MeshCAM Beta 10

[robgrz]

It's here finally - http://www.robgrz.com/download.phtml . By far the biggest release yet; something like 17 changes from the last version. The highlights are:

1) New stock dialog, much more flexible
2) Fixed bug where only flat end mills were used in calculations (Only a problem in Beta 9)
3) DXF support.
4) Ability to cancel long calculations
5) Lots of smaller changes requested by user is various forums.

The DXF importer seems to work well with the output from Rhino, but I'm sure many problems lurk. If you have a DXF file that doesn't work, let me know and I'll see if I can fix it.

Also, I've taken a beating in several newsgroups over my roughing algorithm with regard to the number of retracts it uses and my ego can't take it anymore. I've nearly completed a new roughing algorithm that allows an arbitrary stepover to be used and allows the user to select climb,conventional, or zigzag milling. This should be ready in about a week.

As always, let me know what you think,
Robert

[kong]

Sounds like you've really been putting in the hours! I'll download it tonight and have a play around. You should be getting the photo's I promised in a week or so, as my machine is finally running.

[balsaman]

It won't open a 2D DXF from autocad...Is it supposed to? I don't know what it would do with it if it did open it. No error when opening but nothing to see and an error when you build a zmap.

Eric

[Rekd]

Wow!

Looking forward to trying it out!

'Rekd

[rcrabb]

I can't get it to open a 3d dxf from autocad. May I'm doing something wrong. Everything else seems to work good.

[robgrz]

MeshCAM can only handle a DXF built from 3DFaces; 2D files have no physical meaning in a program linke MeshCAM. I know thaat Rhino gives the user an option when exporting a DXF to use 3DFaces or 3DMeshes. 3Dfaces are the only thing supported.

If your DXF file meets these requirements
and still won't open then email it to me and I'll figure it out.

Robert

[kong]

No problems here with DXF. But I do have a small problem that's been with me since the first meshcam I downloaded. If you can see the little grey box in the screenshot, it dissapears if I am rotating or moving the model, but then appears again. Seems to be a problem with my system, if I open another application over meshcam, then bring meshcam to the foreground, the box dissapears. Anyone got any ideas?!

[robgrz]

Before I had the display quality settings it took a long time for a big model to redraw so I made it not redraw if the view got messed up from a window displaying on top of it. To get it to redraw you can click anywhere on the 3d window to force a redraw. I had gotten used to it and forgot that it may not be obvious to everyone. I'll have to look at a way to fix it.

[kong]

Ah! nice one rob, On my desktop I am running "coolmon" which displays system stats. It is this program which is behind meshcam and is causing it to display the grey box. I only noticed it coz if I resize a picture, and the box dissapears, it re-appears every time the clock on coolmon is updated! Another problem solved.