Radius board corners and edge route in one operation?

[jadnil]

Hello all -

I feel like I knew the answer to my own question once upon a time, but have been working in NC on a larger mill for two years and now need to get my head back into using the CW (too bad you can't do G-Code on the CW...or can you? ...for all I know, maybe a recent release of the Designer software includes a G-Code interpreter! ;) )

Anyway... Does anyone know of a way to round off (radius) the 4 corners of a board and then edge route around the entire board after the corners have been rounded off? I can easily and (much more) quickly do this manually using saw and router table, but I wanted to see if it can all be done in one carve operation (followed by the patterns I want carved into the board face).

I don't want to use a pattern for the edges, although I think that is what makes the most sense. I tried it with a round-over following what a mounted to an semi-oval cut-path on a square board, but had to do many passes to get it S L O W L Y down through the board to completely cut-off the ends. Thinking next of doing a two bit operations...1/8 cutting to radius the corners followed by the round-over on the corner paths. All that said, I feel like I'm missing something obvious, so any help appreciated.

By the way, I am using a sled for the end-of-board operations.

Thanks, -Tim.

[DocWheeler]

Tim,

Since nobody has responded, I'll give it a try.

Start with a rectangle the size that you want, on a side of the rectangle, near the corner, add a vertex by right-clicking on the line and select "insert vertex".
Set the dimension to the size you want to round the corners and repeat this for each side of the rectangle on both sides of all four of the corners.
Then remove the corner vertex and use the "change to arc function to create the rounded corners, and then select the "cut path" icon.

Copy that new rectangle and paste it right over the top of the first one, and then select the "edge route" function and select the bit.
I think I've done it without creating the second copy of the rounded-rectangle, but it gets cumbersome.

If your Edge route was deep enough you could do it in one operation, but you would have to do something to hold the cut-out piece in place.

[Sawdust Jeff]

I'm new to all this, and don't know if this is the place to ask, but I too am trying to figure out if there is a way to have rounded corners when you draw a rectangle on a board. Any help appreciated.

[bergerud]

This is easy to do. Follow this example. Draw a stop sign with the connected lines tool. (best with the snap grid on). Right click on a slanted corner and go to form arc. The slanted line will be converted to and arc which is tangent to the sides. In the picture you can see I have done three corners and am about to do the last one.

[SteveNelson46]

I'm new to all this, and don't know if this is the place to ask, but I too am trying to figure out if there is a way to have rounded corners when you draw a rectangle on a board. Any help appreciated.

Jeff,

Here is a link to a video I made awhile back that may help.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0jR3LNRxqJeVXJaamNpSTZhMHM&authuser=0

[ktjwilliams]

Thx Dan ,,, Like pushing the Staples button ,,,, That was easy ...

[bergerud]

My method is always to draw first with the connected lines on a snap grid leaving short line segments where I will want rounded corners. I move the vertices around to get what I want, and then, the last thing is is to convert the corners to arcs. After converting to arcs, editing is not so easy. The arcs try to stay tangent to the adjacent line segments and things can go crazy. Also, there are certain conditions which cause crashes when converting to arcs, so, I always save before converting to arcs. (Sometimes I have to convert the arcs back to line segments to edit.)

The Utility Tool Bar is most convenient for these types of operations. View - Toolbars - check Utility Toolbar.