It turned out to be easier than I thought. I just created a basic DXF drawing in ACAD9 with the types of lines, curves I wanted to added. This gave be the nasty, in coherent header and a proforma for each of the curve types I needed. A bit of cutting and pasting to turn it into VB and ta daaa
Previously the outline was made up of 1mm, seperate line segments. When I tried to load it into Mach3 (Shareware CAD/CAM software) it didn't create a tool path correctly. With the upgrade I've changes to a new type of DXF entity called a polyline which is a single line made up of a long list of coordinates - much like G-Code which is the language of CNC control.
LazyCAM, which is the tool I used for creating the G-Code to import into Mach3,appeared to create a sensible tool path and didn't miss anything. Yet to be tested on a CNC but I'm hopeful that the output from BoardOff can be loaded into a CAM package without modification.
So far, I've only upgraded the outline template. The plan is to do a bit of work on the rocker jigs and explore whether its possible to generate a 3-D surface for the rocker table. From what I've read you can take a grid of 3D points and create a topological path to pass a smooth surface through them - which sounds like a 3D spline fit. It might be possible with BoardOff to pull out the vertices for 1mm x 1mm tiles (a POLYMESH in DXF speak) and use that. Not sure how smooth the surface would be though. Maybe enough if your willing to clean it up a bit before using it.
Screen Capture BoardOff output in LazyCAM
Nice work. It really depends on what cnc program you are using too. I use vcarve pro and it traces the pdf files your program outputs without any worries at all. The machine i have access to is only smaller (Shark pro) but it get it done if i tile the output to the machine
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