Topic of the paper is in the area of sculptured surface machining (SSM). The objectives of the paper are as follow. Firstly, to develop an approach that enables one detecting regions of sculptured surface those are not accessible for a cutting tool of a given design (i.e. regions, which cutter cannot reach without being obstructed by another portion of the part). Secondly, if we observe any not-machinable regions, the approach to be developed has enable one to subdivide the sculptured surface P onto the cutter-accessible and onto the cutter-not-accessible regions. To resolve the problem of sculptured surface partitioning, focal surfaces for the surfaces P and T were applied. Based on implementation of focal surfaces, cutting-tool-dependent characteristic surfaces are introduced. This enables derivation of equation for boundary curve, and enhancing the developed approach for locally extremal kinds of tangency of the surfaces P and T. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is verified from numerical simulation with the simple and clear examples. The main advantage of the developed approach over existing methods is that it incorporates topology not only of sculptured surface to be machined but also topology of the machining surface of a tool to be applied. This makes obtained results more fitted for engineering application. Taken as a whole, the topic covered in this paper enables one to develop reliable software for machining the sculptured surface on multi-axis CNC machine.