QCad CAM

Groovy, thanx.

That is not too dissimilar to what I'm doing. I made a circle, and I'm counting out the measurements between each one and creating a drill point. I figure if I do half, I cna then copy & duplicate it to create the other half.
Then I'll just delete the circle.
(and run the program to see how inadequate my measurements were... )

Import vs Export.
So, I export a saved drawing from QCAD using the [Lcnc_Mill] option and usually it works just fine.
Then I saw the Cam Import option.
It occurred to me that I should be able to load one of the Linux CNC, and since I noticed that one of the cribbage board patterns I wrote by hand needed a little modifying, I saved it on the Linux machine, from *.txt to the *.ngc extension (the only option available).
...and...
It didn't work. QCAD only offers the *cnc and *.nc file extensions. And when I expanded it to all files, I could see and 'select' the file...but it didn't load.

Anybody know of a work-around? Can I save the Linux files using a different extension?

Thanx!

>>> J

I've finally go my Qcad-CAM 2d config file into a reasonable showoff state.
The file sits alongside the standard file and then selected in the CAM dialog.
Z depth and tool compensation can be set using custom properties or capital letters in the layer names.

I finally did some real world testing and it works!





You can find more info on the Qcad forum.

srl

Okay...this is a new one;

I am attempting to make a POCKET. I have drawn out the outline in QCAD, loaded it into LinuxCNC and it looks just swell!

So then I draw in the pocket. Making each line approximately .125 apart (using a .25" bit) until I reach the middle.

One end is a semi-circle, and to make that I selected from the menu=
[Arc Tools], then [2 points and Angle]. I clicked one end, and brought it to the other end, enclosing the shape. = it worked just swell.

HOWEVER -
When I do this with the pocket operation, I'm getting an error that "radius to end of arc differs from radius to start"

I don't know how that can be. I used the 'snap-to-grid' and in the Properties window everything checks out~!

The first one worked just fine...In the event that there are too many for Qcad to understand/process, I will delete every other one and try it again.

Suggestions? Ideas?

Thanx -

>>> Sterl

I used the 'snap-to-grid'

I recently used LibreCAD, which is a debian fork of QCad, using Qt4 instead of Qt3

I had endless problems with joining arcs. No matter how much you enlarged the view the lines seemed to meet, but the gcode paths did not.
I discovered this when deleting part of an entity to find it was comprised of far more sections than it should have done.

I then used 'snap to entity' which gave apparantly the same result, but in fact ensured that the paths met at a precise point.

May not be your actual problem, but worth bearing in mind

regards

I beleave your error may have to do with relative-absolute I and J values. Standard Qcad-CAM , Linuxcnc and my Geko 540 uses relative.
I have noticed Andrew has written a absolute config file.

srl