RCAD by me

[Robin Hewitt]

are you looking at developing it ?

Hi Mark

An excuse to gloat a bit more :naughty: Thanks I wasn't actually expecting any replies :whistling:

I spent a lot of time and money looking for CNC software that was right for me. I couldn't find it so I wrote my own. The chances of this being right for anyone else seems somehow remote.

The AutoCAD end is easy if you know AutoCAD. But who uses AutoCAD these days? I am a bit of a dinosaur. I use a cheap AutoCAD clone called ProgeCAD which has the required AutoCAD structure to make a pukka dxf output.

Here's a pic of the drawing that created the cut file shown above...

Draw each cut level with lines, arcs and circles. Bulges have a positive thickness, pockets have a negative thickness. Bulges inside pockets not a problem, nest as many as you like.

It stitches everything together for you, I've never understood why some software makes you do that manually, it is so easy.

Anything with a zero thickness draws on screen but doesn't cut.

Zero thickness circles create location points, handy for drilling holes on a mill drill.

If you want a block outline to control waste removal you stick it on a seperate layer called "Block". If you don't draw a block it creates one that is a snug fit to the lowest outline.

I wanted it to cut injection tooling so f you put things on a layer called "draft_2.0" you impose a 2 degree draft angle on it.

Rounded sides similarly. It compensate for a ball nose cutter, "Tool 1.5 ball", but that really slows it down because the Z advances to keep the tool overlap constant on the arc circumference. Surface finish is paramount.

I do plan to allow blocks so I can tell it, "Cut fred" and it will go looking for blocks called fred.

best

Robin