Seen on IRC yesterday. The python-scripting capability of FreeCAD(a Qt + OpenCascade based free CAD-program) allows calling opencamlib for toolpath-calculations much like is done from HeeksCAD/CNC(a Wx + OpenCascade based free CAD-program).
Cool.
Another screenshot with waterline:
I like what i see
I am in need of installing this on both ubuntu 10.04 and windows xp to use with my emc2 machine but i can not figure out how to get it to run on windows first and then ubunut . any help would be great
Thanks
John Ackland
For FreeCAD you will need to ask on the #freecad IRC channel or on their mailing-list. The big dependencies are Qt and OpenCascade (you need these libraries installed first).
I build Opencamlib using cmake on Ubuntu. The easiest way to build opencamlib on another platform is to get the cmake-toolchain to work (probably in the mingw-environment). I haven't tried, but I expect only minor changes would then be required to the cmake-configuration. The other option is to use Visual Studio, but that requires either making a VS solution-file by hand, or figuring out how cmake can generate one. Note that the free version of Visual Studio does not support OpenMP which is used for multi-threading in opencamlib (everyone has 4 or 8 cores in their machines now!).
If cnczone has a cad/cam forum that might be a place to find people with the same interests.
Anders
It is not exactly clear to me how you configure and run FreeCAD with opencamlib. Is there any documentation anywhere?
HeeksCad did pretty good tool paths, so I look forward to using it with FreeCAD.
The screenshots are from Dan Falck's blog
http://opensourcedesigntools.blogspot.com/
He may have the complete workflow, or parts of it, documented in his blog.
On Ubuntu the easiest way to install opencamlib is through the PPA: https://launchpad.net/~anders-e-e-wallin/+archive/cam
I agree that moving over the CAM-operations from HeeksCNC to FreeCAD would be a good idea. I've been busy with OpenVoronoi so there will be some profiling & pocketing toolpaths available with that library also in the near future.
Anders