Looking for some flourish...

[Mike-S]

The jagginess is where you have true vertical walls and is do to the pixel based s/w. Try Michael's suggestions. It doesn't take much to remove the roughness; basically just trace around the outline with the smoothing tool.

[adam_m]

I'm getting ready to assemble my model and have a question about material thickness and model thickness and how to setup up the mill.

My base model when I hover my cursor over a portion of the model shows the Z height at -0.9 but the 'Job Setup' screen shows the thickness of 2.75. Does that mean if I zero out Z on the top of the stock that its going to cut -0.9 to the top of the model?

Assuming I want to cut this in different thickness of materials how do I cope with that?

[adam_m]

Anyone have any input on my last question about stock setup..?

Do I recall a Vectric video somewhere about this question?

[Mike-S]

Does that mean if I zero out Z on the top of the stock that its going to cut -0.9 to the top of the model?

If you move your model all the way to the top of the material, the deepest part will be -0.9.
If you push the model down (see below), more material will be removed above the model.

[adam_m]

I'm assuming Vectric uses the material thickness when calculating the Gap above or below the model then.

So, assuming we used your model, if I set the Gap below the model to be 1" the model would then be cut on top of that and you would need a board of at least 1.75" thick?

Is there a way then to find the highest point in your model without having to hover over each point?

Adam,

[highpockets]

Look at Material Setup on the Toolpath tab.

[TReischl]

You may be overthinking this.

You are setting your Z zero to the top of the material. According to your post.

If the dialog shows your model some distance below the top of the material, then that is what will happen unless you move the little slider and make the model go to the top.

Most folks either put the model at the very top, zero gap, or .015 or so gap to make sure no mysterious flat spots appear because the stock is not uniform.

I have never been sure where some of the larger gaps come from, but I think they appear after fiddling around with model thickness controls....never bothered to really find out because I usually set my gap to .015 and do not worry about where it came from.

I find that I have far fewer headaches if I do not try to figure out where some number I am not interested in came from or how it was calculated, I just do not care, I know what I want the gap to be so I set it to that number.

Edit: The highest point in your model is at zero if you set the gap to zero. Sounds strange, but you can create a component, a pocket that is .25 deep and the thickness is .25. So far, so good. Then drop another component on top of it and make that component .5 thick. It will look like the second one is above the surface. But when you set the gap to zero and machine it, that first component will be .5 deep, not .25. If you give that a try it will help in wrapping the brain around how this all works.