Help,Im lost. Where do I dive in?

[Truss-rod]

Hi, I've been lurking for while, now I'm looking for some xmas list fillers. By trade, I'm a displaced autocad draftsman in the architecual field, and a wood worker in my free time. Free time, whats that? I've been planning on building a copy carver that I could one day turn into a routing / cutting machine. I know how these machines work, and have an idea for the basic frame to start out with. But I know nothing about the software side of things. I'm looking for some books that start at the ground floor. Can some one point me in the right direction.

Thanks

[Switcher]

I suggest to use Mach3 http://www.machsupport.com as the control, you can download the program. Watch the videos, first.


Videos:
http://www.machsupport.com/videos.htm




Also read the forums here for your specific project, router, plasma, etc...

.

[diarmaid]

I bought the solsylva plans for a small wood router. Ok, they are 'plans' not a basic's book, but they cleared the actual machine components concepts up for me. I found them, along with this site, great to get a basic understanding of the concepts. You probably can get the basics by just using this site.
http://www.solsylva.com/

[ger21]

As was mentioned, watch the Mach3 videos, and read through the manual. Mach3 reads a g-code file, which tells the machine how and where to move. With an CAD background, g-code should be easy to learn. It's basically just a bunch of X,Y,Z coordinates, and mostly either straight or arc moves.

If you have AutoCAD 2002 or newer, I wrote a macro that will export g-code from circles and polylines from within AutoCAD.
http://home.comcast.net/~cncwoodwork.../AC2GCv039.zip

If you download and install Mach3, and the macro, you can create g-code and simulate the machine running with Mach3. To install Mach3 in simulation mode, make sure you uncheck the box labeled "install driver" near the end of the install.