At 2000 dpi the curved traces look great on EMC2/Axis!
On 11/10/2010 11:11 PM, d...@umich.edu wrote:
The g-code exporter looks great! Right now I am looking at EMC2 simulate the milling of a pcb design!! I like that the gound plane outline is machined. The circular pads could use some more lines to round them out. Have you thought about programming g-code arcs (G02, G03) for them? HeeksCAD/CNC does this (see below). Please, consider a dxf export of the outline so that users can put the artwork into a cam program that can pocket out all of the copper, and make the board look just like the pcb program's artwork. Having a dxf file allows people to tweak all of the milling variables (depths of cut, jogs, feed rates, number of passes, pocketing, drilling, etc) in a CAM program, rather than go through the g-code by hand. Speaking of CAM programs... I want to share with all of you a FOSS program that I am excited about - HeeksCAD/HeeksCNC. It is an integrated CAD/CAM software project started by Dan Heeks. http://code.google.com/p/heekscad/ http://code.google.com/p/heekscnc/ Dan has a great blog where he shows parts he has made with HeeksCAD/CNC: http://heekscnc.blogspot.com/ The current Vol. 5, No. 3, Fall 2010 issue of Digital Machinist Magazine has an article on it. I was able to compile it from source easily on my EMC2-Ubuntu-10.04LTS system. At only 2 years old it has an incredible level of CAD and CAM functionality. I am most interested right now in its 2.5 axis and 3 axis CAM abilities. It freezes, crashes, and runs very slow at times, but heck, its only 2 years old. Several months ago I wrote the gEDA-user list about my attempts to get a dxf outline of gEDA pcb's artwork using FOSS software like inkscape and pstoedit. The goal was to get an outline of all of the traces and pads so that I could pocket route away all of the copper exactly as it looks in gerbv - using a 2.5 axis cam program. HeeksCAD/HeeksCNC has the ability to open .grb files and gives you four conversion choices: Produce trace isolation sketches Produce trace centre-line sketches Produce mirrored trace isolation sketches Produce mirrored centre-line sketches Currently, I am only able to load small .grb files or else HeeksCAD/CNC freezes. The program produces a beautiful smooth outline on the circular pads using 'G03 - Circular interpolation counterclockwise' g-codes. However, the program does not recognize the ground plane clearance outlines. It only gives the outside border of the entire ground plane rectangle. I hope that will come in the future. Please, share your thoughts on this. Thanks, Dave _______________________________________________ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
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