I’ve seen in VCarve Pro that there is an operation you can add to a v-carve that adds a clearing pocket before the v-carve. Is that a feature that will come to MillMage or is there a way to do it currently?
Lightburn Software has a wonderful Try B4 U Buy program. Download the Release Candidate and try it out for yourself.
Be aware V-carve is a Pro feature and not included in the Core product. If you do not have MillMage Pro and are interested in V-carve, go ahead and upgrade now.
You do not need the Pro License (but you might need to get a special license adjustment) to test out the Release Candidate. If you do not have MillMage Pro and are interested in V-carve, go ahead and upgrade now. Did I say that twice???
I already have MillMage Pro. I was asking if this feature would be coming to MillMage or if there is a way to do it. I’ve been a beta tester of MillMage Pro for a couple of months now (before the RC).
They are already working magic in the RC, and have been talking about pocketing and clearing for V-carve.
- Install the RC in a separate folder so you don’t mess up your production copy.
- Read the bajeebies out of the postings about the MillMage-v0.9.00-RC-2/ program.
Like I said, I already have and use RC2 and the beta before that. I was just asking a question about a feature or a way to do it. It is okay if you don’t know, but you keep telling me to do something that I am and have already done and know about. I have not seen any post regarding this feature. That is why I asked.
I apologize, because I did not catch that you were using RC-2.
Here is one posting. And there are more. @wanderingtruckie has been banging on V-carve pretty hard and @LightBurn has been sharing some great information.
You are mostly right, I have not tried V-carve myself yet. I do not have any pending MillMage projects and Lightburn is keeping me pretty busy. That is not an excuse, just an admission of guilt. But I try to read all postings for MillMage.
I think it is on the list of things to come, going by a comment , but not here yet
the above is someone that set up pocket operations before V carve, which i had a play with, did take me a while to get my head around what was happening
It was trial and error working out stock to leave to match DOC of V bit so it didn’t remove to much material , hopefully this helps you out
a wish list would be to be able to have a live preview open and edit tool parameters and watch it change , id hate to think what the logistics of achieving that would be, but never say never 
The clearing pattern for a v-carve allows you to use a bigger bit to clear most of the waste instead of a v-bit. This is great for raised lettering where you might have a huge amount of waste to clear then you’d come back in with the v-bit to do the letters. I am sure it is coming since it is a very common practice. I will just have to wait and see. I was just hoping that there might be a work around in the meantime. I will play around with it and see if I can come up with a solution.
heres a post i asked about outside pocket, which OZ explains a few things
https://forum.lightburnsoftware.com/t/v-carve-with-pocket-query/191122/7
This is planned for a future release of MillMage. We’re unable to provide an estimated timeline unfortunately, but it will be coming, as far as I’m aware.
Thank you for letting me know. I am glad to know it is coming.
The work is in progress, but it’s non-trivial because it needs a bunch of new plumbing.
For example, in the current “rest pocket” operation, you have to manually enter the size of the previous bit. For a V-carving operation, we need a lot more information (the bit diameter, angle, geometry type, max depth) and expecting you to do that manually is unrealistic.
So we’ll now have the ability to link operations to each other, and the software will manage the linkage, and that’s a lot of new code. For example, what happens when you delete a pocket op that has a rest pocket attached to it, or more than one of them?
For the v-carve clear itself, I want to allow multiple clearing bits, and I need to figure out a few more things with the “rest” math for that, but I have the basics working for a single clearing bit.
Thanks for the explanation. I love hearing the details on this stuff. Keep up the great work.