Re: Sorry :)

[Dan Falck <dfalck-at-sprynet.com>]

>
>Well,  I am not  against this.  We all have different views. But  I would not
>consider
>this too complicated.  Most of what I have said earlier on, is within our
>reach.  Most
>of the things I have said, - is in fact working.  It is more a matter of
>putting it together.
>
>I don't know about what happened to the  "freedesigner"  group,  and what
kind
>of trouble they
>got.
>
>

Arne,

Ok, I see your point.  The graphics part is out there and ready to be put
together.  Since our last conversation, I have been looking at what is out
there and you are right- it looks like we have an abundance of resources to
work with.  I'm sorry to say, I'm just now learning TCL/Tk and will have to
sit on the sidelines for the heavy duty stuff.  But, it looks like the
software gods are making things easier every day.  
The free source at www.opencascade.org is accessed with Tcl.  In their docs
they give examples using tcl commands to do lots of complicated things.
The docs for Varkon show that it is very programmable and could be used for
what we want.   Tdcad imports dxf files and converts them to viewable
objects.  Yes it's all there right now for us. I will hack away at some of it.
Thank you for the references to Tom Kramer's web page.  He has done some
amazing work related to CNC and CAD/CAM.  I downloaded most of the pdf
files on his web page
http://www.isd.mel.nist.gov/personnel/kramer/publications.html and skimmed
a lot of them.  It looks like there are the ingredients for a good CAM
system there.  
Sorry for the rambling... I'm drinking my coffee right now.
On the "Freedesigner" group- they were a group of programmers who wanted to
build a new, free, CAD program.   A lot of people had high hopes, but it
fizzled out.  They had a status page with a lot of programmers working on
individual module with some getting the work done and others not.  So, they
never had a working program and ran out of gas.  
I like Ian's idea of throwing stuff into the bucket and letting everyone
have a look at it.  Speaking of which...
Steve S.  is helping me with the web page and will have a shell ready soon
after Christmas.  I want to set it up similar to his metalworking.com
dropbox- so that we can deposit files for everyone to look at.  

Thanks, and merry Christmas!

Dan