Toolpath Display — PureCut CNC User Guide

Overview

Once an operation has a toolpath, that toolpath is drawn as colored lines over your work. The overlay appears in both the Sketch view and the 3D view — flat over the 2D design in Sketch, and in space over the model in 3D — so you can inspect entry points, depth layers, and travel moves wherever you are working.

Only operations whose toolpath visibility is enabled (the ◉ toggle in the operations list) are drawn, and the selected operation is highlighted. Which move types you see is controlled by the toolpath legend, described below.

The Toolpath Legend

A small collapsible toolbar sits in the corner of the viewport, marked with the G-code icon. Click the icon to expand it, then toggle each move type on or off independently — handy for decluttering a busy path or focusing on just the cutting moves.

screenshots/toolpath-legend.png

The expanded toolpath legend — Cuts, Lead-ins, Rapids, Plunges, Retractions, and Directions toggles with color swatches

Toggle	What it shows
Cuts	Feed-rate moves where the tool is removing material (coral red).
Lead-ins	Lead-in and lead-out moves, drawn in the cut colour but toggled separately — turn the cuts off and the entry moves stay, so you can see exactly how the tool arrives at the profile. On by default.
Rapids	Fast positioning (G0) moves that are not lifts — travel between cuts, and descending rapids that drop the tool toward the work (blue).
Plunges	Downward Z moves at feed rate where the tool enters the material (purple).
Retractions	Rapid moves that lift the tool back to a safe height (blue).
Directions	Arrow markers along the path showing the direction of travel (amber).

Every rapid is now drawn. A rapid that descends — say a 9 mm drop into a 12 mm part — used to belong to neither the rapids layer nor the retractions layer, and so appeared in neither preview. Rapids are now split strictly into "lifts" and "everything else", so no move can fall between the two. If a preview looks busier than you remember, that is why, and the extra lines were always in the G-code.

Collapsing the Legend

The legend is collapsed and expanded as one thing across both views — collapse it in the Sketch view and the 3D toolbar is collapsed too, and vice versa.

Collapsing does more than hide the toolbar: it hides all toolpath moves in both previews, which is the quick way to get an unobstructed look at the geometry or the model. Your per-layer choices are not lost — they are restored exactly as you left them when you expand again.

Printing is unaffected. A design print uses your real layer selections, not the collapsed state, so collapsing the legend to look at the drawing does not silently strip toolpaths out of the printout.

In the Sketch View

In the Sketch view the toolpath is projected flat over the 2D design, on top of the stock, features, tabs, and clamps. It's the quickest way to check coverage and travel between cuts while you are still editing geometry. Moves that would collide with a clamp are redrawn in amber.

screenshots/toolpath-sketch.png

Sketch view with a visible toolpath — cuts, rapids, and plunges layered over the 2D design

In the 3D View

In the 3D view the same toolpath is shown in space over the model, which makes the vertical moves easy to read. Use it to check:

Entry and exit points for each pass
Depth layers and stepdown progression
Tab locations on edge route operations
Clamp clearance on rapid moves
Overall coverage of the operation area

screenshots/toolpath-3d.png

3D view with a visible toolpath over the model — plunges, cuts, and rapids at their true heights