On 10 Jan 2006 14:45:42 -0800, "Guy Fawkes"
wrote:


F. George McDuffee wrote:

My questions to the group.

(1) If its free and easy to use, would you like to have such a
program?

yes, in huge bold text


(2) Do you want the output to be a complete "stand alone"
program or simply a code fragment that you cut-n-paste into an
existing cnc program.

you said open source, so both really innit...


(3) Will a program that runs in a "DOS" box be acceptable, or do
you need/want one that runs in the windows environment?

platform independent like C would be best, failing that something that
could easily be recompiled into C, so lots of informative REM
statements


(4) Does it make any difference what language the source code is
written in? I am leaning toward M/S qb4.5 as I have/use that
compiler. I will post both the source [.bas] and compiled [.exe]
files for download.

see above

if the dll's are available if required linux users can always run it
under emulation.


(5) How much group interest is there in a version that generates
metric output?

honestly, it shoukd emuate g code and allow metric and imperial in the
same output


(6) How much group interest is there in a version that uses a
rotary indexer to generate text/graphics around a cylinder?

yes, radius compensation too for rotary table on mill stuff


(7) Is there another output format that would be more
acceptable/useful to the group than ISO? If so which one, and
what are the specifications, i.e. number of characters in each
column, leading/trailing signs, decimal point inclusion, number
of places, etc. FWIW, the program output will be positive
absolute moves only.

(8) How would you use such a program?

code library of gcode "objects" waiting to be made ;^)
=============
ref item 2 --
cut-n-paste option would have only the actual g0/g1 moves.
header of program to turn on spindle CW, set absolute, etc, and
footer turning everything off would be written by the user, who
then uses an editor to insert the generated code into the
complete program. From some emails I have received I think i
will do it this way as you can do a zero offset to position the
text/artwork just where you want it.

As several people have pointed out it is trivial to allow
selection of either inch or m/m output, so will include that.

I will get the "flat" version up and running and then try for the
cylinder model.

Uncle George