Anyone used hole tables in WF? I remember them as being difficult, unpredictable, quirky. I decided to make one recently to simplify drilling about 70 holes, randomly placed, on 6"x8" sheet of 18 gauge aluminum. The print was packed with ordinate dims. I decided to zero from the lower right corner because the travel dials on the ancient, decrepit Bridgeport I was using read positive in those directions. So, that's where I created the coordinate system for use with the hole table. (Only problem was that, if I got both x & y facing into the part [positive], z was negative [into the part, away from the screen] but somehow, you can do it in the upper right hand corner. Oh well, right hand rule or something.) Still, even with negative numbers for y and backward sorted, it was ten times better than fishing for hole coordinates through a mass of lines then trying to figure out how many turns backwards or forwards I had to go, in each axis, to get the the next x,y coordinate. I estimated that it took a tenth of the time. I explained this to the engineer. I'm not sure how impressed he was when the holes didn't quite line up with his heat sink. I said they should get a CNC or at least a Prototrak. You wonder why people start talking to themselves! It only becomes obvious when no one's around cuz they've been doing it their whole lives with people looking them straight in the eye. David Janes
