I did a search through here for this one but couldn't see the answer. So:

I can define the order the parts are cut in by the order they get grouped in. That works fine. However! Is it possible to define where on each part the cut will start?.

It seems right now that the code wastes an awful lot of time making pointless tool moves, where it ends up covering the same ground more than once, by not starting the cut at the nearest point, to the place where it finished cutting the last part.

Any suggestions??

Edit: another quick question that occurs to me.... Is there anywhere in sketchup that allows you to see a list of the groups and the order they appear in, and to easily alter that order?? I ask this one because I'm used to having a tree structure of groups available in to view in 3D Canvas and being easy to alter those in there as well.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

 

Yes, you can define where the cut will start. it trys to go in the order you drew it. for example if you draw a line it will try cutting it in the same direction you drew it, or if its an arc it will start at the first point you put down. When you have several lines that are connected to form a surface it seems to start at the first point of the last line added to make that surface. Of course I'm still learning this and I may be mistaken on some cases, and when you group things it changes the order too. For an example of a file I did to minimise tool travel without using any groups look at the file I posted in viewtopic.php?f=102&t=1003 Right before Mark cut one out to test. If I can explain it any better, please ask

 

OK.... Thanks for your help... I did have a read through your thread earlier and it kind of partly answers the question, but not fully.

What if I drew a part a while ago and have no idea where I started to draw it??

What if I drew or created the part as part of a 3D model and then flattened or unwrapped it and where I started drawing it originaly bears no relation to the layout subsequently created on a parts sheet?

What if I want to alter where the cut starts on a part?? I don't really want to have to define the starting point before I even draw a part.

I really just want to be able to pick a point and say "Start There" for each part. I take it this isn't possible?

Am I just hitting the limitations of Sketchup and Phlatscript?

To be honest I'm just finding sketchup way too basic in a lot of areas. For example... what CAD program (except sketchup) doesn't have any functions for drawing splines and beizer curves! I've never seen a CAD program that's so irritatingly limited in what you can and can't edit after you created it. Even adding plugins to create curves, it's near impossible to actually edit them easily afterwards. These are such basic CAD concepts that their ommision really is unbelievable.

At the moment I'm seriously considering ditching sketchup and generating G-Code from something a bit more capable. Don't get me wrong, the Phlatscript plugin is superb and an excellent piece of coding. In fact it's outstandingly good. Just unfortunate that it's bolted to a dogs beakfast like sketchup.

Sorry!! I don't mean to be ranting.... It's just after banging my head against a brick wall with sketchup all day it's kind of getting to me when I go to do something and the tools to do it don't exist.

Best Reagrds,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

 

Gefahren, you pretty much nailed it. The code just orders things based on how SU returns it while iterating. That is how the grouping of parts helps in the cut order. When asked for all the groups SU returns them in the order they were made.

I have about five bug tickets to finish for the next version of the script and it includes the ability to select a cut start point. It also has a basic algorithm to try and cut parts closer together that is optimized for Y travel.

 

Thanks for your reply... I appreciate that this is probably as much to with me as it is with anything else. I'm so used to having sophisticated tools available to me that sketchup has me tearing my hair out. That's not in any way a fault of Phlatscript. It's a fault of Sketchup.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

 

Hey FozzyTheBear, you posted while I was making the last reply. I agree with you that SU has some pretty severe limitations but Mark's goal with PhlatScript is to be a free, easy to use tool for people that may not have any CAD experience at all. I think we can all agree that the SU/PhlatScript combo does a pretty good job of meeting that goal.

You seem quite experienced and a lot of people at that level have similar complaints. If you have access to other CAD/CAM software I think you will be much happier with it. There are absolutely no hard feelings about you using another software suite but even if you do, I like hearing the complaints of why you made the choice. At some point there may be a solution that addresses the experienced users issues with SU and PhlatScript.

 

Please don't take it the wrong way at all.... I understand the goal. And for a lot of users it meets that objective perfectly and with every release of phlatscript it's getting better and better. I very much appreciate the work done on it. I'm certainly not knocking phlatscript, because I think the work done on that, is absolutely outstanding. It's really the base platform it's running on top of, that's giving me grief.

I would have liked to have seen it implemented for something like Autocad or 3DStudio or ideally for the free cad software that's easy to use but very powerful like 3D Canvas, that in fact has a very good plugin structure and hooks for additional software.

I'll certainly be sticking with Sketchup and Phlatscript for the basic projects. But I may employ other stuff when I really need to. This is simply because it's faster and easier than having to reinvent the wheel inside sketchup. In fact it may prove easier to export DXF from something else into sketchup before running phlatscript on it.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

 

I agree that sketchup can be frustrating, I've been modeling in Rhino3d for several years(since the 1.1 beta) and when I got into sketchup it simply sucked. I've gotten more used to sketchup and like some of the features, but I'm still doing any real 3d work in Rhino. I've not had any problems with the .dxf import that others have so I'm comfortable importing those.

Right now if I need to define the starting point of something I've already drawn then I delete the surface and whichever line I want to be the start. Then I redraw that one line.

I'm real happy to hear about those improvements to the phlatscript that are scheduled to be added, it will make it much simpler to get the right results the first time I think.

 

Trust me, I am not taking it the wrong way at all and while I don't presume to put words in Mark or Trish's mouth I believe they would say the same.

It looks like I need to check out 3D Canvas. I didn't have any CAD or CNC experience when I built my flat bed machine back in May (I don't have a phlatprinter, yet). I was looking for free/open source CAD software and the phlatscript is the first thing I found so I have done whatever I can to improve it to meet my needs.

 

It's written by a guy called Richard Borsheim, He's a very nice chap and is always interested in new projects and new ideas and new ways of using his software. If you want to see what it's capable of you might not have seen one of my other posts:
http://www.phlatforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=102&t=1002#p8561 That should give you some idea of what it can do.

The address to check it out is: http://www.amabilis.com Have a chat with Richard, and tell him I sent you over there.
You can see more of that model of mine in the gallery at: http://www.amabilis.com/gallerymstssteamlocomotives.htm It's a fully working model with all the parts animated and functional.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

 

I did see that fantastic Engine you drew but I completely glossed over the software you used. That looks like a very good price for each version but the version matrix says that plugins and scripting are only available in the Pro version. I am downloading the base version now just to check it out. Thanks for the link, I'll probably pick up the Pro version.

 

Fozzy, this is a milestone in the next release, and is under development. Gerfhren has the correct approach as of now. And I'm not sure it works in all occasions.

Do you have a MKI?

One thing you may want to look at as a temp speed up is this:
Set your X axis to a very fast speed, it will handle 200-300ipm

If you have a MKII set both the X and Y up for those kinds of speeds. (Mark say 600ipm is doable).

Then change your feed rate inside the script to the actual number of inches per miniute you want to cut at. The feed rate is a direct value not a percentage. Set it at 30-40 and the pp will make cuts at that rate, and will truck to the next cut at the max that it is set for.

 

I have a MK1.XXX It'll be a MK1 with a lot of mods.... What I'm looking at at the moment is just the software running on the bare board and steppers. But I'm watching the tool moves and seeing the extra moves happening.

Thanks for the speed tip.... I will give that a try.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

 

Fozzy, there are many programs for 3D but with these capabilities, only SU is free.

There is a plugin to make bezier splines and curves. Look here http://www.crai.archi.fr/RubyLibraryDep ... o_page.htm

 

Thanks Tiger Pilot,
Much appreciated! There are some really good plugins on that site.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

 

I've gotta give Sketchup it's props as well, I've used many CAD interfaces, but for free Sketchup is tough to beat. There are some things that seem to be 'issues' but you get that with any new CAD software after you've learned your first. 9/10 times, there is a way to do what you want, it just requires a different approach.

I've used some very expensive packages that lacked an UNDO feature!

Most deal breakers I've been through on CAD software has been on the finalizing features of that particular software, for instance if a company wanted THEIR drawing detailed in ‘such n such’ of way and the software didn't allow for that... You could have a superior modeling program, that was not used, simply because the final mfg drawing detail wasn't up (or sometimes down) to their par. What?!? Inventor wont let you detail like that? Fine! -Do everything in turboCAD.

 

All good points there.... Like I said it's more to do with me struggling with the interface and the lack of some tools that I'd expect to just be there. Thanks to Tiger Pilot's link, a lot of that is fixable. Many of the plugins on that page put things right where I want them.

I'd had a particularly frustrating day with it yesterday. Like you say, for being totally free (although not quite free in my case, because I'm on the pro 7 version) it's not that bad. It's just really that the workflow is so very different to anything else, and the lack of easy editing of components after they're created does frustrate me a bit.

Reorganising the tool layout and adding more plugins today, has fixed a lot of the things that were irritating. I think the stock screen layout was part of why I was tripping over myself a lot of the day yesterday.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

 

Yes indeed.
Fozzy do you have any models made up worth a screeny or two? I'd like to see what your cooking up over there!

 

LOL Yeah! I'll drag something out of the vaults of Dr Frankenbears Lab at some point soon. Evil Laugh :ugeek: Miniature Arcade Machine Cabinets in progress right now.... I know weird! best not to ask!!

I've also got a 40" span, scale, Messerschmitt 163 Komet in progress, that I started designing and building by hand in depron a while ago. I'm now converting my paper drawings to CAD versions so I can cut it on the Phlatprinter.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

 

Both of those projects sound very cool man! I'd love a mini-river-raid (the old Atari 2600 game).

 

First one up is the "Williams" Defender cabinet.... To be followed swiftly by Pacman, Sinistar, Space Invaders, "Atari" Star Wars and now it seems I need to find the drawings out for the River Raid Cabinet.... I'm sure I'll have the graphics for that somewhere... They're all 1/6th scale by the way.

EDIT: It seems that River Raid was never an actual Arcade Machine, before it went onto the 2600... so I might have to fake one up for you in a generic Atari cabinet... I'll see what I can do....

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)