anyone used apt360?

Stustev
Looks like I was wrong (again) I hunted down a emc5ax postp file for apt360 and it does produce 5axis moves.

Jim

I use dAPT many moons ago, first time a\in 1978, and then a few years later in the early 90's. I have been working on a Post Processor and have one functioning tha will produce good code in the XY plane only, and have created code for the Post that will produce working code for several machines that I work with, waterjet with Burny 10, KX3 mill with Mach3 and a couple Milltronics mills.

This is just a poke to see if anyone is still interested in APT. Would like to get to where I can compile APTOS and then work on the user interface a bit.

My post works under windows, I am thinking about converting it from VB6 to C and exercise my C & C++ programming skills...

Andy,
Sorry for the laaate response. This does convert APT to gcode.
APT is a generic process of machining a geometric defined object.
The PostProcessor is the tool used to convert the APT generated tool position data into a gcode (or other format) program for a specific machine tool. The PP has the machine's geometry definition and uses that to output gcode to control the machine.
You can use the generic APT tool position information to Post for machines with different geometric configurations.
The clearest example would be a Cincinnati 5 axis Hydrotel retrofit (like my cinci in the videos) and FSP120 from SNK. The Cinci spindle rides on the A axis and the A axis rides on the B axis. The SNK spindle rides on the B axis and the B axis rides on the A axis. Machining a part on machines sitting side by side will look amazingly similar but be assured the numbers in the program are very different.
StepNC was an initiative with the goal of what you describe as the better approach. I believe there was some success but a general success has been elusive. When driving a cutter around a set of geometric definitions a small change in one parameter could cause a wild variation in the resulting motion. This is rare but always a possibility.