Creating Macros in Raptor

Hello again. I'm Duane Bates, the pre-installation and training department manager at Peddinghaus. In this video, I will be explaining how to create a macro in Raptor.

You start by going to the tools menu at the top and clicking "macros". The Macro window will open for you. On the left-hand side, you see macros I have previously created. You will also see a macros menu. Under that macros menu you haveiImport. You also have the ability to import Raptor macros, which are XML, or Peddimat macros. If you have a previous version of Peddimat that has macros you want to import, you can import those files here. At the top we have "new macro", "new cope" and "edit". New macro is where you create a new macro, which we will do in a couple moments

New cope would be an additional cope for that macro. Once we create a macro on one surface, or at one location on a surface when we want to create another one in the same macro, we would need to hit the "new cope" button. If we want to edit one that's existing, we simply select it and edit. At the bottom we have surface, defining what surface we put the cope on, the reference location and absolute & incremental. Whether we are measuring in Absolute or Incremental values. I'll explain more about that in just a moment. Select "new macro". You'll notice the surface is now highlighted. We can select the surface we want to put our first cope on.

In this case, I'll select web. The reference location I will use is XY. I prefer to do my copes in incremental. Absolute values are locations away from the reference point. This is the value or distance away from the reference point. Incremental is the distance from the previous point, wherever you happen to be on the part. It is how far you moved to go from this location to that location.

Down here we have the area where we will start entering our values to make our moves. We have an X value. That's how far the X movement is, or the X location.  We have a gage value. That's the Y component, or the vertical component. We have a radius X and radius gage. You can either use radius X and radius gage, or you can use a radius value. If you choose to use radius X and radius gage, you do not need to use the radius. Conversely, if you use radius you do not need to use radius X and radius gage. You also have direction. If you are creating an arc, like a semicircle, you would need to tell it whether you are going clockwise or counterclockwise around that radius. The slope is the angle, or degree, of a bevel for a beveled flange or any beveled cut. You put your degree in here. It does need to be proceeded by the "K" which means constant. It's a constant value. It is not seen as a dimension but a degree at that point.

Under "type" we have either external or internal. Those are the two different types of bevels you might put on a flange. An external bevel has the bevel exposed to the external portion of the beam. Internal is exposed to the internal portion of the beam. Angle and angle type will rarely be used in any of the macros you make. They are for doing bevels across a flange when you need to change the torch angle back to zero. You insert the number of degrees you want to change that angle by. The angle type is either forward or reversed. That's the direction you are moving the torch, either a forward or reversed direction. Like I said, you will rarely use these in any of the macros you make.

The cope we will attempt today is a standard block cope. A cut on the web here is a standard cut on the web. I cut across the flange that coincides with it. In this particular cope, it happened to be 3/4" deep 1-7/8" long. We're going to change those when we apply this later on, but that's an instance of what it would be. For the values that we're going to use today, instead of using solid values such as 3/4" and 1-7/8", we are going to use depth and length. That way values can be changed at a later date to make the cope variable, pending upon what the needs are. We're going to start by setting our start point. The point I want to start this cope is actually right here. It's at the beginning edge of the beam. It is a depth distance down from the top. My X value will be 0 because I am on the front edge. My gage value will be depth. That's all I need to do to set the initial position. I click down to the next slide to create my first actual cut.

I'm going to move a distance of length in X and a gage movement of 0. I'm not moving vertically in this cut. It is simply a left to right movement from here to a point right here. I'm also going to put a radius on that corner. My next movement has no X movement at all. It has a gage movement of negative depth. That movement is moving from right here upward back up to the top. It is negative because we are going back towards our reference point. Anytime you move back towards your reference, in this case we are at the top left, it is going to be a negative movement. Our value here is going to be negative depth. That's all we need for the web cut. We simply hit "save". Hit "new cope" so we can create a corresponding top flange cut to go with this.

Select "new cope". Come down here to find a surface we want to do this cope on. Our reference location is XZ'. This is top left once again as we look at the top flange. It's going to start on the edge. I'm going to leave it at incremental, and set my dimensions to start the cope. My first X location is length. My gage location is 0. If you can imagine a flange here, we are length distance in from the end. We are right on the edge at 0. Our movement is going to be straight across the flange, so we're not going to be moving X. We are going to be moving a distance of &W in gage. &W stands for the part width for the width of the flange. As you can see you also have available to you &H - part height, &T - flange thickness, &WT - web thickness, &L - part length, &R1 - radius between the web and flanges, and &R2 - radius at the end of a flange, or the edge of a flange.

We can use this &W value so the cope can be resized based upon the profile it is being applied to. That's all we require for this cope, so we hit "save". You can see we have cope 0 and cope 1. Cope 0 is the web cope and cope 1 is the flange cope.

At this point, I am going to select the word "untitled". It is the current title of our part. Right click and rename it. I am going to rename this "block cope". Close this window, open a part to view it, and go to the tools menu in the part view. It may be here in the top left like mine is, or it might be anywhere along this toolbar. Look for this toolbar, not the one at the top. Select the dropdown and "add macros".

Once here, select the block cope, the cope you want. Enter the values you want for the cope. I'm going to make this 1.5 inches deep, 3 inches long, with a .75 inch radius on the corner. Hit "apply to shape". Verify it has been applied. Close this window and select "Ok" in the lower right viewer. There's our cope in the top left corner of the part. We have the web and flange cuts that correspond with it.

There's one more thing we can do. Go back to macro, and go to "block cope". This area here, on the upper right side, is to add an image to have a descriptor. This way we know exactly what it should look like. You can see on some of the other ones I created. I will go back to "block cope". Right click and select change image. I have an image already ready for this, of course we've been using it. Select it. You can resize the window. It is resizable. There's a descriptor of what we need. We still have the radius here as well. If I went back to that window to add macros and select that cope I will see the image is there.

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