RE: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] Future CNC man

Shawn, yes there are several ways to get .dwg's to work under linux. the
most direct way is to get vmware (www.vmware.com), and simply run autocad
under a windows98 (tm) window. i do that with autocad2000, it is a touch
slow, but i have an old machine. a less direct way is to use qcad (and
camexpert--which i haven't personally used yet, just qcad) www.qcad.org.
qcad for linux is free, and ihave used it for more then a year. it is very
powerful, but pretty easy to learn. the selection process is 'backwords'
from the traditional autocad way... you should select things BEFORE you
apply the command to them, and things stay selected, you must do an
'unselect all' (one of the buttons) to get a new selection set.
also there is no command line, which can be a bummer for us old acad guys...
the native language of qcad is the .dxf, but i have found that reimporting
dxf's to autocad does not work after a while (from qcad)
one thing i have heard about camexpert (the beefed up version of qcad with
cam stuff in it) is that the toolpaths are defined in the actual drafting
file, so that editing them is much easier... i have not used it, so i can't
say for sure. the price last i read for camexpert was 180 for the linux
version, and 250? for the windows version... not sure
anyhow, hope that helps,
Dave L.

-----Original Message-----
From: hightechsystems@... [mailto:hightechsystems@...]
Sent: Thursday, September 20, 2001 11:01 PM
To: CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] Future CNC man



I plan in th near future to setup a CNC for a 3-n-1 system. I have
not worked all the details out on the hardware side, but I was
wanting to know what is needed from the software side to get the end
results on the CNC machine. I'm a user of Autocad and wish to stay
with it. What is involved in taking a Autocad file and turning it
into a working part. I see lots of refrences to EMC for linux. Would
files move from the NT Autocad enviroment to the Linux and is there
some sort of file conversion? Anyway I'm trying to visualize what's
involved on the software side of things. LIke I said though I would
like to use my Autocad files.

Thanks for answering my newbie questions. I hope to be in the CNC
world soon. Looks to cool not to do.

Shawn



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