How could there be a V8, V7 is still in Beta? That’s a good quesion, it just kind of happened.
V7 was a deep rethinking in how to change the UI for MeshCAM to make it more intuitive and more powerful. Users that have been following along for the past few years have seen a number of wild changes of direction. There were many very good and very bad ideas along the way. Some people loved the simplification and some people hated it so we kept iterating toward a good solution. In the end we got very close but it wasn’t quite right.
For the past month we’ve been talking with a team that has a background in CAD/CAM UI and we’ve been getting some great feedback. Along the way we’ve made so many changes to MeshCAM that we decided to change it to V8 so that users who like V7 will not have anything changed or taken away from them.
Here’s what changed in the new V8:
- New UI for defining toolpaths that keeps much of the simplified V7 settings with more flexibility (like V6).
- Tools can now be defined to have a default speed/feed or set to have MeshCAM calculate an approximate value.
- No more 32 bit builds. It was becoming clear that 32-bit systems were a growing support problem so we’re following the industry trend for CAD/CAM and going 64-bit only. V6 and V7 will continue to be available for 32 bit systems.
- MeshCAM Art has been removed from V8. Art hasn’t been listed as a MeshCAM feature on the website for a while and it hasn’t received any code updates in even longer. If you use the Art features, you can keep V6 or V7 on your computer and continue using it.
- Lots of UI simplification and subtle bug fixes.
V8 will be a free update for anyone running V6 or V7 currently. You can grab it here