> I have only a little experience as a user of cut simulation, but the times > I've used it, it's been integrated with the CAM rather than with the machine > control. It's when you're designing the cuts that cutsim is most useful, > IMO. I wonder if Dan Falck's FreeCAD+OpenCamLib work would be a useful place > to add it? >
Well, one thing is for sure: I will not write a new g-code parser/interpreter. There is about three parts to this I think: - openGL view (AXIS is quite close to raw OpenGL I think, FreeCAD has one based on OpenCascade and/or Qt) - g-code or other input interpreter (LinuxCNC obviously has librs274, FreeCAD could work on some internal CAM-format maybe, but that would need inventing+work) - libcutsim (stock-model, cutting ops, surface-extraction/update) - ui (AXIS has g-code preview, play/pause/stop buttons, etc). >From having toyed around with developing a few CAM-algorithms I can say that you can be led into a false sense of security by only plotting static geometry on the screen. Forcing oneself to produce G-code and viewing the motion often reveals small or bigger bugs. So from a CAM-development point of view I think having the simulator work with G-code input is good. So this needs not necessarily be within the framework of AXIS. It may or may not be faster/easier to write a new GUI from scratch that has g-code preview, play/pause/stop, and an OpenGL context with good rotate/pan/zoom etc. for drawing. I've already tried and failed at this second approach, so it's unlikely I will try again (at least until the scars heal, or I forget...:) ) Graphics performance is an obvious concern. With my toy-tests are easily get up to 100-500k triangles, which starts to be slow to draw using naive methods. If it turns out early that AXISs python-based OpenGL will not perform then an OpenGL view in c++ might be required. AW ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Virtualization & Cloud Management Using Capacity Planning Cloud computing makes use of virtualization - but cloud computing also focuses on allowing computing to be delivered as a service. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfnl/114/51521223/ _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users