You will find these properties on the Solid Analyzation tab of the Microvellum Options page. Each section below contains the properties listed.

Material Thickness Section

Minimum

Enter a value that is slightly less than the thinnest material your company uses for products created by SMA. If this value is set too small, speed will deteriorate, and SMA will analyze everything, including hardware included in the solid model. If the AutoCAD bounding box surrounding the hardware block is smaller in any dimension than this value, the part will be ignored. If it is larger than the Minimum value, it won’t accurately represent the hardware in the block created for the Microvellum product. Still, it will try to convert the hardware to an object made from the material specified for the product, perhaps wood.

Maximum

Enter a value that equals the thickest material you will be using for the products created by SMA. The usual maximum is 2 inches, but it may be less or slightly more for your company. If this value is set too high, SMA may misinterpret the width of a small part as its thickness and place cutouts on the edges of the part instead of the faces that are actually face 5 and face 6.

Drill Hole Diameters Section

Minimum

Enter a value for the smallest drill diameter installed in your CNC machine. This is the smallest value that will be interpreted as a drilling operation when the solid is analyzed. Any holes in the solid object that are smaller than this value will be ignored during the analyzation process.

Maximum

Enter a value for the largest drill diameter installed in your CNC machine. This is the largest value that will be interpreted as a drilling operation when the solid is analyzed. Any holes in the solid object that are larger than this value will be evaluated as route machining during the analyzation process – typically a circle cutout machine token.

Pocket Penetrating Cutouts Section

Max Area

Enter a value for the largest area of ‘penetrating’ cutout machining that should be converted to a pocketed cutout. Any penetrating cutout machining that produces pieces larger than this area measurement will be left as offal. In contrast, any penetrating cutout machining that produces pieces smaller than this measurement will be converted to pocket machining and turned to dust. This applies only to machining that ‘penetrates’ the full thickness of the material. The goal of this setting is to prevent the creation of small islands or pieces of material that could be launched as projectiles from the CNC. Some users adjust this setting contingent on the type of bit used and CNC machine bed vacuum volume, which may affect the size of offal that remains safely immobile.

Non-penetrating route cutout machining will always be a pocketed cutout.

Part Size Section

Minimum

Enter a value for the smallest part size that should result from the analyzation process. The program will not analyze any solid object smaller than this value as a part. Smaller parts will be excluded. Use this value to adjust the analysis ‘sensitivity’ of SMA. If analyzation is taking too long or evaluating more parts that it should, adjust this value upward. If it’s excluding too many objects, adjust this value downward.

Maximum

Enter a value for the largest part size that could result from the analyzation process. Typically, this would be slightly smaller than the length of the material sheet. For example, if the maximum length of your material is 96 inches, you might decide to set this value to 95.875 inches.

If the size of a solid object is outside the range of these minimum and maximum values, it will not result in the creation of a part but will be shown as an AutoCAD block in the Exception Part Color set here on the Solids tab.

Nonplanar Parts Section

Oversize Dimension

Enter a value to oversize all curved or bent (nonplanar) parts. This oversize value is the equivalent of using the AutoCAD OFFSET command to oversize a part equally on all sides. This addresses requests from users to give them the flexibility of tweaking these nonplanar parts by oversizing them so they can be cut down and custom fit during the assembly process.

Part Naming and Material Section

Automatic

Check this option, and the program will assign names to the part produced by analyzation automatically, in consecutive order (e.g., Part_1, Part_2, Part_3). It will also prompt you to select the Microvellum material assigned to the part during the analyzation process.

This is true regardless of whether or not the part solid object is assigned to a solid layer or AutoCAD material, as described below.

Fig. 8 – Microvellum Material Selection Box Resulting from ‘Automatic’ Option

From Solid Layer

Check this option to assign the part produced by analyzation to the Microvellum material taken from the solid model layer name. The layer name must be assigned to the solid model of the part before analyzation and must contain the exact Microvellum material name in the format <partname>_<materialname>. For example, if the Microvellum material name is “1 White Melamine 2S,” you could create an AutoCAD layer named “Part1_1 White Melamine 2S,” where Part1 is the part name and 1 White Melamine 2S is a material in the Microvellum material file.

The portion of the AutoCAD layer name that specifies the material may contain spaces if your Microvellum material names also contain spaces.

Since that layer name contains a specific part name and the exact Microvellum material name separated by an underscore character, this option will cause the program to assign that material to the part with that name during the analyzation process. You will not need to rename the part or manually select a material.

Fig. 9 – AutoCAD Solid Object Properties with Special Solid Layer Naming

Regardless of whether this option is activated or not, if the program does not see a layer name that includes an actual Microvellum material name (Figure 8), the program will prompt the user for the selection of a material, as shown in Figure 7.

Fig. 10 – AutoCAD Solid Object Properties without Special Layer or Material Naming

From AutoCAD Material

Check this option to assign the part produced by analyzation to the Microvellum material taken from the AutoCAD material assigned to that solid. The program will assign names to the part produced by analyzation automatically, in consecutive order (e.g., Part_1, Part_2, Part_3), but will take the material from the AutoCAD material assigned to that solid object.

The AutoCAD material must be assigned to the solid model of the part, as shown in Figure 11 before analyzation, and must contain the exact Microvellum material name. For example, if the Microvellum material name is “1 White Melamine 1S,” you could configure an AutoCAD material named “Part1_1 White Melamine 1S,” where Part1 is the part name and 1 White Melamine 1S is a material in the Microvellum material file.

The portion of the AutoCAD layer name that specifies the material may contain spaces if your Microvellum material names also contain spaces.

Since that AutoCAD material name is the exact Microvellum material name, this option will cause the program to assign that material to that part during the analyzation process. You will not need to select a material manually.

You may have the layer name set and the AutoCAD material both set for some solid objects. However, the part material name will be generated from the option as specified in Part Naming and Material section of the Solid Analyzation tab, not from the existence of the AutoCAD layer or material.

A Fourth Option is not visible, but if the solid model was created using the Microvellum Solid Modeling Tools (SMT), the object has the necessary name and material embedded within the XDATA of the part and these options do not apply.

Exception Part Color Section

Select a color from the dropdown list for parts that are not evaluated, generate an error, or otherwise need further investigation.

Miters Section

Draw and Machine

Check this option both to display part miters in the drawing and to produce G-Code that creates the miters on a CNC machine.

Draw Only

Check this option to display part miters in the drawing only. Many users create their miter joints offline on an edge profile machine and would need to eliminate any miter G-Code before processing. This option makes that additional step unnecessary.

Tool Selection Section

Routing tools to be used with SMA are defined on the Tools tab of the toolfile, in the Routers section. It is possible to set multiple tools as a Pocketing Router/SMA type of tool.

The program will consider these tools when analyzing the solid object and select the best match.

If you have no tools set with this option ON, you will likely see an error and be redirected to select a tool from the Tools > Routers screen of the toolfile.

Remember to set up tools with diameters that match your intended machining operations before analyzation.