Google drive sharing

Today, not sure how,
the access privileges to the download files were changed. A weird thing on the drive... Because I wasn't even online during the day. I changed the access rights back to everyone so downloads should work again.

Blender CAM on Blender Conference

Blender CAM will be presented next friday on the Blender Conference.
If you are going there, stop by. I will be there wanting to discuss anything related. I will also present some videos I did on the projection which will happen also there.

see the conference schedule here, the talk is on friday at 14:30 :
https://www.blender.org/conference/2014/schedule

Blender CAM 0.8.0

Let me present you the new version:

new features:

ramps with parallel strategy

- new strategy - curve to path. Enables to tweak paths manually.
-support splitting of large files. This is a machine setting. Splits into files always after a limit of operations per file is reached.-files can be exported now after computation, e.g. if you only change feedrate. This is also faster when you try to tweak your settings.
-operations now can start in the +z or -z area, this was requested on the forum.
-improvement for ramps - these now work with bridges, and are enabled for more strategies.
-experimental feature - more outlines for cutout operation. Is useful for making more space for chips, or to make more space around the piece because of shank. Doesn't support bridges nor sorting!-improved ramps, now work for almost any operation. They now work as zig zag for non-looped paths, so that the cut starts at the beggining of the path. works also with bridges for cutout.






-print progress in the operations list, rather than in header.
-waterline works a tiny bit better.
-if loading files from older files, you need to switch to blender CAM in the top header.

slicing

-basic slicing of objects, for cutting 3d objects from plywood. Just start of this, your ideas are welcome!













optimization:
-new library called Shapely can speedup pocket operations calculation up to 20X, and makes all offseting of 2d paths faster. Shapely gets installed similar to Polygon and numpy.
-many small optimizations made generation of large files about 35-30% faster.


fixes:
-fix pocket operation missing small rest spots, this happened if stepover was larger than cutter radius.
-drill paths work with object groups
-brought back some panels that went missing in last version
- a lot of small fixes




some little tools accessible through operator menu:

-boolean operation for Curve Objects-object silhouette offset, works for curves and low-poly meshes

background work:
- lots of code reshuffling, improvement in readability, so more coders can join the project
- start of testing framework
- starts for some new strategies.

Big thanks go to everybody:
-Giovanni Bianchessi, Bernhard Braun for doing Mac and Linux version 
-everyone who gives feedback and gives images to the gallery, or contributes in any other way
-everyone who donates money
-the people who started contributing code(which will hopefully be in next releases, but I am so happy about this, I have to mention it already now ;)

List of donors update

I haven't done this for several months - going through all emails, writing down names, and checking if the people wanted to be actually mentioned. I want to apologize for the delay in publishing the donations, I very much appreciate all the donations.

Also, all your donations are rewarded with my work. I spent a lot of time developing new version, but things are still not stable enough to make the release.

Good news is - the list is now large enough that I had to move it to a separate page on the blog. Also, donations towards open-sourcing the bas-relief addon are halw-way there, so someday in winter I expect the target could be reached.

Blender CAM 0.7.0

Pack curves on sheet example

New release!

What is new:

• custom cutter shapes. With exact mode, only convex are supported. 
• limit curve - you can now limit any operation with a curve.
• limit curve and ambient have now an option, whether the cutter stays inside completely, or reaches the limit with it's tip.
• Pack curves on sheet - this helps a bit to save material. The algorithm is slow by now, but provides relatively good results
• Code for this version was completely reorganized and there are many internal changes. 

• Please test and report any bugs you encounter, there might be some tricky things.
• some more speedups in both modes.
• Lots of bug fixes
• Big part of work for n-axis was done, but it is not visible in UI. I cannot test the code, so I don't want to release anything. also other things are wip.

  

  limit curve used on an operation 

• All the code was separated into libraries. I wanted it to be more readable, and also would like to invite more coders to join.

As always, big thanks to:
as always, thanks to:

• Bernhard Braun and Giovanni Bianchessi for linux & mac builds
• Gaël Rosset for extensive reporting of bugs
• everybody who posted feedback or donated

this help is essential for the project, I don't have time to test everything properly, and donations help me to save some extra time.

Also, new tutorials coming soon! and more surprises ;)