Working with Features to Review
You can examine GCDs assigned to Features to Review or General Mill Finishing to obtain diagnostic information, including the reasons for the infeasibility of operations that were considered (but rejected) for the GCD.
When you use semi-automated costing, Features to Review serves as a to-do list for achieving full costing. For each feature to review; you must take action, either by manually assigning an operation to the feature, or by modifying setup options, setup axes, or part geometry in order to make an operation feasible for auto-assignment (see Semi-automated Costing).
Follow these steps to examine GCDs assigned to Features to Review or General Mill Finishing:
1 In the Manufacturing Process pane, expand the Features to Review or General Mill Finishing node under the Machining node. Right click a GCD and select Process Setup Options….
The Process Options editor appears and displays diagnostic information about the selected GCD.
2 In the Process Options editor navigation pane, select any GCD in order to display diagnostic information about that GCD.
When you use semi-automated costing (see Semi-automated Costing), some GCDs are assigned to Features to Review because no other operation was feasible for them under the constraints of semi-automated costing. These constraints include the following:
• Do not assign Contouring to large surfaces. See Contouring Area Ratio Threshold in Machining Node Process Setup Options.
• Do not assign General Mill Finishing to any GCD.
• Only assign operations for which a principal or user-defined setup renders the GCDs accessible (see Setup Axes and Operation Feasibility).
Besides the constraints of semi-automated costing (see above), machining operations are subject to variety of other feasibility constraints, which may be mentioned in diagnostic information. Following are some of the most important requirements on milling operations:
• Geometric tolerance is achievable. See the "Specifying Tolerance and Roughness" section of the aPriori User Guide.
• Appropriate setup axis and part-relative tool orientation can be found. See Setup Axes and Operation Feasibility.
• For rounding, the GCD has a constant radius of curvature.
• For side milling, the selected tool has a length-to-diameter ratio that is smaller than the maximum side milling threshold. See Maximum Side Milling Length to Diameter Ratio in Machining Node Process Setup Options.
• GCD has no sharp corners (corners that would require a 0 tool diameter). Consider whether you should activate a setup axis to allow facing, or (if sharp corners are not the intended geometry) either modify the CAD model or disable feasibility checks for this GCD’s operation.
• GCD’s extracted dimensions are not unreasonably small.
Drilling operations also have constraints on the selected tool’s length-to-diameter ratio.
For each GCD assigned to Features to Review, you should consider either explicitly assigning an operation or taking steps to allow aPriori to assign an operation to the GCD during a subsequent costing. See Modifying Machining Operation Assignments.