New CamBam Beta Release 0.8.2

[10bulls]

I am pleased to announce the next public release of CamBam.

http://www.brusselsprout.org/CAMBAM/

More details on this new release may be found here...

http://www.forum.cambam.org/index.php?topic=103.0

There have been many internal modifications to this release so be wary. I have been using it a fair bit but I would expect a few wrinkles here and there!

Important fixes :

* Tolerances should be less of an issue now. There are only 2 tolerance settings used now. One for the machining options and another in tools, options. A move to high precision variables everywhere means this can be set to a comfortable low 1e-7 or lower. In english, this means the toolpath generation should be more reliable for very detailed geometry (typical with vectorized art) or if you are just making really teeny tiny stuff!

* An annoying bug which resulted in new machining operations not 'accepting' the selected geometry has hopefully been squashed. Previously this required a reboot of CamBam.

* The confusing Machine Op : Stock parameter has been renamed to RoughingClearance to denote the amount of stock to leave between the last cut and the geomtry. As an added bonus, I discovered you can put a negative amount in here as well to slightly oversize a cut. Very handy for hole or die cutting.

* The file tree refreshing is a bit smoother now.

New Features !

* A new machining operation called Bas Relief is introduced. This enables you to take a 3D surface such as a 3DS file and generate a height map of it. This is the method we have been using to generate the foam sculptures mentioned in other threads. It has some limitations and can be painfully slow for high polygon surfaces, but optimisation and other tweaks are planned.

CAM Improvements

* I have made a start with toolpath optimisations by simply ordering the cuts a bit better.
More optimisations are planned.

* Machine operations can now be renamed and enabled/disabled. This makes machining much more
manageable.

CAD Improvements

* Polyline editing can now backspace to remove last point. Middle mouse button ends the polyline and shift will close the polyline.

* A few more polyline operations such as detecting interection points and breaking polylines allow drawing of reasonably sophisticated geometry.

UI Improvements.

* Cut and Paste is here now (Yay!)

* A File open MRU is there (about time!).

* A rudimentary right click menu has appeared in the drawing window.

* Can drag an drop files onto the drawing window to open them.

A lot of fixes and features in this release have come directly from listening to your comments on these forums so for that I thank you and keep up the good work!

And a big thank you to the CamBam death wish release beta testers. Brave souls all!

I hope you enjoy using this release as much as I am.

Now get out there and make some stuff!

Regards

Andy (10bulls)

[epineh]

New vers is now DL'd, and am about to start practicing

I didn't get much time to play with the earlier version(s) but intend to get stuck into it now, including that techamanogical free dee stuff !

I will be using the SBWHFE technique of testing machine operation, which has served me well on my trials so far so I don't see the need to change

P.S. SBWHFE = "Stand Back Whilst Holding Fire Extinguisher"

Cheers.

Russell.

[10bulls]

Originally Posted by epineh New vers is now DL'd, and am about to start practicing

HaHa, Cool!
How did you get on with Win98 and Ubuntu?

P.S. SBWHFE = "Stand Back Whilst Holding Fire Extinguisher"

Saucepan on the head seems a popular choice amongst beta testers!

[epineh]

Originally Posted by 10bulls Saucepan on the head seems a popular choice amongst beta testers!

Doesn't everybody do that when running DIY CNC machines ?

Originally Posted by 10bulls HaHa, Cool! How did you get on with Win98 and Ubuntu?

Lets just say that I forgot just how much "character" Win98 had, and to top it off the machine I was using had very little RAM to start with, and things got a little unreliable after a while, I got it installed though...

Not enough time in the day.

Cheers.

Russell.

[rippersoft]

10Bulls,

You mentioned Ubuntu. Are you talking about running CamBam under Wine or as a .net program running under Mono (Linux .Net)?

Have you check to see if your programming is reasonably square with Linux .Net?

RipperSoftware

[epineh]

Running CAMBAM with Win98 inside of Ubuntu was one of my crazy idea's, I tried using QEMU to emulate a virtual machine, but it was doomed from the start, mainly the lack of hardware, I used a junker PC with very little RAM.

I have thought of trying WINE, and have heard about MONO but don't know many details, do you compile the same source using Linux.Net or is it more complicated than that ?

Cheers.

Russell.

[10bulls]

Originally Posted by rippersoft Have you check to see if your programming is reasonably square with Linux .Net?

We got as far as MrBean installing the .net development environment under Ubuntu and compiling one of his projects but I have not yet tried compiling CamBam.

I am pretty sure there will be some things to rewrite. I have used win32 apis in a number of places. I also have my doubts as to how well the mono GDI+ will perform but hopefully it will surprise me.

I will be devoting much more time to CamBam soon and Mono experiments are defintely a prority. Ubuntu and the lastest clutch of linux distros are getting more impressive all the time and their future looks bright. And Vista is...well...Vista.

[epineh]

That would certainly be exciting news for Ubuntu users, the CAM side of things for linux is pretty lacking (not to mention the BAM side )

I will be using EMC with my router as soon as it is going again, I will definetely be testing the possibilities of using one machine to draw/CAM/machine, especially as it is a long walk to the shed in the rain

Russell.