Hi all,

We cut a lot of 3D parts on our waterjet table. It's mostly weld prep for thick steel. I'm hoping I haven't bitten off more than I can chew by attempting to automate the process by which we turn a part with more than one angled cut into ACIS format that our waterjet software can use. As a simple example, our current process here is to take a part that looks like this:

The software we use to generate cut paths for the waterjet insists on every face extending from the top of the part to the bottom. We accomplish this using extrudes to describe every side face. We then also need to move the part to positive x,y space and non-positive z ( we use a move/copy ). Shown next is what this part would look like before we export:

We can then select just the extrudes and export them to SAT, and this works okay. After having done this many times, I'd like to build a macro to identify the required number of extrudes, build the extrudes, move the extrudes to where they need to be and then export them to SAT. Alternatively I'd be happy to learn if there's an easier process by which I could automate generating a file for 3D waterjet cutting.

Does anybody have any experience doing something like this?