On Tuesday, May 31, 2011 10:22:25 AM Andy Howell did opine: > On 05/31/2011 03:03 AM, gene heskett wrote: > > On Tuesday, May 31, 2011 03:09:57 AM Andy Howell did opine: > >> On 05/30/2011 07:52 PM, Igor Chudov wrote: > >>> I am aware that this is a "can of worms". I will ask, nevertheless. > >>> > >>> I am becoming constrained by my approach of "just write G code for > >>> anything I want". > >>> > >>> Is there an inexpensive CAD/CAM package that is EMC2 compatible, > >>> designed to work with milling operation (I have a 4 axis mill). > >>> > >>> At this point I do not care if it is Windows or Linux based, > >>> although I would prefer Linux. > >> > >> Igor, > >> > >> I've been playing with HeeksCAD/HeeksCNC. I'm quite new to > > > > machining, > > > >> cad/cam etc, so I can't comment on how it compares to other packages. > >> I run it under Ubuntu. It works under windows as well. See > >> http://code.google.com/p/heekscad/ > >> > >> Regards, > >> > >> Andy > > > >From my POV, HeeksCAD/HeeksCNC for linux is a disaster as its several > > > > versions (0.13) behind the windows issue (0.18) and missing stuff in > > wholesale quantities. Using wine on this pclos box, heekscad for > > winderz seems to run well and stably once you click through about 25 > > xml errors on startup. But I have not been able to locate any > > beginner oriented printable tutorials for it. A URL for that would > > be highly appreciated. > > Gene, > > I built it from source,
What tarball version? > which is pretty straight forward. I did have to > fix some problems in the EMC2.py script. Those changes are checked in. > There are three different EMC 'machines' defined. I fixed the firth > first one, "EMC2 Controler'. > > There are some docs and links under http://code.google.com/p/heekscnc/ I found those easily enough. 3rd party authored. > I've found a number of tutorials on YouTube. I just found those last night. Generally he is too far from the mic, and goes way too fast for me to keep up. > It would be nice to have a > tutorial that took something simple from a hand drawn sketch, into > heekscnc, and then milled using EMC2. That would be several 10 minute movies to do it justice, but yeah, precisely my thought. > I ended up starting with HeeksCNC because I could not find any other > open source packages that handled both the CAD and CAM aspects. QCad > has a CAM option, but its not free. > > Being new to all this, its taking me awhile to figure out how all the > pieces fit together :) Me too Andy. And as I age, that point where I can say "aha, that's how it works" seems slower and slower in coming. At 76 and diabetic, I'm fond of quoting that old saw about taking better care of me if I had known I was going to live this long. ;-) One of my stepsons came down for the weekend & I got out the boat & we went fishing. Caught a bunch of minnows & one bass plus an improved tan. Coming back, my son said, "well, now you know how to catch trout" with a grin. Pulling up to the dock to wait my turn at the ramp to pull out, I tried to give that lone bass to the retired folks in the next boat, but they didn't want it, and in fact said they had some trout, about a dozen, to give away. Not having had fresh trout in 30 years, I said I'd take them. So they dug out a plastic grocery sack and opened up the live well in their bass tracker & started sacking rainbows, and the smallest one was a good 14", with several up around the 18" range! That sack was FULL and over 20 pounds easy. So the 2nd warmup of my new gas grill was a fish fry Sunday evening. We ate very well indeed. And about half of them are still in the freezer where we put them to stiffen up while filleting them. I had passed them, sitting on the bank with the boat semi beached, so I know where they were fishing, and the trout were full of a chartreuse powerbait, said they were fishing on the bottom as far out as their spin rods could throw, so they were a good 40 foot deep. Anyway, to bring home trout, try to give away the only bass you caught. ;-) Makes perfect sense when you think about it. :) In fact, I was surprised at the relative lack of traffic on the lake, I'd guess a dozen boats at the max. Its a 10 horse limit lake, used for flood control mostly, about 12 miles long. About 80 feet deep, my fishfinder said the surface temp was 78F, already too warm IMO. -- Cheers, Gene "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) Programmers used to batch environments may find it hard to live without giant listings; we would find it hard to use them. -- D.M. Ritchie ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Simplify data backup and recovery for your virtual environment with vRanger. Installation's a snap, and flexible recovery options mean your data is safe, secure and there when you need it. Data protection magic? Nope - It's vRanger. Get your free trial download today. http://p.sf.net/sfu/quest-sfdev2dev _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
