Setting up Linked Copies of Vectors

[Angus Ross-Thomson]

Hi Folks,

I hope someone might give me a steer as to how to set up 'linked' copies of vectors in Vcarve in the style of a Sketchup component. The wooden thingy I am designing comes in two parts which mate together and to make the design process easier, I design them in separate layers on top of each other on one side of the plank. When it comes to cutting them out, I mirror the top part, move it to the other side of the plank, set up the toolpaths and cut away. No problem so far.

Unfortunately, the thingy is made to bespoke sizes and requires tweaking. But then I have to recopy, mirror and setup the multiple toolpaths again for the new shape. A bit of a pain.

Is there a way in Vcarve of having 'linked' copies of vectors similar to components in Sketchup where a tweak to one vector is reflected in a linked vector which is mirrored? Thus, I could tweak the original copy of the top part in place on the bottom part and the changes are magically reflected in the linked copy and all that is needed is a quick recalculation and we are off again. Mirrored arrays don't seem so work as the vectors are individual and not linked.

Hope someone can point me in the right direction.

Angus

[Adrian]

There is no way of associating the change in size of one vector shape to another one automatically. You can resize a selection of vectors by using a percentage with the size tool. I have a base set of designs in 100mm scale and I can then scale all the parts to whatever size I need from there using the size tool.

Make sure all your toolpaths are setup using the vector selection facility of the toolpath and it's set to Automatic. That way you can recalculate all the toolpaths for copies of vectors and resized ones with one press of the recalculate all button.

There isn't anything in VCarve that goes to the level of the parametric components in Sketchup though.

[vip-klaus]

At my job, we work with CATIA. Its ability to us parameterized dimensions is very powerfull. Maybe we can hope that a future version os Aspire supports associations? For me the most important feature that I'm missing.

[Angus Ross-Thomson]

Shame, looks like it’s back to the hard way. Thanks for the responses.

[Adrian]

Are you using automatic toolpath vector selection though? You say you have to setup multiple toolpaths after copying etc. There is no need to do that if you have the vectors setup on layers associated with toolpaths.