Re: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] Linux -soup to nuts?

"scyvt" <scy@...> wrote:

> Is it possible yet to conduct the entire three stage process from design to making chips on
> the Linux platform?

I haven't done all three steps yet, but I have a plan for doing it all
in Linux, sort of.


I'm doing the lowest-level machine control in Linux using EMC. I'm super
impressed with EMC. It takes some understanding of the underlying
equipment (at various levels) to configure it, but I dont see how that
could be avoidable in this field. The documentation is excellent, the
online community is very responsive and helpful, and the software has
been 100% stable so far.


I'm doing CAD in Windows XP, running in a Qemu virtual machine on my Linux
laptop. There are some Free/Open-Source Software (FOSS) CAD solutions,
but they're very immature and primitive. When they catch up with the
commercial Windows offerings I'll be delighted to switch, but for now
nothing I've seen comes close to Solidworks. FWIW I've looked at these:

synergy <http://www.webersys.com/>

qcad (2d only) <http://www.qcad.org/qcad.html>

pythoncad <http://www.pythoncad.org/>

varicad <http://www.varicad.com/>

art of illusion (written in Java, the reprappers use this)
<http://www.artofillusion.org/>

alibre <http://www.alibre.com/>

freecad <http://juergen-riegel.net/FreeCAD/Docu/index.php?title=Main_Page>

brl-cad (the gcam folks like this) <http://www.brlcad.org/>

SagCAD (seems pretty dead) <http://sagcad.sourceforge.jp/>


I'm not sure what to do for CAM. This is a piece of the puzzle I haven't
looked too closely at yet. I imagine I'll run something like MasterCAM
in another virtual machine on my Linux box. The FOSS projects I've
found do not seem ready for use yet:

gcam (promising) <http://gcam.js.cx/>

cam-occ <http://cam.occ.googlepages.com/>

OpenCAM (seems dead) <http://opencam.sourceforge.net/>


Doing Windows work on virtual machines instead of real machines has
removed 90% of the Windows headache for me. Each Windows application
is installed on its own dedicated virtual machine. I run them all in
"snapshot" mode, so when I'm done using the application for the day I
just kill the virtual machine and the disk goes back to its original
state - no risk of the corruption or the gradual decay that is so common
to Windows installations. I'll be happy to answer questions about this
setup, but let's do it offline so we dont anger the list ogre. ;-)


--
Sebastian Kuzminsky