collision warnings against the parts sitting on top of them, and are free to extend past the sheet.