Patent ID: 8010302

Claim:
A tool path display apparatus for displaying a path of a tip of a tool attached to a machine tool, positions and attitudes of the tool and a workpiece machined by the tool being controlled by a plurality of drive axes including a rotation axis, the tool path display apparatus comprising: data acquisition means that concurrently acquires and stores position information, speed information, acceleration information, position deviation information, and a torque command of each of the drive axes at each time moment, as time-series data; tool path calculation means that calculates three-dimensional coordinates of the tip of the tool with respect to a coordinate system fixed to the workpiece using the position information of each of the drive axes at each time moment and structure information of the machine tool and obtains the three-dimensional path of the tip of the tool; display means that displays, as a time-series waveform, at least one of the three-dimensional path of the tip of the tool obtained by the tool path calculation means and the time-series data obtained by the data acquisition means; time axis selection means that selects any part of a time axis of a time-series waveform displayed by the display means; and display attribute change means that changes a display attribute of the time-series waveform corresponding to the part of the time axis selected by the time axis selection means and the three-dimensional path of the tip of the tool corresponding to the part of the time axis selected by time axis selection means.