What tool operations does CAM Assist support?
CAM Assist supports a wide range of milling operations. These include roughing (including bulk roughing and rest-roughing strategies), finishing operations for various surface types (e.g., face finishing for flat faces flat finishing for horizontal areas and freeform finishing like scanning with a ball mill for curved surfaces), drilling and hole-making operations (standard drilling spot drilling helical boring for large holes tapping, and thread milling, chamfering (for edges) and even specialized operations for undercuts like T-slot cutting.
Essentially, if it’s a common 3-axis or 3+2 milling operation, CAM Assist likely supports it. It does not currently support turning operations (lathe work) or full 5-axis simultaneous toolpaths, focusing on operations typically found in 3-axis/3+2 machining.
Why does the list of supported operations matter?
Knowing which operations CAM Assist can handle tells you what tasks you can entrust to it. For example, if your part requires thread milling, and CAM Assist supports it, you can expect it to program those threads (with the correct tool and parameters) rather than doing it manually. Conversely, if you needed a more esoteric operation not in the list (say, a custom probing routine or something like 4-axis simultaneous engraving), you’d know to handle that outside CAM Assist. It matters for planning your workflow – you can confidently give CAM Assist parts that have pockets, holes, slots, chamfers, etc. knowing it will generate appropriate rough, finish, and drilling sequences for them. Supported operations also highlight the AI’s capability breadth: from big roughing passes to fine finishing and tapping, it covers a lot. If a user was worried “will it do my chamfers?” – yes, chamfering is supported and so on. This breadth means CAM Assist can truly do ~80% of programming on many parts, because it’s not limited to just one type of cut.
Where can I find / adjust which operations CAM Assist will use?
In the CAM Assist interface, there is often a section (like a Tool Use tab or Advanced settings) where you can enable/disable certain operation types. For instance, you might see a list or matrix of allowed operations for each tool. If you, say, didn’t want CAM Assist to do tapping (perhaps you plan to do it manually), you could potentially turn off the “Tap” operation in those settings. Otherwise, CAM Assist by default will support and use all relevant operations needed to complete the part. After generating, you will see the operations listed in your CAM tree. If you want to adjust them, you can reorder or delete operations manually in the CAM software, but within CAM Assist you influence it mainly via preferences like Finish full part, Undercuts, or specifying that a certain tool is/ isn’t available for certain operations. For example, in the Tool Usages tab, you might see abbreviations for operations next to each tool (like a drill might be marked for “D” drilling use) – you can adjust if a tool is allowed to do a certain operation. This indirectly adjusts CAM Assist’s operation planning. But on a higher level, just know that if it’s a supported operation and the geometry calls for it, CAM Assist will include it. Check the output list if you’re curious – you’ll see entries like “Face Roughing (Fr)”, “Face Finishing (Ff)”, “Roughing (R)”, “Flat Finishing (Fl)”, “Scanning (Sc)” for freeform, “Chamfering (Ch)”, “Drilling (D)”, “Tapping (Ta)”, etc., often with those abbreviations. These correspond to the operations CAM Assist used.
How else are tool operations in CAM Assist known?
- Supported toolpath types
- CAM Assist operation list
- Machining operations automated by CAM Assist
Related articles to tool operations
- What machining Modes does CAM Assist support?
- What turning parts does CAM Assist support?
- What Autodesk Fusion freeform finishing options do you support?