PutiaCNC 0.4.3

What's new in 0.4.3

New

• Rest machining for pockets (Corners row of a Pocket operation): pick a smaller flat end mill and, after the pocket is cut, it clears only what the main cutter could not reach: the corners and any part narrower than the main cutter. When the main cutter is too wide to cut the shape at all, the Corners cutter cuts the whole pocket, with a note saying so.
• Rest machining for 3D relief (Detail row of the Finishing step): pick a smaller ball nose and it finishes only the places the finishing ball could not reach, such as inside corners where slopes meet the floor, narrow grooves and fine detail. It has its own stepover, and the 3D preview, the warnings and the G-code replay all know the third tool.
• Finishing pass (Profile outside, Profile inside and Pocket, Finish row): the depth passes keep a little stock (0.2 mm by default) on the walls and one last pass cuts them to size, at full depth when the tool's flute length covers the depth. Cleaner walls and a more accurate size.
• Relief finishing direction (Lines row of the Finishing step): the finishing lines can run along X, along Y, or along X then Y for an even surface (twice the cutting time).
• Sample 3D relief (Generate → Sample projects → 3D relief): a six-petal rosette cut with a roughing flat end mill, a finishing ball and a small detail ball, sized to fit your machine and tools (about 20 minutes of cutting). It shows the whole relief workflow, and adds starter ball nose tools if your list has none.
• Metric ball nose bits (1.5, 3 and 6 mm) in the default tool library, and in the setup assistant's ball nose choice for metric users. Until now only the 1/8″ and 1/4″ ones were there. Existing tool libraries are not changed; add them from the tool manager if you want them.

Improved

• Menus: the Edit menu is split in three. Edit keeps undo, selection and grouping; the new Modify menu holds Offset, Array and copy, Fillet and chamfer, Combine shapes, Finger joint and Clean up drawing; the new Generate menu holds Box with finger joints, Surface the stock and the sample projects (moved out of Help). The File menu's import items are set apart by a separator.
• When a pocket or an inside profile gets no toolpath, the message now says why: the tool is wider than the shape (with the shape's width and a tool that fits), or the lines are open.
• Dialogs can be moved over the 3D half of the split view and over the side panels, and are stopped by their own borders at the window edge. The view cube and the 3D hints no longer cover a dialog.
• The minimum Rust version for building from source is now stated correctly: 1.89 (it said 1.75). It is set in Cargo.toml too, so cargo tells you at once if your toolchain is too old.
• New screenshots on the website and in the README: 2D in millimetres, 3D in inches as fractions.

Fixed

• Relief roughing with a wide cutter (an 8 mm end mill, say) left bits of the pocket unmilled at the sides where the model's rim rises, and a wavy wall at the ends of the roughing rows. The roughing now reaches the whole pocket and follows its outer wall at each layer. The cleared area is about 1 mm wider, so G-code for relief projects with a roughing tool changes.
• Open lines (On line, engraved text) were cut with a straight line across the work in every depth pass after the first, from the end of the line back to its start; the letters of the sample plate showed it. Each depth now starts where the last one ended and runs back along the line. G-code for projects with open lines changes: the passes alternate direction, and the cut length is about the same or shorter.

Testing

• New tests for rest machining (pockets and relief), the finishing pass, relief finishing directions and open-line depth passes; the checker and the G-code replay know the extra tools.

Full changelog: v0.4.2...v0.4.3