> All this algorithm was done by Alberto Maccioni and some research brought up > the statement, this is the only reliable way for offseting all the traces. Actually the algorithm is not mine, it comes from potrace, a tracing program by Peter Selinger (as you can see in the source code copyright notice). Tracing involves a fair amount of mathematical analyses and his code gives excellent results with equally great efficiency. I just took the algorithm, stopped the tracing process before bezier curves extraction, and adapted it to the png exporter. HeeksCNC algorithm in comparison is extremely primitive and naive, and it doesn't even work in many conditions, for example very sharp edges cause it to crash completely.
>With a dxf file, in a CAM program, you can program your fine line cutting with >a tiny v bit, then program a >pocket operation with a larger bit to remove the >remaining copper. Are you sure you want to do this? Is it for aesthetic reasons or because of better isolation? Besides thrashing large amounts of bits and requiring hours of work it won't make your pcb's work better; if you need good isolation it's better to insert several traces between the ones you want to isolate. >Have you thought about programming g-code arcs (G02, G03) for them? >HeeksCAD/CNC does this Once your resolution is high enough there's no difference between a line path and an arc. Detecting arcs would be extremely complicated; you can't describe a generic curve with arcs, so the original tracing algorithm uses bezier curves; you would need to check when a series of beziers are close enough to an arc. Does this make your end product better? Not at all, so it's not even worth to try, in my opinion. A dxf export could however be useful. >The drill xxx.gcode.drill.cnc file goes through the board drilling all of the >holes without differentiating the >different drill sizes (found in the >xxx.fab.gbr file). And, there are no tool change g-codes for changing >between >drill sizes. The drill file generation is being improved with separation between different sizes and better comments; if you have in mind a good sequence of commands for switching between drill bits please let us know. Best regards, Alberto _______________________________________________ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user