Extending CamBam

[Evan]

As most know I have been beta testing CamBam Plus for Andy Payne. I think it is a great program and it is getting better with each new revision Andy makes. He isn't paying me to say this and we have never even met. All I get from it is a new (and buggy!) preview release to play with. Andy has added some very nice new features lately and CamBam is turning into a powerful program.

I decided to help that along by writing an extension for generating spiral toolpaths. It will generate an almost endless variety of three and two dimensional shapes (many that cannot be machined) and will also generate any regular n-gon in any size or radial orientation on a 2D plane.

It's wizard driven. All you need to do is enter a series of simple parameters and it does the rest. No editing of the script or other complexities.

It's free. It's called Spiral PollyGone (there is a reason for that...)

Here is some of what it can do:



How about a parabolic mirror?



Need a cam clamp?



You are getting sleeeepyy.....



Download here:

http://vts.bc.ca/misc/SpiralPollyGone_v2.vbx

It's only 4kb. Rename the file to SpiralPollyGone_v2.vbs and put it in the CamBam scripts directory. Then open it from the scripts menu and select compile and it will run. The prompts include basic error checking but do not check for reasonableness. It is possible to bring CamBam to it's knees by entering very large values for some of the parameters. The same would apply to any program doing this sort of job.

Have fun. You are free to copy, distribute and do whatever you want with it as long as my copyright notice stays on the header in the file. If you find any bugs or have suggestions let me know.

[John Stevenson]

Are you working with Andy and Brian Barker on the new conversational program ?

.

[Evan]

Not at this time John.

[MickeyD]

Andy had a booth right next to my father's at the Makerfaire in Austin last fall and I got to spend some time talking to him. He is very nice and extremely dedicated to cambam.

[Evan]

I have added another small feature to Spiral PollyGone. You now may choose to invert the z axis (or not) for the object. If you have already downloaded it then just do it again.

[davidfe]

Evan,

I tried to download using the link. But, it does not exist.

Any chance of getting a copy?

Thanks,

David

[Thomas Staubo]

David, did you just click the link? I got a "Not found" when I did that.

But if right-click on the link and select "save link as..." or "save as..." it should work.


.

[davidfe]

David, did you just click the link? I got a "Not found" when I did that.

But if right-click on the link and select "save link as..." or "save as..." it should work.


.

Here is the link from below / or above as the case may be.

http://vts.bc.ca/misc/SpiralPollyGone_v2.vbx

It is for the extension od CamBam

Thanks,

David

[Evan]

Funny this should come to the top. I am right now writing new code that will produce a wide variety of 3D mesh constructs in CAMBAM that can be exported in DXF format for use in any CAD program including SketchUP.

These shapes only take a few seconds to specify and create.

Here are a few examples:

Need a velocity stack?



Rendered:



Don't ask me what this is but it looks cool.

[John Stevenson]

Don't ask me what this is but it looks cool.

It's one of these upside down



.