Selection

When planning 5-axis machining cycles, selecting the appropriate surfaces is essential. During the geometry selection process, the chosen faces—referred to as Drive surfaces—are the specific areas where machining takes place. However, this process can become cumbersome, particularly when dealing with multiple surfaces that have varying curvatures.

GO2cam provides several modes of face selection to facilitate this process.


	Select by click Click on the surface to select it. For multiple selection, click on each surface individually.
	Select by window Click and drag the mouse to create a rectangular selection window. All complete surfaces within the window will be selected.
	Select by edges path Click the edge profiles of a solid to select the surfaces attached to these edges.
	Brush selection Hold CTRL and hover the mouse pointer over the surfaces to automatically select them. Hold SHIFT and hover to delete the selections. This is very useful to quickly select multiple surfaces.
	Select by color If the solid part has multiple face colors, click on one face with a specific color and all the faces with the same color will be selected.
	Select by chaining Click on a surface and GO2cam will try to associate the related adjacent faces and select them as a group. For instant, this is useful to select fillets with varying radii. Just click on one of the curvature face and GO2cam recognises the related curves.
	Select all Click on any surface to select all the faces of the part.
	Invert the selection Click on the part to invert; the unselected faces are selected and the selected ones are unselected.
	Cancel the selection Click on the part to unselect all faces.

The selection process for 5X Expert does not end here. As mentioned earlier, the geometry selection step is only for the drive surface recognition. Due to the complexity and surface based calculation of this module, it is necessary to define the other surfaces to check so as to avoid collision. Also for certain Surface paths chosen, reference faces need to be defined.

As such, the selection process is also an important aspect in the strategy definitions of the cycle. This is explored further in the General 5 Axes pages.