Welcome to the coding forum!

[Death Adder]

Nathan,

I know I have more programming experience than CNC experience at this point. I've heard the term "Back Plotter" before, but never really knew what it referred to. Is that it? Software that displays the toolpath as you described? Or would a typical "backplotting" package do more as well?

Lance

Back plotting is just showing the toolpath as wireframe in 3D and usually showing the cutter moving along the path. It's a verification strategy just like solid viewing. The only difference is how it looks. I prefer solid viewing so that I know what the die looks like but maybe people doing drilling would be OK just seeing the wireframe. NCPlot (now up to ver 11) is a backplotter.

[nikolatesla20]

I through in a couple of things...

A CNC simulator... Should only simulate G and M codes on a virtual piece of stock with a virtual tool...

Reading DXF and Drill files is more of a CAM thing... There are programs out there that can convert Drill files to Gcode for use in the simulator.

A good logical place to start the parsing of the Gcode would be to write a Back Plotter that renders the tool path. (Usually with simple lines and arcs with a different color for each code type. (Line, arc, rapid, drill cycle etc.)

Then move into the stock removal simulation coding. Cause Back plotting is where that all starts.

Ha I never thought of that for some reason, that is true. We could just load up G-Code for now...although that is pretty darn easy to render then being mostly just x, y, z, movements for example, that are clearly spelled out..

-niko

[cadfish]

Does any one have an extra copy of C++, CHEAP!!!
minimum wage washing cars doesn't get a 17 year old very far.

[Death Adder]

Does any one have an extra copy of C++, CHEAP!!!
minimum wage washing cars doesn't get a 17 year old very far.

I just so happen to be the world's foremost advocate of free software. So, while I can't just give you MSVC6 or anything I CAN point you in the direction of free compilers:

Microsoft Visual C++ Toolkit 2003
http://msdn.microsoft.com/visualc/vctoolkit2003/
This is just the compiler. It isn't of much use by itself but it can be used from other free IDE's and from the command line. Not so recommended if you dont have anything else

Dev-C++
http://www.bloodshed.net/devcpp.html
This is MinGW modifed and with a good IDE. I'd actually recommend this if you are just getting into C programming and dont have the money to buy Microsoft Visual Studio.

If you just want MinGW its at:
http://www.mingw.org

There is also CygWin which is basically a linux like environment within windows. It's pretty cool and if you want to cross compile linux stuff this might be the ticket:
http://www.cygwin.com

If you want to go the Delphi route instead of C++ and you are using windows then you might try Lazarus:
http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/
It's a free Delphi clone for windows. In linux just use Kylix.

The really cool part, if you use MinGW, is that QT4 is available as an open source version for MinGW in windows. I'd recommend QT over MFC any day of the week. QT is located at:
http://www.trolltech.com/download/opensource.html

I know thats a lot of info but don't hesitate to ask questions!

[cadfish]

Dev-C++
http://www.bloodshed.net/devcpp.html
This is MinGW modifed and with a good IDE. I'd actually recommend this if you are just getting into C programming and dont have the money to buy Microsoft Visual Studio.

Do I need to order the CD if not where do I go for the application that we want to put to use? Do I want the Beta?

[cadfish]

never mind Just figured it out.

[nikolatesla20]

Hey, thanks for the links, I'll have to try out that Delphi clone !

-nt20

[MrBean]

Death. Thanks for those links. I fancy taking a look at programming again. The last time I wrote some software, was on an Amiga 1200. It was a technical analysis tool for tracking stocks and shares, but that was many moons ago. Maybe I can get back into the easy stuff and progress from there. I wonder how many of my brain cells have died since I was 17?

Regards Terry.....
www.terry-is.f2s.com

[rweatherly]

Everyone seems to like C++ over Visual Basic -- what's the real advantage of C?

[nikolatesla20]

Everyone seems to like C++ over Visual Basic -- what's the real advantage of C?

It's a lot easier to write a fast and well organized program in C++. In VB you can write a program fast, but making the source code organized and well layed out - well, it can be done in VB but it's hard to do and most people don't do it! Whereas C and C++ usually force you into a cleaner source structure. Which means easier to read, and debug, and troubleshoot, and update.

Also, if you use Design Patterns to design the code structure and architecture, VB stinks. It's almost impossible to easily create a Singleton class in VB, for example.

I know you probably won't know what the heck I'm talking about, but really for large programs C and C++ are the way to go, especially if using Design Patterns (which any good program should do nowadays). VB always gets messy (unless the coders are very disciplined). I have nothing against VB but I am speaking from experience.

-nt20

[Death Adder]

I actually like VB (at least version 6). And I do use it for small programs and business apps. It's really stupid to write a program in C if you could have done it easily in VB. The two have a different application set. VB is for business apps and things that don't need a lot of specialization or speed. It CAN be fast but usually isn't too quick. It is fast to code in however. It's great for creating a GUI front end to something else. I use VB to create front ends for C code. Sure, I could use MFC or QT or something in C but it's easier to get out of the gate w/ VB. Case in point, Unreal's game editor is a VB frontend to the C++ coded game engine.

That having been said, C is great if you know what you are doing. You can customize anything you want, tweak code for speed, etc. In C/C++ there is more freedom to what what you want instead of do things the way the language was written to do them. C is like a sports car w/ a manual transmission. It's harder to drive at first and theres always the ability to really foul something up by accidentally overtaxing something but it's FAST. VB is a luxery car w/ the hood bolted shut. It shifts for you and does a good job most of the time but if something under the hood breaks you are out of luck.

In my experience it is a LOT easier to write complete trash in C than it is to do so in VB. There are so many ways to do any one thing and so many ways to make the code look like spaghetti in a blender that a lot of people end up writing in Arabic and Greek by accident. Then, when they want to debug it or have to go back 6 months later to work on it again they are completely lost. Any language requires discipline to write beautiful code in. A case in point here... Pointers, defines, and tertiary if statements. I've seen all three used on one line. Talk about confusing code!

All in all, I'd recommend VB for simple programs that don't need anything fancy and C w/ a VB frontend or QT/wxWidgets/Anything Other than MFC for the fancy stuff and things that need speed and code acrobatics.

It's a lot easier to write a fast and well organized program in C++. In VB you can write a program fast, but making the source code organized and well layed out - well, it can be done in VB but it's hard to do and most people don't do it! Whereas C and C++ usually force you into a cleaner source structure. Which means easier to read, and debug, and troubleshoot, and update.

Also, if you use Design Patterns to design the code structure and architecture, VB stinks. It's almost impossible to easily create a Singleton class in VB, for example.

I know you probably won't know what the heck I'm talking about, but really for large programs C and C++ are the way to go, especially if using Design Patterns (which any good program should do nowadays). VB always gets messy (unless the coders are very disciplined). I have nothing against VB but I am speaking from experience.

-nt20

[Evodyne]

I tried VB back when it still created interpreted PCODE. Talk about slow. It has improved tremendously, but to me it seems patched and pieced together and I've never thought it was an "elegant" solution.

I switched to Borland's Delphi back when it first came out. For those who don't know, Delphi is similar to VB in that they are both RAD (Rapid Application Development) tools. Delphi is the product name, not the language. Delphi uses an object oriented Pascal as the language. In fact the Delphi IDE was itself written using Delphi! To me it is a wonderful product. Unfortunately it has gotten very expensive. I'll definately be looking at the open source alternative.

A company named TurboPower sold several libraries as add-ins that were very powerfull and expensive:serial communications, data compression, encryption, etc. The company took a different direction and basically put all of their libraries out as open source-it can all be found at www.sourceforge.net.

And there is a wonderful TCP/IP component library called Indy that is also
open source and can be found at www.indyproject.org.

Delphi's speed is great, and a programmer has full access to lots of things: true object inheritance, polymorhism, sub/super classing, interfaces, pointers, in-line assembly, COM, OLE automation, dlls, threads and fibers, etc. The latest incarnation does .net as well. The OpenGL headers have been converted to object Pascal and I'm trying to learn OpenGL programming now via Delphi.

Code written in Delphi can be ported to Kylix, their Linux version, and C++ Builder, their C++ (vs. Pascal) version. You can also convert Delphi objects to ActiveX components.

It's pretty much the only thing I use right now.

Evodyne.