Automatic Tooling
Inside the Punch tab, navigate to the Auto Tool icon.
Clicking this button analyses the drawing, and applies tooling for all polylines, using the settings defined in the Punch Tooling Properties dialog. On clicking this button, the Auto Tool dialogue is displayed.
This dialogue is just a single page of the Part Settings dialogue. You can click on the More Settings button to view the other pages of the part settings dialogue.
Auto Tool Settings
Generate tooling for: Use this list to choose whether tooling is generated for all entities, or for selected or unselected entities. This can be useful when you want to tool up different entities in the drawing with different settings.
Sheared sheet: Use this setting to choose whether to process the part as a sheared sheet part or not. If you turn this setting on, the edges of the part that lie along the bounding rectangle of the part are not punched. If you select the Use margins option, you can process parts where only some of the edges are sheared. Set the margin to zero for those edges (in the Clamps and Margins page), and to non-zero for other edges. Then, MetaCAM will avoid tooling up the sheared edges, while still punching out the other non-sheared edges.
Off:
On:
Slug out notches: This list has three values, No, Yes and Only Sheared Sheet. If you set it to No, MetaCAM does not slug out notches. If you set it to Yes, MetaCAM slugs out notches. If you set it to Only Sheared Sheet, MetaCAM slugs out notches if the Punch as Sheared sheet setting in the auto tooling settings is turned on.
Suppress punch on bend lines: If you turn this on, MetaCAM will ignore the tools you have assigned to punch on bend lines; bend lines will be left unprocessed.
Suppress automounting tools: MetaCAM will not mount any tools from the turret automatically, even if the Automount required tools from the tool library setting is turned on the Switches page.
Suppress thickness check: If you turn this on, MetaCAM does not filter any tools based on thickness checks; it will attempt to use tools even if the current thickness lies outside the tool’s thickness limits.
Suppress wirejoints: Turning on this setting causes MetaCAM to never place any wirejoints, irrespective of the settings on the Wirejoint page.
Suppress corner joints: Turn on this setting to tell MetaCAM to never place any corner microjoints.
Suppress pierce punch: This setting is available only on hybrid machines and tells MetaCAM not to use tool-type piercing; normal pierce operations (laser pierce) are used instead.
Suppress single punching holes: This setting is available only on hybrid machines. For these machines, the auto-tooler tries to single-punch holes as far as possible, if there are punch tools that match the hole shapes exactly. If no such tools are found, the holes are laser cut. Turning on this option forces MetaCAM to avoid any single punching and use only laser cutting instead.
The links at the bottom of this page can be used to navigate to the other settings that relate to auto-tooling.
Auto Tool Patterns
The switches on this page control which pattern MetaCAM is allowed to use when placing tooling for the part. The patterns are grouped broadly into Single Punch patterns, Slug out patterns and Trace patterns. You can use these switches to fine-tune the tooling layout because of auto-tooling.
The settings in the Punch CAM page of the MetaCAM options dialogue as well as some of the settings in the Metrics page
