GearHeads Forum

Hi John:

  It will appear in future in a cad modules ability to edit any object for pretty much any part .. or at least thats the plan.
With the workbenchs ability to cut to any thickness it wasnt a high priority for development..though it is on my list to
add that. Ill bump it  notch or two as a visually desirable option.

Art

Hi Art!

I don't know how you feel about open source libraries (and the licensing mess they can get into), but take a look at Anders Wallin's opencamlib if you haven't already.

Kirk

Hi Kirk:

  I do tend to stay away from open libraries, as you say the licenseing becomes a mess but more importantly the structure of a
cad program tends to be such that code written for one structural design is good only as a tutorial on how to do something in another
stuctural design. It is interesting reading though on variosu techniques one can use.. I havent chosen one particular way as yet, but I have
a lot of paper s with various designs. Thx for the addional material.

Art

Hi All:  Quick poll type question...

  Since doing the simulator hurt my head, Im adding some code for personal usage this past week to unwind. Im curious
as to if anyone else would find the output usefull. Does anyone ever find they'd like to have a stl sliced and saved
as DXF's?
  I really dont want ( at this point) to make a whole lot of 3d printer output, but I do have need for slicing so Ive
added a slicer to Gearotic, I dont always turn on such things for the general user, so I was curious if having the ability
to slice 3d objects ( gears as well as any other stl's has any value for you. If so I can leave it turned on in future releases.
It basically slices an object in any orientation to any number of slices and will then save each slice as a dxf ( or put out
Gcode for a laser to do 3d printing in paper. ). I suppose at the least it allows one to have 3d slices of bevel gears for further
processing by other cam systems.
Thx
Art

Yes for definite.
One use is to take an stl to get the sliced dxf's to cut on a laser to then get say a casting pattern.
I know you can STL a pattern but your 3D printer might not be big enough for the part or you need to modify one of the dxf's to get better representation on the mould.

Will it have the ability to import a foreign STL, then slice it or just a Gearotic grown STL ?

Hi Art,
No personal need at this point in time but down the road is likely, what about adding it as a selection at install time like is done with the 32bit run time.


Ken

Yes

Hi Art,
Since I only work with simple gears for clocks and such - I don't use slicing - but there are people who do more complex stuff then me.

John

Hi John:

  It works with Any STL , binary or ascii. Sounds liek Ill include it for general output.  So I guess Ill
add a few more controls so its more usefull. You'll probably see it soon.

Thx
Art

Ken:

  No real need for a seection, Gearotic has several toys that only enable when I run it on my system, I just set compiler switches to enable things.
So Ill turn this one on in the compile once I add a few widgets,,,

Art