On Wed, 8 Feb 2012 11:43:48 +1100 Erik Christiansen <dva...@internode.on.net> wrote:
> On 07.02.12 07:11, Stuart Stevenson wrote: > > APT does this and has since the 1960s. > > Thanks for the "heads up". That textual CAM package is very > interesting, even though it neither documents our LinuxCNC dialect > nor provides a more human readable variant of same. We could change > our goal to gcode generation, but that would mean abandoning current > goals. > > We read here: http://aptos.sourceforge.net/WhatisApt.html > that "Apt is a CAM system based on a special-purpose language.", and > that "Most Apt compilers , however, are proprietary." > > So if we wanted to change our goal from a more readable gcode dialect > to a full-blown CAM system, then we'd have to use an open source > product, such as Apt360. > > Here: http://aptos.sourceforge.net/CurrentStatus.html > we see that the author used it on one project six years ago. > > Here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/aptos/ > there are no reviews from the 17 downloads, and no visible signs of > any project activity. > > Since there seems to be no life in the project (either Aptos, which > the author has dropped in favour of Apt360, or Apt360 itself), I'm > reluctant to get too excited about it now. > > > With AptOS you can create a script to read in an APT style > > 'instruction list' and 'process and post' to have the gcode in > > LinucCNC. There is an emc postprocessor. The code is in several parts ... original FORTRAN and the same code converted to C. I would guess that most of the work is done but it would seem to need several people that really understand the internals to clean it up and test. I struggled with some code for a lofted surface and finally sent it to Stuart for verification: it would not run on Apt360 but would on NCL. Until someone skilled or experienced really tries it we won't have much of an idea how clean it is. > > There's probably documentation on its use out there somewhere, at > least descriptions of the generic Apt language, so when I have need > for CAM, I'll certainly take a look at it. There is an ANSI standard dated 1999. About 28 Mb download .... costs $30 and uses about 250-300 pgs double sided. Krall, I,H. "Numerical Control Programming in APT" ( 1986) is of course OP but available on the secondary market. ISBN 0-13-626599-5 HTH Dave > > Erik > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
