CAM Library

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Build paths for your manufacturing process

CAM products often need the same core operations: extract a contour, create an offset, fill a pocket, or follow a surface. CAM Library brings these operations together so your team can focus on the process and user experience around them.

Use the results in machining preparation, robotic inspection, cutting, or other workflows that turn geometry into paths.

How it works

Start with a contour, a surface mesh, or selected points. Choose a geometric operation such as offsetting a boundary, filling a pocket with contours, or following a surface. Pass the resulting paths to your process rules for ordering, tool movement, and machine output.

Work with contours and pockets

Convert 2D curves into lines and circular arcs. Calculate inner and outer offsets, then generate offset contours within a pocket boundary.

Your application can order and connect these contours according to tool size, operation sequence, and process rules. Shared path and contour data structures help carry results into later steps.

Follow mesh geometry

Create planar sections and projected outlines from triangular meshes. Calculate paths along a surface, lines at selected distances from selected points, and distance fields for further processing.

These tools can support inspection paths, surface coverage, and custom cutting or deposition workflows.

Retain detail needed by the operation

Curve approximation and offset settings control how paths follow source geometry. Small features, narrow regions, and connections between segments matter when a contour becomes part of a manufacturing process.

A closed cutting outline needs connected segments. A surface-coverage task needs paths that follow the intended region. Choosing detail around these requirements helps avoid both lost features and unnecessary path data before machine preparation.

Reuse path preparation across custom equipment

A machine builder may need contour offsets for cutting and surface-following paths for a separate inspection station. Building each product around unrelated geometry code duplicates work and makes changes harder to maintain.

CAM Library lets your team reuse supported contour, offset, pocket, and mesh-path calculations. Each application can pass the resulting geometry to its own tool selection, movement rules, and machine-output stage. For example, an offset contour can become input to a cutting process, while a surface path can guide coverage planning in an inspection tool.

This gives a development team a common geometric foundation while allowing each machine product to keep its process knowledge. Path calculations can be reviewed separately from feeds, approach moves, clearance checks, and postprocessing. That separation makes it easier to investigate whether a reported issue comes from source geometry, path preparation, or machine-specific decisions.

Fit geometry tools into your process

Connect calculated paths with your tool definitions, approach and retract moves, clearance checks, and machine output. This lets your team build around its own equipment and operating rules.

Use Collision Detection for mesh-based interference checks and Advanced Mesher for CAD surface preparation. Describe the path you need to create, from source geometry to its manufacturing use.