Re:Rhino3D + Visual mill

>The plot thickens. I've started looking at the CAM side of things.
>I checked out Rhino - looks pretty powerful. With the Visual mill,
>it spits out Gcode. All good. The price of Visual mill seems to be
>around $2500. Anyone had any experience with this combo?

Like you, I decided that Rhino 3d was the way to go. I used their evaluation
package, and was able to do a couple things up front that I couldn't do
with any of the other packages I tried, so I ended up buying a copy. Now,
as you say,
the plot thickens. Finding a CAM package to work with it is a challenge.

My driver package is TurboCNC. It is a basic, easy to understand,
program. If
the rest of this project were so easy!!. Anyway, getting from Rhino 3D to
TurboCNC
has been a challenge. I am trying the ACE converter, and while I am
getting some tool
paths, I'm not sure it is the answer. I looked into the Visual Mill/ Free
Mill approach, and
at least for the Free Mill, it will only generate a raster scan of your
part. Try cutting eclipse's
with it and it is a problem. With The Ace converter, and Rhino, I was able
to, at least one
time, cut some very smooth eclipses in a radial pattern around a center
point, even though
I had not taken tool compensation into account and screwed up the part.

I am now looking at GMax and CNC Toolkit to bridge the Rhino 3D to TurboCNC
problem for
4 and 5 axis Gcode. At this point, I think I might die before getting
anywhere near the top of
the learning curve on all these products, and I'm planning on being around
for quite a while.

With the Rhino package, you have to dump the idea that you are making 2D
drawings of
the final product, but are instead making a, no holds bared, 3D image. For
us old blue print
guys, it is a big change in thinking. While you can make some very nice 2D
type drawings,
you can't, at least in my experience, get a usable DXF file, or any other
format, to translate
into G-code.

Again, this may just be my inexperience with these programs,

I've tried Meshcam also, and it is a beta test program that has some
potential. However, it too
is a raster scan type of G-code generator. Can't find a G02 or G03 in any
of the output.

Sure wish I had stumbled onto this stuff a few years back. Before I became
so set in my ways so to speak.

Don