Re:Visual Mill vs Visual Mill Basic questions

Don Rogers says:

"I look at the Gcode output, and if I'm not doing a rectangle piece,
there needs to be some G02 and G03 steps involved. You won't find
them with some of the raster approaches."

Don, I couldn't agree more. I guess the raster approach does have
its place, but, as far as I'm concerned, I want that place to be
somewhere far away from me :) If a machine is incapable of
simultaneous circular interpolation in 3 axes, then I can see where
this type code would circumvent that barrier, and some cam programs
do have the built in capability to break arcs into short straight
line segments to allow machines to do simulated helical
interpolation. This can be very useful, but, if all I need to do is
go around a corner at some specific radius, then I really am not
interested in seeing 300 lines of code generated to get me there.
If a person attempts to use this type code on an older machine which
uses only exact stop motion and does not have constant velocity
capability, then traveling around a simple contour can take a
lifetime, and you'll generally see every place the motion stopped
when you examine the part. IIRC, TurboCNC is strictly an exact stop
controller(someone please correct me if I'm wrong about this). I've
got a couple older machines that use exact stop, and for most things
its not an issue, but it certainly becomes an issue when there's
thousands of lines of code. Also, many older commercial controls
have single block look ahead capability, and code with very short
line segments turns one of these mills into an exact stop machine as
well, as the lines are executed faster than the control can operate
to move the next block into the buffer and keep up, so it stops and
waits. Just some points to be aware of when deciding what to buy.

Cliff