21–30 of 63 posts
I wonder which tools use people making real things with CNC machines. I assume that there's some specific, not really friendly file format which cannot be edited in some 3dMax or Blender, so some conversion is performed before, but, anyway, there must be some more or less standard workflow, I suppose.
It lends itself to a workflow where sometimes, a user checks out a file, and forgets to unlock it. Or goes on vacation. Then you have to forcibly check out the file your coworker locked to get work done. And when he has to merge his changes with yours again, it’s a gigantic hassle. This exactly describes web development on the Microsoft stack using Visual Source Safe. I don't know if that product exists anymore or st…
You were probably too Microsoft specific in your work environment. CVS is older than most(?) HN posters and had no locking problem. So your pain was not necessary. :-( (The wikipedia says VSS was bought 1995, so the original product might be older?)
One of the more interesting things about 3D printing is that it is igniting this sort of issue. A long time ago (like 1991) I was a working for Sun and representing them at the "CAD Framework Initiative" efforts or CFI. The express goal of this was to create a set of interchange formats for CAD tools so that you could move things from one system to another, you could store and diff changes, and even if your vendor we…
Robust open-source CAD software would clearly fill a niche. The problem however, is not so much CAD as the schemas for the data that at gets attached to the models...IGES has been around for many decades, but what one engineer needs for FEA is not what the machinist needs for making the die or the Architect for making pretty pictures.
open source data formats are more important than programs initially, the above is for 3d models.
"— namely, the position of each vertex, the UV position of each texture coordinate vertex, vertex normals, and the faces that make each polygon defined as a list of vertices, and texture vertices. "
I'm sure there's one for the edge based models too.
I can see an UrStandard developing, which while probably inefficient, can describe necessary attributes for all practical applications and export into the open standardised format for the field at hand.
XML for objects in 3d space.
Open Source geometric kernel? It is called "Open Cascade": http://www.opencascade.org/ It represent decades of hard work from dozens of programmers.License is LGPL. Freecad is a very promising tool that uses the power of Opencascade only a little(Opencascade supports things that are way more complex than what freecad does). Everything in Freecad is a script in python.
I couldn't agree more with this. I have actually been looking at writing a CAM program that uses OpenSCAD (and perhaps the python bindings to it) in order to generate gcode for machining. It would work great for me, but probably less so for the guys in the shop. Representing the OpenSCAD code as a tree you can fairly readily edit next to the renderer would help. Being able to click on something and have it pull up al…
Seems like there would be a lot of distance between an openscad model and generating a toolpath in gcode. I currently use MeshCAM for this and have thought about writing something several times (usually while fuming.)
Open Source geometric kernel? It is called "Open Cascade": http://www.opencascade.org/ It represent decades of hard work from dozens of programmers.License is LGPL. Freecad is a very promising tool that uses the power of Opencascade only a little(Opencascade supports things that are way more complex than what freecad does). Everything in Freecad is a script in python.
Its also what forms the heart of OpenSCAD, which is built ontop of OpenCascade
I wonder which tools use people making real things with CNC machines. I assume that there's some specific, not really friendly file format which cannot be edited in some 3dMax or Blender, so some conversion is performed before, but, anyway, there must be some more or less standard workflow, I suppose.
I think STL is a nice file format that is used a lot. It can be imported and exported in a lot of 3d software.
I wonder which tools use people making real things with CNC machines. I assume that there's some specific, not really friendly file format which cannot be edited in some 3dMax or Blender, so some conversion is performed before, but, anyway, there must be some more or less standard workflow, I suppose.
In the end it really doesn't matter how your CAM software stores its data as long as you can translate it to g-code within the software or with a 3rd party compiler. The fun part for me back then was optimizing that translation with respect to the machine's capabilities so you can do things like minimize machining time while maximizing tool life and keeping surface roughness within tolerances.
Many years ago, when I was designing a part in AutoCad, I drew it by hand and then back-converted the drawing into parametrized AutoLISP, which I then stored under version control (RCS at the time). It'd be nice to have tools that make this easy. Though I'm honestly surprised more people don't do it anyhow.
NOTE: Its been 20 years since I used AutoLISP and the code I was using was being generated from software that did cut-plan optimization for lathes so I am probably speaking from a very old/ignorant point of view.