gcodetools for inkscape

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

… does anyone have experience with this?

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Note: Topic is 'CNC machine tools' because that's what G-Code drives.

I have installed Inkscape and the gcodetools 'extension' on my Mac.

Both look very powerful, but I suspect that the learning curve will be steep.

Is there anyone out there with experience?

… I look forward to hearing from you!

MichaelG.

[russellParticipant @russell]

Hi MichaelG

my wife and i use Inkscape to develop designs for her paper cutter – (effectively a sign cutter) – this functions like a roll plotter, except with a sharp knife instead of a pen…

 

We found it fairly straightforward to learn. Somethings dont work as you'd first expect, and there is the odd bug, but in general its pretty good.

 

I decided it wasnt really suitable for 'engineering' type drawings, although i have no doubt it could be used for that. (i'm currently trying to learn CREOElements/ Direct Modelling Express which is a free 3D package. )

 

I've not tried g code in any shape or form so cant comment on that part…

Edited By russell on 28/06/2012 04:06:59

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Russell,

Thanks for the comments

I've just had a very quick look through the PTC website, and was impressed by this video.

… CREO Elements definitely looks worth further investigation!

That said, it was the availability of gcodetools that really attracted me to Inkscape.

Thanks again

MichaelG.

[Jeff DaymanParticipant @jeffdayman43397]

I use PTC ProE and Creo products in my day job. They are good quality, but there are a few things to be aware of:

-it is still early days for the Creo lineup, and there are still some pretty big bugs and problems, compared to ProE which has become very stable over the years. The new drawing interface ribbon in Creo is really bad compared to ProE's drawing tools in my opinon.

-ProE and Creo are professional design and drawing software and full-capability user licenses start in North America at around $7500 USD each, plus around $1500/year base module maintenance, upward as more modules are added.

-PTC still do not have an industry standard CNC programming module that works well. Most industry ProE users use a secondary CNC programming tool like Mastercam for CNC.

-PTC's help /training software is among the absolute worst in the business. In person training by an expert is usually best, and with a good trainer you can get up to speed quickly. If you need to call their help desk you speak to very polite but completely useless staff in India or Bangladesh that have a script and standard spiel but are usually not fully trained in ProE. As a user of PTC products since 1993, I don't have to call them with a critical "showstopper" problem very often, maybe once a year. When I do it is a serious problem, and have not yet received a useful "fix" reply in less than 5 days, sometimes not at all, so it is of no use to me at all.

-PTC VAR's (who you buy ProE and Creo from) are not to be trusted. I have experienced many scams and very "sharp" business practices from several VAR's, and always have had to pay much more for licenses etc. than the published PTC rates. Unless you are a big enterprise firm with sales over $2,000,000 USD, PTC forces you to buy from a VAR.

JD

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Thanks for that review, Jeff

… If that's the standard of spport from the Pro's, I am glad I can't afford it !!

Inkscape and gcodetools are both free and open-source … being developed by enthusiasts.

MichaelG.

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

An interesting diversion on my path to enlightenment …

I found this amazing G-Code Viewer

It's Web-based, and runs WebGL … so only works in some Browsers

But definitely worth a look.

MichaelG.

[Gone AwayParticipant @goneaway]

Jeff, I used Pro/E in my day job too from about 1996 till I retired 9 years ago. Things have changed a bit, I think.

The latest version I used was 2000i …. we received Wildfire but we (I actually) elected not to switch to it at that time because we had a very tight schedule and the learning curve for the switch to Wildfire was much worse than for previous updates. Not the least of it was the the change to the model manipulation (rotate/pan/zoom) buttons and keys. I hadn't realised just how second-nature that had become until then. On top of that, I knew I would be retiring within a year so it was easy to leave the migration to Wildfire to the next guy

We were serviced (in Canada) by a local outfit which also did in person training courses(and were good at it). You could also pay them for 1-on-1 training on site if you wanted. They were also our primary help desk. They were quite close by and, if necessary would drop by to see the problem in situ.

Sounds like that's changed quite a lot. I'm a bit surprised their customer service seems to have fallen off …. They have a lot more competition these days.

I actually still have an old copy of 2000i (with licence) that I use at home for my workshop projects. I hope that the latest version is more intuitive and less user hostile than the earlier versions.

[russellParticipant @russell]

don't forget though, that the direct modelling EXPRESS product is free….a free version of a high end product can better a paid version of a cheap product…if you can live without official support.

(of course, it aint necessarily so…)

i agree, open source can produce great code, although sometimes usability isnt as good, it seems interface/usability experts aren't so interested in open source.

Can anyone advise if there is any level of interoperability between different 3D products? Ie, is it likely that a model built in one tool can be imported to another? (in the event creo goes belly up…)

-russell

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Russell,

"a free version of a high end product can better a paid version of a cheap product"

Very true … and that certainly seems to be the case with DraftSight [2D CAD from Dassault Systems]; which does everything that Autocad did a few generations back.

MichaelG.

P.S. Can you please point me to some info aout the Paper Cutter?

[Jeff DaymanParticipant @jeffdayman43397]

There is some functionality with direct native file transfer from CAD software to CAD software. For example, a native ProE model will transfer direct to Solidworks. However, there is usually some data loss. The majority of the main solids or surfaces will transfer with close to 100% fidelity. Rounds/fillets and draft angles, datum axes and planes are sometimes lost. Transfer is far better than it used to be though. A few years ago almost none of the model tree history parametrics would transfer reliably.

If you export a STEP or IGES file from any given major CAD software, these will import 100% complete and accurate most of the time into any other major CAD software. If you are doing an interference check, like dropping a boiler CAD model into a frame CAD model to ensure fit, this is fine. If you intend to be able to edit the part after transfer, like changing the number of tubes in the boiler, or the size of the firebox, it's not so good. The part imports as a non-editable lump. There are things you can do to patch and modify it but this is for advanced users only, and time consuming, so if you don't absolutely have to edit an imported lump, you don't.

JD

[Jeff DaymanParticipant @jeffdayman43397]

Posted by Sid Herbage on 28/06/2012 22:56:23:

Jeff, I used Pro/E in my day job too from about 1996 till I retired 9 years ago. Things have changed a bit, I think.

The latest version I used was 2000i …. we received Wildfire but we (I actually) elected not to switch to it at that time because we had a very tight schedule and the learning curve for the switch to Wildfire was much worse than for previous updates. Not the least of it was the the change to the model manipulation (rotate/pan/zoom) buttons and keys. I hadn't realised just how second-nature that had become until then. On top of that, I knew I would be retiring within a year so it was easy to leave the migration to Wildfire to the next guy

We were serviced (in Canada) by a local outfit which also did in person training courses(and were good at it). You could also pay them for 1-on-1 training on site if you wanted. They were also our primary help desk. They were quite close by and, if necessary would drop by to see the problem in situ.

Sounds like that's changed quite a lot. I'm a bit surprised their customer service seems to have fallen off …. They have a lot more competition these days.

I actually still have an old copy of 2000i (with licence) that I use at home for my workshop projects. I hope that the latest version is more intuitive and less user hostile than the earlier versions.

Hi Sid,

Yes, the learning curve for Wildfire was extremely steep for very little benefit. It was primarily driven by PTC marketing to make the user interface or "front end" look and feel more like their major competitor Solidworks, and make the menu picks work more like Windows. Behhind the new user interface, the old style (and rock solid) ProE menu driven CAD was running just the same as always.

With Creo they have stared to change the underlying software in addition to changing the user interface to ribbon style selection system, to make it more like Windows 7 etc. Again though, users have to put up with another major change to the user interface and again the learning curve is steep. Again we have much lost time and productivity to learn a new front end imposed by a software company. There is some increased functionality, but also some major financial traps with the maintenance costs for the many "apps" that are offered. In many cases several extra "apps" are needed to do what one module of Wildfire did. The difference is that each app carries a yearly maintenance cost. If you had a "Foundation XE" Wildfire licence the maintenance used to be about $1500 per year. Now, to get the full functionality of that licence you would need 2 extra apps so you pay $1500 x 3 or $4500 maintenance. (or that is what the VARS are trying to get away with. The info on what is included functionality and what is not is very vague, no one seems to know in detail. I am using the basic Creo license and have found a ton of stuff I could do is missing, but I can't find out what "app" modules the missing stuff is in for sure. It is early days for Creo as I said.

My general opinion is that I like ProE very much, Creo not so much, but I really hate the way PTC (the parent corporation) does things. I am not a fan of tyhe VARS either.

In the 1990's, training and support from a company called Rand Worldwide out of Mississauga Ontario was great. The training from the VARS now is not too solid, generally. Rand is no longer a VAR for ProE, although they do offer some ProE training at HUGE costs. I usually hire a couple of ex-Rand guys who have kept current with ProE for training these days. They are generally excellent quality trainers and charge about a quarter of what the VARs do. Torgon and BRT are no longer ProE VARs either. TriStar still are, but their sales practices are iffy. There is NO local help desk anymore.

2000i was the last great rev of ProE before Wildfire. I could make 2000i sing, and was never more productive than I was working in 2000i. Nowadays I have a daily fistfight with ProE products to reach decent productivity, due to piss poor front end interface software and hidden or lost functionality.

It was a running joke among long time ProE users that we would bet on the fact that the end of the world would happen sooner than implementation of enhancement requests. I had many ER's that were filed 1993-2001 which I never heard another word about, and I have since found out that many of these were seconded or duplicated by thousands of users. As an example I requested in 1993 that commonly used shapes be included in the sketcher menu, like hexagons, round ended slots, keyhole shapes, etc. rather than just lines arcs circles and rectangles. I recently found out that some of the other/extra shapes have been implemented on Wildfire 5, released dec 2011. The stats published on one user site said that this enhancement had been requested 230,500 times since 1993. 18 years for PTC to do it. This lack of response for ER's really put a bad taste in many people's mouths. PTC is now listening more to users, but for a very long time they just did not care, except for big customers with hundreds or thousands of seats of ProE. That bus left the station a long time ago, and many users are now single seat or two seat customers. -end of rant- JD

[Gone AwayParticipant @goneaway]

Posted by Jeff Dayman on 29/06/2012 15:12:22:

In the 1990's, training and support from a company called Rand Worldwide out of Mississauga Ontario was great.

2000i was the last great rev of ProE before Wildfire. I could make 2000i sing, and was never more productive than I was working in 2000i.

Hi Jeff,

Actually, Rand was the company I was talking about that we used. They were very good and had their standard courses or custom courses if you wanted to pay for them. Still got the course notes from some of them.You must live in my neck of the woods then (Mississauga)?

When I said 2000i up there I actually meant 2001i and I suspect you did too. As I recall, 2000i was a bit of a dog and was rapidly replaced (one of the alternate good/bad releases that PTC used to go through at that time. Autodesk did too funnily enough).

[Jeff DaymanParticipant @jeffdayman43397]

Hi Sid, you have a private message.

Happy Canada Day to all Canadian forum readers!

JD

[Author]

Posts