At a glance
- Adaptive roughing on closed inside hole contours—outer geometry on a pocket layer is skipped
- Helical center-out entry, optimal load control, and link clearance for low-lift re-entry
- Roughing-only in v1—stock to leave supported; wall and floor finishing coming later
Pocket is true adaptive clearing: instead of stepping the cutter over in rigid parallel passes, it keeps radial engagement at a constant Optimal Load so the tool never buries itself in a corner. Assign Pocket to a layer in the OPERATIONS list; only closed contours classified as holes generate pockets — outer profiles and open geometry on the layer are skipped.
How it clears
Entry is a helical center-out ramp. Helical Ramp Diameter sets the tool-center diameter of the entry helix and is capped at the tool diameter so the sweep can't leave a center slug; a floor cleanup circle then makes the entry area true before adaptive clearing begins. Optimal Load defaults to 25% of tool diameter, entered as a length or a percentage — the two fields stay in sync. Between engagements the tool takes low-lift links at Link Clearance (default 0.025") above the current floor, moving at the High Feed rate instead of retracting to clearance. Multi-stepdown pockets compute the XY path once and replay it at each depth with a fresh helix.
Passes and finishing
Stepdowns work like Contour — by count or by height. Tolerance (default 0.004") controls the accuracy of the internal polygon math; Smoothing (default 0.001") controls how densely the emitted cut motion is sampled — tighter means smoother curves at the cost of generation time. Signed radial and axial Stock to Leave is supported, and Take Finish Cut runs a contour-style wall pass around the pocket boundary at the Bottom height after roughing, with lead-in/lead-out controls on the Leads tab.
Tips
- Adaptive generation runs in the background — the app stays responsive, and cancelling keeps your previous toolpaths intact. Large pockets can take tens of seconds; watch the Generate progress bar.
- The auto-nester knows a pocketed hole is not a usable cavity and won't nest parts inside it.