Using EMC2 with a Mac (GCodeCnv)

[acondit]

I love emc2 but I hate having to go out in the garage when working on a part just to see if emc2 likes my gcode or not.

So to make a long story short, I am working on a piece of software to run on my Mac that will read a DXF file and generate gcode for the machines in the shop.

I actually have a version running. It currently generates gcode specifically for EMC2 (it uses o-words and emc2 subroutines). It currently only generates code for my mill (not my lathe). I have written a number of gcode subroutines and many of them will ultimately be used in wizards in the software. The only one that is currently being used as a wizard is for cutting holes. I generate a subroutine from the DXF input and have another subroutine that calls it repeatedly to cut to depth. The result is much shorter gcode output than some other software. Much easier to debug.

It has a job setup window for setting parameters related to the particular job being run; a layer list for all of the layers in the DXf, and a Layer Edit that allows you to set certain variables by layer (for example you can change the depth of cut for each layer).

You can also set a preference to set how close the ends of entities must be to be considered connected.

I have attached a few screen shots to show what it looks like.

It currently barfs on some large DXF files.

Alan

[henrikw]

Nice Work!

Need a beta tester?

H.

[acondit]

Originally Posted by henrikw Nice Work! Need a beta tester? H.

Probably will shortly.

Alan

[chinsettawong]

Wonderful work!

Wachara C.

[acondit]

I haven't totally solved the problem of dealing with large files but I did discover that it is something about their format that my program doesn't like. If I open the problem file with QCad (which it does without complaining) and resave the file then I can process it. Since QCad can open the problem file and I can't it must be in my read routines.

Alan

[Dan Falck]

Alan,
Could it be as simple as different line endings? I've had to put '\r\n' in for my line endings for the mac and '\n' for unix. It's usually easy to see what's going on by opening the file with vi.

Dan

[acondit]

Originally Posted by Dan Falck Alan, Could it be as simple as different line endings? I've had to put '\r\n' in for my line endings for the mac and '\n' for unix. It's usually easy to see what's going on by opening the file with vi. Dan

No, it is something else because I fixed the line endings problem a while back.

I have been spending a bunch of time on cleaning up my code and testing. Hopefully, I didn't break too much while cleaning up. I just had a lot of little bugs that I wanted to fix before I let anyone else have a shot at it.

Alan

[SpeedsCustom]

Good stuff ACondit, you always helped me with EMC2, i'll be asking questions in the coming days. Need to re-set my coolant relays gain, can't them to work!


-Jason

[acondit]

Originally Posted by acondit No, it is something else because I fixed the line endings problem a while back. I have been spending a bunch of time on cleaning up my code and testing. Hopefully, I didn't break too much while cleaning up. I just had a lot of little bugs that I wanted to fix before I let anyone else have a shot at it. Alan

Well, I thought that I fixed the line endings problem. It turns out that I had just fixed it for files written on the Mac or Linux/Unix. It was still bombing on files written under windows 'crlf' endings. That is now fixed too.

I still have a problem with certain entities in one DXF file. I handle LWPOLYLINE but not POLYLINE (Autocad DXF entity names). So the one DXF that I can't handle uses Polylines. I haven't decided what I want to do with that yet, it uses some slightly weird encoding and seems to have a lot of different types in it. Most of the DXF's are less that 200k but that one is 1.5mb. It looks almost like it has broken the curves into very short line segments rather than curves. That makes processing the file much slower in EMC2 as well. At some point I will have to bite the bullet and support that too, but for now I want to get everything else that I have written tested. In terms of machining speed it is better to use arcs to generate the DXF image than breaking the arc into very short line segments.

Anyway size isn't a problem. I added some progress indicators so I can tell where I am in processing a file.

Alan