Re: open source CAM

[Charly Brauer <cbrauer-at-pop.voyager.net>]

At 12:18 PM 11/8/00 -0500, you wrote:
>
>I hope that my thoughts don't sound too strange for the list....
>Every week, I usually call Ray and talk to him for about an hour, about EMC 
>and CAD/CAM related things.  This week we were discussing probing, open 
>source vs MS, Tcl/Tk windows terminals, and open source CAM programming.  I 
>will have to admit, I can't program source and therefore, have to sit on 
>the sidelines.  But,  I do like to stir things up to generate interest in 
>topics.  So,  here goes another session of stirring the soup....
>
>  In the last year, I have seen more EMC developement with the open source 
>world than I would have expected in my wildest dreams.  Open source truly 
>is the right model for this application.  Who would have thought,one year 
>ago, that we would have a controller that rivals and even surpasses the 
>commercial systems ?  With that in mind, I know that things could be taken 
>to another level.  There has been a lot of talk on the "other" list 
>(CAD/CAM/EDM/DRO) about conversational programming, being able to make G 
>code right from DXF files etc.  Currently, there is an open source effort 
>at www.opencascade.org and www.opencascade.com that is building the 
>framework for opensource CAD/CAM.  Right now there are only a couple demos 
>using the opencascade libraries, but they are encouraging.  My thoughts are 
>that the opencascade libraries could be used in the EMC backplot program to 
>create a small CAM program to go along with EMC.  It would be good to be 
>able to hit a button and be able to switch between "backplot" mode and CAM 
>mode on a screen that is independent of the EMC controller window. Ray and 
>I have discussed this a little and we thought that it would be good to 
>bring this up so that programmers could look at this and comment.  I know 
>that the guys at NIST are doing great work on the controller, and I 
>wouldn't want to divert their attention away from what they are 
>doing.  Therefore, I am making an appeal to the programmers on this list to 
>give me some feedback about how to go about getting an open source CAM 
>program built.
>
>Thanks,
>Dan
>
I would like to see this too.

I wrote a somewhat simplistic g-code generator that reads a Geomview OFF
file and outputs a VECT file and an NC file.  It's not terribly accurate
because it uses an x-y grid and then looks for the part using a collision
detection program called RAPID. Then a few years ago I wrote a dxf
converter... takes closed polylines and makes them into trianglar
meshes(which RAPID wants).

I just wrote it so it has blugs. And to compile it of course you need the
RAPID program which is free, but you must request it from the University.

My interest was from a TV show that talked about laser scanning artwork in
Europe.  Thinking about it I realized that was much interest in this area,
and so open source programs.  Most of them output a mesh.  Now all 
I have to do is get the mesh to my g-code maker.  Hopefully I can cut
pretty shapes fairly easily.

Any way if anyone is interested let me know.

charly