Improved Finishing
I’ve been working on the new offsetting code to make smoother and more accurate ZMap-free toolpaths. Eventually this will be carried to all toolpaths but it will first appear in the finishing since that would be the place where more accuracy will be appreciated. It will take longer to calculate the new paths than the current ones but they will be something that can eventually be distributed between multiple processors since most new computers have multiple processors or cores. The new code is very math intensive and, in order to speed it up to a tolerable level, each type of cutter must be implemented separately. This leads to many cases to test and long hours of debugging.
Right now I have 2 of the 6 cutter variations mostly working and the rest are coming along slowly.
New Website
As you’ve noticed, I uploaded the new website. I forgot to check it against IE6 before doing so and there were several things that displayed wrong. I think I’ve found most of them, aside from some more minor not-quite-centered problems, but if you seen anything really wrong then please let me know.
Build 5946
I just uploaded a new version that fixes a new bug I found. Under certain circumstances the finish stepover may be wrong depending on the oversampling value. This got introduced in the last couple of releases and I’m shocked that nobody reported it.
Also, I’m just finishing up a new web site. The current one hasn’t been touched much in the past three years so it’s about time to redo it. I’m probably less that a week from being done but I’ll probably post a link if the forum for feedback before that. Included in the new site will be the MeshCAM Art release and a new payment processor, 2Chechout.com. Paypal will remain but those who don’t like them can choose 2Checkout. I hope that those who dislike Paypal will like this option.
Build 5941
I just uploaded a new build to http://www.grzsoftware.com/v2dl.php . It includes a few minor changes and a German manual option.
For those who’ve been following the pocketing development I’d recomend the following link sent to me by a reader – http://www.mmsonline.com/articles/0206ex1.html . It’s a marketing article for Surfware disguised as a technical article. The article outlines a more state-of-the-art approact to area clearance that, while patented and therefore off-limits, is interesting if you like a more detailed look.
New release in a few days
I haven’t heard of any big problems with the new roughing algorithm so I’m going to make it a public release in a few days. Tonight I was able to add code to notify a user if a post processor doesn’t support 4–axis when it’s required. I think this may be the root of some of the 4–axis problems that have been reported.
Also, I’m trying to update the installer to give the option for German manual since I now have a German distributor. I haven’t tried to change the NSIS installer script in years so I don’t know how long it will take to get that done.
Lua DXF
I got the Lua DXF reader working and in the process learned a little more about how to interact with Lua on a deeper level. It’s a really nice language and the community that supports is seems to be very helpful.
The pocket algorithm has progressed quite a bit and the ability to input DXF files has allowed me to find several trivial to fix but nonetheless important bugs. The results are shown below:
The image shows several significant items:
- Islands can go outside of the pocket bounds with no problems
- Islands can overlap with no problems
- When concave pockets overlap new islands are automatically created. In the image above the F and the intersecting pocket are unique areas. When they are combined a new island, the small red triangle, is automatically created.
The downside here is that the speed is less than impressive on outlines with high vertex counts. The example above has about 825 points in the main outline and takes about a minute to run. I ran a profiler and found the offending code but it’s not something I can fix without changing the core algorithm. I’ll have to put some more thought into it and try again in a few days.