FreazyKam

4. Operations#

An operation is one toolpath: a tool, a piece of geometry, a depth, and the settings that decide how the cutter gets from one to the other. A job is a list of them, run in order.

This chapter is about the parts every operation shares — the shape of the forms, how the program is ordered, where a cut starts in Z, and what happens when you change something after the fact. The individual operations get their own chapters.

The shape of an operation#

Every operation is made the same way:

  1. Select the geometry on the canvas.
  2. Click the operation in the sidebar's Draw tab.
  3. Fill in the form — it replaces the menu.
  4. Press Generate Toolpath.
  5. Close the form with the × to get the menu back.

The toolpath appears on the canvas and a chip appears in the Ops strip. Nothing is committed until you press the button: changing a field doesn't alter an existing toolpath, and closing the form without pressing it leaves things as they were.

Fields you'll meet everywhere#

Field What to know
Tool Lists only the tool types this operation can use (see chapter 3)
Start Where in Z the cut begins — see below
Depth Total depth of the cut, measured down from the start height, not from stock top
Step down How much each pass takes. Left alone it is derived from the tool, material and rigidity, and snapped to a whole division of the depth so the last pass isn't a sliver
Direction Climb or conventional
Stock allowance Material left on the wall for a finishing pass. Negative cuts past the line
Ramp in Enters on a slope over 2× the tool diameter at 50% feed, instead of plunging straight down

Climb vs conventional: climb is the normal choice on a router in wood — the chip starts thick and ends thin, which leaves a cleaner edge and pushes the cutter away from the work. Conventional suits a machine with backlash it can't take up, or a material that tears out on the way in.

Depth is how far below the start, not a Z position#

Depth is the depth of this cut, measured down from wherever it starts. It is not the distance from the top of the stock, unless the cut happens to start there.

Engraving 1 mm into the floor of a 3 mm pocket:
Start Floor of the pocket — resolves to Z −3
Depth 1 — one millimetre of engraving
Result The engraved floor sits at Z −4, 4 mm below the top of the stock

So the number you type is how much material this operation removes. To know where the cut ends up, add it to the start: the form shows the resolved Z beside the Start label for exactly that reason.

Type 4 here instead and you would cut 4 mm below the pocket floor — a 7 mm deep hole in a 12 mm board.

Adding and removing paths without starting over#

Missing one hole from a set of drilled holes used to mean deleting the operation and doing it again. It doesn't:

While a form is open, shift-click on the canvas adds a path to the batch or takes one away. The chips at the foot of the form show what's pending — new ones marked as added, removed ones struck through — and pressing Regenerate applies it.

Two things protect you here. Nothing follows the selection on its own; only the button writes. And clicking empty canvas — which clears the selection — does not mean "remove everything", so the commonest misclick in the app costs nothing.

What a shift-clicked path becomes depends on the operation. For profile, trochoidal and drilling, one path is one operation, so adding a path adds an operation. For pocket and V-carve, which hold a boundary and its islands, the app re-reads the geometry: a path added inside an existing pocket becomes an island of it rather than a new pocket.

Pick order is cut order#

Operations run in the order they were created, and nothing re-sorts them. Click circle 1, then 2, then 3, generate a drilling operation, and the machine drills them 1, 2, 3. The path chips at the foot of the form are numbered in that order, so it's visible before you commit rather than discoverable in the G-code.

Two things deliberately keep their own order: the holes within a single path — a ring of pin holes was picked as a ring, not as eight picks, so the travel optimiser is free to re-order them — and a rubber-band selection, which has no pick order to record.

Start height#

Operations don't have to start at the top of the stock, and the Start control is how you say so. It stores a reference, not a number, so it re-resolves every time the operation regenerates. Deepen the pocket and the lettering in its floor follows it down.

Option Means
Auto (from earlier cuts) Reads the surface earlier operations left over this operation's footprint, and takes the highest remaining material
Stock top Pin it to Z 0
Floor of <operation> Follow one named operation's floor, whatever depth it ends up at
Custom… Type a Z yourself

Auto is the right default and it is deliberately conservative. It takes the highest remaining material over the footprint, so if any part of the cut hangs over uncut stock it stays at the top. Reading too high costs an air pass; reading too low is a crash. The line under the control tells you what it decided and why — "nothing cut here yet" means no earlier cut overlaps this one, "reaches uncut stock" means one does but this cut extends past its edge.

Custom is the one with no safety net. The app warns you: nothing checks this — over uncut stock the first pass cuts full depth.

The two strips#

The bar under the canvas has two tabs. They look alike and they are not the same thing.

Objects — the document#

One chip per thing in the project. The two circles, the tabs, a boolean, a pocket. Clicking a chip selects what it stands for and reopens the editor that made it: a gear chip its module and tooth count, a pocket chip its depth. Editing changes that chip rather than adding another, and deleting the chip deletes the thing.

A whole Generate is one chip. Profiling five paths makes five operations but was one decision, so it edits as one.

Ops — the program#

One chip per operation, in the order the machine runs them, which is the order they are written to G-code. This is the strip to check before exporting.

Control Does
Drag a chip Reorder — this changes the program
Drag a run header Move that whole tool's block at once
Hover → eye Hide. A hidden operation is left out of exported G-code
Hover → × Delete
Click Select the paths the operation was made from and reopen its form

The chip's ring tells you its state: amber means it needs regenerating, red means it failed, a spinner means it's still working. Hovering says what's wrong.

Tool changes#

Operations sharing a tool are drawn as one coloured band with a marker at each tool change, and the counter at the right reads N ops · N TC.

The ops list is flat and new operations append to it, so a program can easily read A, B, A — three tool changes, two of them avoidable. When that happens, a −N TC button appears. Press it and each tool's operations are gathered together, keeping the order the tools first appear and the relative order within each tool. It is one explicit, undoable edit, so the order in your G-code is always one you chose.

Grouping by tool is not always what you want. Cutting a part free before pocketing it is fewer tool changes and a worse idea. Look at the order it proposes before pressing it, and remember what the coaster taught: inside features first, outline last.

When something changes underneath#

Edit a path, change the stock, or move an operation that another one sits on, and any operation affected is marked needs-update — an amber ring on its chip, and a count in the strip's status area.

The app doesn't silently regenerate. A toolpath you haven't looked at is worse than an obviously stale one, and regenerating can take real time on a complex pocket. Open the operation and press Regenerate Toolpath when you're ready.

The export review counts stale operations as a warning, so a job can't quietly go to the machine with a toolpath that no longer matches its geometry.

When a Generate fails#

The reason appears in the form, directly above the button, where it can be fixed.

  • An operation that click created is removed again. A chip claiming a cut that doesn't exist is worse than no chip at all.
  • An operation that already existed keeps its slot and its error. Deleting your work because a re-Generate failed would be the worse of the two mistakes — fix the setting and press the button again.

The commonest causes are an open path where a closed one is needed, geometry too small for the selected tool, and a depth the tool can't reach. Chapter 11 goes through them.

Next#