Sign in to watch this lesson

Hi there. In this last video, surrounding the various workspaces of ENCY, we're taking a look at the simulation space now. As we can see, the view is fairly similar to the machining view, but without the option to define new operations along with a lack of details for the setup of set operations. However, we can now get improved and updated status information about each of the operations that we've got here.

So if we have a look in setup stage one, we can see that we've now got things defined at the moment according to tooling order of operations, which we can switch over, looking between the design view or the operations view here. Now the operations view is predicated on what the tool usage is, whereas the design view is predicated around what the operation specifics are. So that is something that is useful to be able to switch between for being able to determine order and priority of approach if you need to group stuff according to tool changes. Anyway, looking further on from this, as we can see, there are a few different interface elements here that we're going to very quickly go through.

So firstly, we've got this slider here. This is for controlling the speed of the simulation of the actual operations you're going to be going through. We've got the reset workpiece button here, which completely stops and resets the entire simulation view. You've got your step backward, which allows you to step back between individual steps within a simulation as well.

You've got your run, which will iterate through the whole simulation smoothly as one would expect. And you've got step forward, which again will jump through individual steps of an operation. You've also got wider scale control as well in that you can make use of the fact that ENCY constantly runs in simulation in the background. So for example, you can simulate just the one operation here using simulate current operation, or you can simulate up to the current operation.

So say, for example, I wanted to come up to engraving one here and I didn't want to sit through the whole simulation process, I can just click on this button and it will give an accurate simulation up to that point, but without animating through it. Or you can just click on simulate all operations to take a good look at what your final outcome is going to be. You also have a status readouts of how each of these operations go as well. So as we can see here, we've got green nodes throughout.

Having a look in setup stage two, we've got green nodes throughout there as well. Now, as a rule, you will get either undefined nodes, which are usually white and empty, or you'll get white nodes for nodes that have not been proven out completely, green ones, which are known to be good, and red diamond shaped nodes for where there's a problem, but it's not necessarily one that's going to be a complete game stopper for you. So that, of course, is entirely down to your sense of what's appropriate for the job. Sometimes, for example, with engraving and chamfering operations, these can come up red because it involves going into the workpiece slightly unless you turn off gouge detection, because not everyone designs their part with the chamfering or the engraving in situ already.

As is the case in this job, it was done after the fact. So because I've turned off gouge detection for those two operations, it's not coming up red, but if I'd left those on, we'd have red nodes in play there. Further to that, we're going to take a very quick look at the new toolbar that's up here. We've got the same measurement tools that we had before, excuse me, along with the same snapping tool.

We also have G-code based simulation, which once you have generated the G-code using the post-processor for this, it then allows you to iterate through the simulation using the G-code as opposed to the CL data that ENCY will normally work with when developing operations. So the CL data is the inbuilt engine calculations for how the part is going to be machined and how the machine is going to move around the part. Whereas the G-code is the post-processed file that's produced after post-processing, as the name would suggest, which is what your machine is going to actually run. So for the sake of sanity checking and a more accurate simulation, G-code simulation is very, very useful in that regard.

Now we have the machine control panel and the graph of the axes and the verify compare tools again. We have got the reordering view that I showed you a little bit earlier on, which allows you to switch between tool operations. And as we can see here with the conical mill, we've got that little red alert there saying that, oh no, there's a gouge, which we've already discussed. We've got delete chips, which is handy if you're working with a large part that's got a lot of excess stock.

And while you've got parts machined away, the simulation won't necessarily eliminate chips unless it's been specifically told to beforehand. So you've got a secondary backup button to remove anything that floats in space and visibly isn't attached. We also have simulation parameters, which allows you to define things like tolerances in the actual simulation view. The standard default settings for this are typically good enough to get a fairly accurate result as to what it is you're looking for.

And finally, you've got the final detailed simulation parameters. So things like rapid motion speeds and whether or not it's a solid or a voxel style model. For very organic shapes, voxel models are generally much, much faster to work with, but for more prismatic shapes, solid model types will give you a much more accurate result that's much truer to the final end result as well. So this gives the very quick, very cursory overview of the interface of ENCY.

And I hope the internal logic of it is fairly clear and obvious from these videos. Obviously, we'll be going through the specifics of this in more detail as we go through and process various jobs going forward in future. However, for a quick overview, you now know where everything is, where it all sits and lives, and we'll hopefully address any further questions in later videos. Shall see you then.