Build 6738
December 1, 2007 · Filed Under MeshCAM Releases
I just uploaded Build 6738 to http://www.grzsoftware.com/files/MeshCAM2-6738.exe . I’m posting it here only until I get some feedback to make sure I didn’t break anything.
In this build you’ll find the new stock dialog, the new menu, and some new rendering code. All are pretty significant either in terms of lines of code or because they modify parts of the program that have been static for years. I really want to get whatever feedback you can provide to make sure everything is correct.
Comments
18 Responses to “Build 6738”
Aaaaaaargh! 6738 deleted my tool table. That aside, it’s looking decent so far. I’m trying a double-sided part for the first time in quite a while. Viewing the surround as a picture frame, the “top” and “left” part of each face are colored black. Has that always been the case, or is that an artifact?
Best regards,
Randy
It is a little disorienting to have the status area jump from the top of the screen to the bottom when I unhide the menu panel. Could it always stay either at the top or bottom (either would be fine with me.)
I don’t know if you are planning to expand the menu area to encompass all the dropdown menus, but as it is it occupies a lot of horizontal space for what is there. With the current commands, organizing in one or two columns would seem to be a big space saver.
Now I need to square up a piece of Renshape and try the new toolpaths!
Best regards,
Randy
I should say that the toolpath generation seems very fast; on my test part the “don’t machine top of stock” is well behaved, as is the toolpath linking. I have not tried a mixed parallel-waterline yet.
Best regards,
Randy
Minor bug… if you click on the “Set Program Zero” button and forget to close that dialog before clicking on “Set Max Depth” the dialogs will over lay and MeshCAM hangs.
Thanks.
Rich
This is very frustrating Robert, I’ve just spent a few hours without the slightest trace of a bug. And despite my best efforts I can’t even break anything.
Jeff
Randy-
Sorry about that tool table. I just reuploaded it with that fixed. The blacked out faces are an artifact. It’s probably due to the change in two-sided rendering of all polygons that I got wrong. I’ll dig into that- it should be a quick fix.
The shift in the status are reflect a compromise to leave it the existing way for people who don’t want anything to change and, when it’s expanded, shifting everything to a new layout for new users. I I end up doing nothing else with the left pane then I’ll probably collapse it into a toolbar. I’m thinking that I may make the left pane more like the left pane in Solid Works with some type of feature tree that captures important geometry and toolpath characteristics. I’ll probably decide more after I try a few more things.
-Robert
Jeff-
That’s a good change. Did you play with the new stock dialog much? I’m expecting some weirdness there as people try things that I didn’t.
Rich-
Good catch- I’ll fix that.
-Robert
Robert,
A little playing with non centered Z, interface made sense and everything worked as expected. I’ll try harder now that I know a potential weakness
I was working from the old top menu, the new side menu uses too much screen space at the moment and I’m used to the old menu bar.
I don’t see any gain from the “smooth Lines” on my 1024 x 768 crt, it actually degrades the image.
Jeff
Robert, two items concerning roughing.
In two-sided machining, the roughing toolpath extends to the inner boundary of the frame, so that the frame will be cut into by one cutter radius. I hadn’t noticed that before I started machining.
Also, the long-standing problem of the roughing not going as deep as it should. It always stays a depth increment above the max depth. It really should make a roughing pass at (max depth - stock to leave)
Best regards,
Randy
Robert, one further very tiny item. Program zero isn’t sticky when I change it to geometry zero yet. It still starts at the stock corner the next time I fire up MC.
Mind you, none of this is a show stopper. I’m really happy with the finishing toolpaths (which do respect the frame in 2-sided machining) and am not looking back from 6738.
Best regards,
Randy
Randy-
Problems noted. I’ll see what I can do on the roughing and two-side.
The program zero is tougher. I think the average person may be confused if this were to happen to accidentally enable this. I’ll tackle that when I get down to reevaluating the program zero command.
-Robert
Robert,
Most of the stuff I was playing with were the stock dialog screen and insane tolerance settings.
2.5mm tall recessed text (.5mm) with line widths ~ .25mm, tapered ball .15mm tip and 16° included.
Interesting refinements to the tool path with really small tolerances, weird chamfers turn into nice radiuses which depend on the tool tip diameter. .001MM seems to cause crashes and offers of sending messages to M$ mom. .01 gives very nice sharp Z corners.
Not that it really makes any difference on a real machine (at least any of mine) , it is very interesting to explore subtle stuff.
Jeff
I have settled on .0001″ (.0025mm) for tolerance, Jeff. If I coarsen it to .001″ (.025mm) vertical edges of raised text and small recesses when using small flat endmills are markedly sloped. The finer tolerance has not caused any tomfoolery by either MeshCAM or XP for me.
Best regards,
Randy
Shouldn’t the slice stock dialog and the regular stock dialog be combined, maybe with a radio button to toggle the available settings? Right now there’s a bug I think. I have a model that’s .75 thick. If I go to the slice stock and set it to .125, then go to the normal stock dialog, it shows the stock at .125. If I now go back to the slice stock dialog, the stock is now .75 again. I just opened and closed the stock dialog, I didn’t touch anything, but it’s resetting the slice stock if you go into the other stock dialog. I think that either they need to be combined, or you need to pick either a slice job or standard job, and the other stock dialog button becomes inactive. Too much chance for confusion, imo.
Also, after playing around with the program zero dialog, when I went back to the stock dialog, the stock height was -0.75, and the top and bottom Z position were both set to -0.75. When I tried to close it I of course got an error the stock size was invalid, but MeshCAM set it, not me.
I can repeat this. It happens after setting the slice stock, then creating toolpaths, then going back to the regular stock dialog. Apparently the two stock dialogs are interacting.
Also, if I go to the slice dialog, if I set the slice thickness to .125, it’s wants 7 slices, but the top does nothing. .1251 gives me 6 slices. Can adding the extra .0001 be avoidable, or is it to avoid math errors or something like that?
Sorry for the late reply, haven’t had a chance to play lately.
I hadn’t tried flipping between the standard and slice dialog. It probably isn’t a problem since you generally only need to use one. Still, I don’t like the inconsistency.
Thanks for the rest of the bugs- I know there are things like that in there but I don’t have a lot of repeatable data to go on.
-Robert
I gave this build a try. Love the new layout and the new features.
I tried generating a cut path from a model built as a *.stl file. Every time I received an error saying the “operation was aborted and that the program may be unstable. Try closing and reopening.” I’m don’t recall the exact error wording but that was the gist of it. I tried reverting to build 6713 and was able to generate the cut path with no problems.
Can you send me the STL file and the list of steps you went through to cause the error?
-Robert
Sorry it took me so long to get back to you. Yes I’d be glad to. BTW I tried several STL files and they’re all getting the same result. I’ll explain more in the e-mail.