General

The ‘General’ section enables you to specify the environment in which machining will take place, and edit the properties of the chosen machine.

The layout of the 'General ' section is changed when Edit machine properties is clicked (see below)

Features

The following table describes each feature in the General section, as shown in the above screenshot.

Feature	Description
Tool library	The Fusion tool library to use within CAM Assist.
Stock material	CAM Assist will select tools, machining strategies, and cutting data presets based on the selected material.
Choose machine	The drop-down list contains two categories of machine: [Generic] - a range of CA Assist generic machines offering a combination of speed, power, and torque. [Local] - Fusion machines that are contained within the ‘Local’ folder of Fusion’s ‘Machine Library’ (see Autodesk’s article How to add a custom machine tool to the Machine Library in Fusion). If a [Local] machine is selected, the ‘General’ section is expanded to include ‘Machine properties’. If a [Local] machine is selected, CAM Assist requires additional values that are not stored in Fusion’s Machine Library. The additional values are captured in ‘Machine properties’ (see 'Edit machine properties', below) and used for cutting parameters to compute toolpath strategies.
Edit machine properties	On clicking ‘Edit machine properties’, two events occur in the ‘General’ section: The caption of the button changes to ‘Hide machine properties’. The ‘General' section expands to display five ‘Machine Properties’. If a [Local] machine is selected for ‘Choose machine’, this button is clicked automatically and the 'Machine Properties’ are displayed (see Machine Properties, below).

Machine Properties

The ‘Machine Properties’ sub-section has two purposes:

Captures required additional properties - captures additional properties not stored in Fusion’s Machine Library for [Local] machines; these values are used by CAM Assist to compute toolpath strategies.
Override values - enable you to override default values for the chosen machine with the values specified here.

‘Machine Properties’ contains five key values:

Spindle speed min
Spindle speed max
Spindle torque max (Nm)
Spindle power max (kW)
Table feed max

[Generic] machines

If a [Generic] machine is selected from the ‘Choose machine’ drop-down, the ‘Machine Properties’ are populated with the default CAM Assist values. Any 'Machine Properties’ values that have been amended and saved here will replace the default values (see How to Edit Machine Properties).

While alternative values can be specified here (which will override the default values for the machine), it is recommended to create a separate local machine, in the ‘local’ folder of Fusion’s Machine Library, that contains the relevant property values.

[Local] machines

There are two Machine Properties that are not stored within Fusion’s Machine Library:

Spindle torque max
Spindle power max

These properties must contain a valid value because they are used for cutting parameters to compute toolpath strategies.

Any missing values are shown in red and must be input then saved.
For details, see How to Edit Machine Properties.

If a [Local] machine is selected from the ‘Choose machine’ drop-down, the ‘Machine Properties’ are populated with the values specified in Fusion’s Machine Library.

For all machines

Any values that are saved here are stored in the CAM Assist database and override the associated values specified in Fusion’s Machine Library (for [Local] machines) and the default values for CAM Assist’s [Generic] machines.

Any 'Machine Properties’ values that have been amended and saved here will replace the default values (see How to Edit Machine Properties).