Inserting a Copy Operator Instruction

Within a Manufacturing Program, you can apply a COPY Operator Instruction to a delimited sequence of Machining Operations to repeat (an apply a transformation to) those Machining Operations. The sequence is delimited by COPY-INDEX type instructions.

Before you begin:

To compute the COPY Operator Instruction, all the referenced operations must:

  • Be up-to-date or locked
  • Compute the tool path.

Deactivated operations in the reference sequence are not taken into account when the COPY Operator Instruction is processed. Also, machine rotations inside the delimited sequence are not supported.

  1. Open a product.

    1. Select a machining app then the Programming section.
      An empty Manufacturing Cell is created with an Activities Process Tree.
    2. Create a generic machine or assign a machine from the database.
      As soon as a machine is assigned to the Manufacturing Cell, a Part Operation and a Manufacturing Program are created in the Activities Process Tree.
    3. Alternatively, open an existing Machining Process or PPR Context.

      By default, the Activities Process Tree is available.

  2. Create Pocketing operation:
    1. Select Prismatic Machining section.
    2. Click Pocketing and create a first Pocketing operation on the first square cut-out.
    3. Create a second Pocketing operation using a different tool on the first triangular cut-out.

      When creating these pockets, make sure that the Island Detection context menu menu command is not active before you select the pocket bottom.

  3. Right-click the Manufacturing Program and select Compute Tool Path.
    1. Select the Compute if necessary option in the pop-up that appears.


  4. Select the second Pocketing operation in the Manufacturing Program.
  5. Click COPY Operator Instruction.

    A COPY Operator is inserted in the Manufacturing Program after Pocketing.2 and the COPY Operator dialog box appears.



    When Activate the Intermediate stock check box is selected in the Part Operation, the Intermediate Stock icons are available. See Working with Intermediate Stock

  6. Create an INDEX instruction:
    1. In the dialog box, click Create an INDEX/I instruction.

      • creates an INDEX/NOMORE instruction in the Manufacturing Program.
      • associates an existing INDEX to the COPY Operator Instruction.

    2. Select an activity in the Manufacturing Program to specify the insertion level.

      We have selected Tool Change.1 to insert the INDEX instruction before that Tool Change.

    The COPY Operator Instruction is applied to the two Tool Changes and the two Pocketing operations.

  7. Still in the COPY Operator dialog box, set Number of copies (N). In our example, we have set it to 3.
  8. Define the transformation. For example:
    1. Set the Transformation type to Translation.
    2. Set the Translation type to Absolute Coordinates.
    3. Set the Distance along X to 100mm.
  9. Click Display or Simulate to visualize the tool path resulting from the defined COPY Operator Instruction.


  10. If needed, select the Syntax tab to consult the PP instruction that is applied to the COPY Operator Instruction.
  11. Click OK to create the COPY Operator Instruction in the Manufacturing Program.