Creating a Spiral Milling Operation

You can create a Spiral Milling operation, i.e. a machining operation that gives a good surface without having to use a particularly small tool. It gives particularly good results for areas that are relatively flat. Use this type of machining operation to optimize machining time by reducing the stepover.

See Also
Spiral Milling
  1. From the Surface Machining section of the action bar, click Spiral milling .
    A Spiral milling entity is added to the manufacturing program. The Spiral Milling dialog box opens at the Geometry tab .
  2. Still in the Geometry tab:
    1. Click the red area in the sensitive icon and select the part in the work area. The faces must be connected to each other.
    2. Double-click anywhere in the work area to confirm your selection and redisplay the dialog box.
  3. Select the Machining Strategy tab and make sure that Horizontal area selection is set to Automatic.
  4. Select the Tool tab to choose a tool.
  5. Click Display or Simulate to check the validity of the machining operation.
    • The tool path is computed.
    • A progress indicator is displayed.
    • You can cancel the tool path computation at any moment before 100% completion.


  6. Click OK in the Display or Simulate dialog box, and again in the main dialog box to create the machining operation.
    The tool path is created.