On Saturday 30 January 2016 12:03:41 Chris Albertson wrote: > What are people here using to create G-code? I am looking for > options. > > I'm new to CNC and trying to develop a work flow. I'm making small > parts (most fit in a 3" cube) for robot manipulators. These can be > designed for easy manual machining but now I want to add curves and > arcs and later add refinements that have more organic shapes. > Qualities are as much as a half dozen each. > > I use ViaCAD. It is very much identical to "TurboCAD" to make 3D > drawings and these can be saved in several different file formats. > > I found PyCAM. It will read STL files and make G-code. Are there > other options? Can you really build good G-code from STL? It seems > STL has no notion of arcs and hols and pockets. It is all triangles. > Does this matter? > > I'm doing the design work on a Apple iMac and of course the machine > controller is Linux. Any workflow that uses either of those two OSes > is fine, as I've had long experience with both.
Generally, for such projects, I write my own. With a copy of the gcode docs in front of you, its not that hard altho I have had to resort to asking this list for help with the G2/G3 stuff. Andy has been amazingly helpful in that regard. So have others, giving me insightful ways to get it done, and I thank them all. I make very heavy use of subroutines and both local and global named variables in doing so as a step and repeat isn't needed to be separately coded each time, just position the machine and make the call, All of the code to carve the mahogany for the major boards of a copy of that Green & Green style blanket chest on the front cover of the Dec 2014 issue of Fine WoodWorking might be over 1000 LOC, but I don't think so. That is for 2 different widths of boards, and mirroring the pattern used for the side board for the end boards. And that includes all the assembly screw holes and pockets for the ebony buttons that hide the screws. The code that carves those buttons in sandwich baggie quantities will bring it to perhaps 1400 LOC total. At some point, I should tarball the lot of that and post it on my web page, in the sig below. That FWIW is actually this machine. Cheers, Gene Heskett -- "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Site24x7 APM Insight: Get Deep Visibility into Application Performance APM + Mobile APM + RUM: Monitor 3 App instances at just $35/Month Monitor end-to-end web transactions and take corrective actions now Troubleshoot faster and improve end-user experience. Signup Now! http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=267308311&iu=/4140 _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
