More Updates
Work on the roughing has continued and new problems continue to popup. Luckily, the bugs are only in the difficult code- not the very difficult offsetting code. It turns out that I was getting bad contours like the ones below
I thought the offsets were the problem so I wrote a bunch of code to begin a proper 3D engine rather than the simple graphics system I’ve had for a while. I thought this would give me more options to visualize the massive amount of data generated internally by the offsetting code. Turns out to be a problem in the code to trace the outline of the geometry. That bug can be seen below-
The arrows show where the data is corrupted. It’ll take a while to figure out but I was hoping to find some bugs in this code; it worked too well from the beginning and that is always the sign of impending doom.
The time spent on the new engine should payoff big in the future since I can add more stuff to the 3D window without any effort. The new commands I’ve got in mind will benefit from this greatly if I can just finish the roughing code and move on.
Debugging the tiny details like those above forced me to look into the poor 3D behavior of MeshCAM at high zoom levels. I was able to increase the maximum zoom by a factor of 10. I’ll try more when I get more time.
A while ago I added an antialiasing option to the 3d window for users with higher powered graphics cards. It quit working when I got a new laptop with an ATI Catalyst graphics card. It turns out that my method seems have been marked “deprecated” at some point so I have to look into that soon.
My new laptop came with a bad video driver under XP (shame on ATI and Lenovo) so I had to upgrade to a Windows 7 release candidate. I can say that MeshCAM works flawlessly under that OS so I don’t expect any problems when it’s released later this year. For those readers who hate Vista, I think you’ll like Windows 7. The performance is great and it looks nice.
Finally, I was answering an email tonight and I noticed that MeshCAM turned 5 years old in April and I didn’t notice. Thanks to all of the users that have been with me over the years.
Comments
8 Responses to “More Updates”
Wow, it has been five years–you announced RC1 on April 15, 2004. Congratulations, Robert!
I assume you have that email framed and hanging on the wall as a shrine to MeshCAM?
-Robert
Actually, Robert, it’s the 66th email in my MeshCAM archive…I hopped on board your beta train on July 29, 2003, judging from the first email. But MeshCAM doesn’t need words for a shrine–all the things we’re making with it are what’s important.
Randy
By the way, Robert, speaking of words thank you for keeping this blog. It’s nice to see behind the scenes, at least a little bit, to see the level of work you need to go through in developing MC.
If I didn’t post some inside info, nobody would believe what it takes to get this working.
I have a hard time believing that MeshCAM has been in development for almost 6 years. Let’s hope all of that experience will let the next few years be more productive.
-Robert
Some of us morons do really appreciate the work you put into getting it to work. Steady big improvements and it gets harder and harder to break. Thank You.
jeffD
I’m building a cnc router (my first) and will be running Mach3 .. I will need both 2D & 3D CAM software when complete .. does MeshCam do 2D?
Gary-
MeshCAM was made for 3D so that is no problem. A lot of 2D is suitable for MeshCAM as well if you understand the process. If you want to send me an email with more information about the type of work you want to do then I can give you better feedback.
-Robert