Suggestion to the Open Source Cam Authors

[ShopDawg]

I wanted to mention something that I've been thinking about, but so far haven't seen mentioned. It would be really, really, good if all these programs output a common, system neutral file format like the "dumb APT" that most large commercial programs put out, for example:

PARTNO SPRAG RACE
MULTAX
PPRINT***FIRST PASSES****
FEDRAT/10.0000000
RAPID
GOTO/ -0.3440000, 2.0913985, 2.0770814$
, 0.0000000, 0.5579433, 0.8298790
GOTO/ -0.3440000, 1.9914089, 2.1424050$
, 0.0000000, 0.5334523, 0.8458302
GOTO/ -0.3440000, 1.8870524, 2.2058616$
, 0.0000000, 0.5054939, 0.8628302
RAPID
GOTO/ -1.1000000, 2.9527934, 0.9360726$
, 0.0000000, 0.9014145, 0.4329573
FINI

This would allow us to use our time productively in creating cam programs that just create tool paths and prevent isolating the use of the program to a specific type of g-code. This is similar to how Java compiles to a neutral byte-code and relies on the specific java virtual machine to interpret the instructions. As a suggestion, the ANSI standard here

http://www.techstreet.com/cgi-bin/de...duct_id=101855

could be a good starting point. (the system-neutral cl-file portion of it)