TahlCAM development stopped when the 3rd-Party GUI software development hit a snag. The last AutoCAD version that TahlCAM worked with was 2004. The GUI software that TahlCAM used has gone Open Source and is now called Open DCL. It is being actively developed on Source Forge. AutoDESK at one time envisioned AutoCAD going away. This did not happen. Now AutoCAD is being improved and working with Inventor. Autocad and Inventor 2008 open and work with each others files. AuotCAD has greatly improved the 3D modeling abilities.

I have been considering simplifying and releasing a new version of TahlCAM for AutoDESk products. An open source version is also interesting to me. Are there any folks interested in working on cam inside AutoCAD? How about participating in development?

Cheers,

Jim,

Are you still interested in simplifiying the code and making it open source? I'm just now really getting into autolisp, with the intention of doing cnc programming with it. I think that I have a pretty good grasp on what needs to happen. Over the last couple of weeks I have done a lot of research in autolisp and found 3 or 4 lisp routines that are for generating g-code from autocad. I'm using autolisp to open up external applications with the intent of editing g-code with a dedicated application.

Thanks,
Dan

Dan,

It could be fun to create an open source cam project for AutoCAD. OpenDCL has released a solid working version of what used to be called ObjectDCL. This is what had provided the GUI for TahlCAM 2004. It now works in AutoCAD 2008.

The task that presents itself is designing a new application interface in OpenDCL that a reasonably experienced AutoCAD person would find easy to use.

My opinion is that this could best be done using a tree control to organize the machining operation and control which ones post..

Thanks, Jim