Alpha 4 Released

[jpcaram]

Alpha 4 fixes two important parser bugs in Alpha 3 pointed out my Ismael and Horst. One of these bugs was not even present in Alpha 2. Sorry for that.

Cheers,

JP

[Stefano Therisod]

First of all:
Thank you for the great work you are doing!!!

I recently downloaded the Alpha4 Release and started to play with it.
So far I have two comments:
1) I tried to load the program on Windows XP but it didn't work. Looks like there is some compatibility issue with a program contained in"pygi-aio-3.10.2-win32_rev18-setup.exe"
2) I did try to generate the drill files for a PCB that I designed but I couldn't generate the files for more than two drill sizes. When trying to generate the file for the third drill size the second file gets overwritten...
I start from my NC drill file called CNC_Vcc.TXT I generate the first drill file called CNC_Vcc.TXT_cnc then the second called CNC_Vcc.TXT_cnc_1 but the third is called again CNC_Vcc.TXT_cnc_1 and overwrites the second one...

This should be an easy bug to fix.

Thank you again for you great work.
         Stefano

[Juan Pablo Caram]

Hi Stefano, 

Thanks for sharing your comments. I reply inline below:

So far I have two comments:
1) I tried to load the program on Windows XP but it didn't work. Looks like there is some compatibility issue with a program contained in"pygi-aio-3.10.2-win32_rev18-setup.exe"

That package, pygi-aio-... is one of the libraries included in FlatCAM. The libraries are not installed to your system, and they are kept as a local copy in the FlatCAM foder. So I don't really understand what could be the problem at this point. Could you post a more detailed error message?

 

2) I did try to generate the drill files for a PCB that I designed but I couldn't generate the files for more than two drill sizes. When trying to generate the file for the third drill size the second file gets overwritten...
I start from my NC drill file called CNC_Vcc.TXT I generate the first drill file called CNC_Vcc.TXT_cnc then the second called CNC_Vcc.TXT_cnc_1 but the third is called again CNC_Vcc.TXT_cnc_1 and overwrites the second one...

This should be an easy bug to fix.

Well, not so easy unfortunately. I'm working on debugging this. The names are assigned correctly at the moment of object creation, but it seems that at some point, when they are added to the list, the data on the "Selected" tab gets read (because the list got updated), and some things get overwritten, like the name. It is hard to debug, because it is related to the event system of the GUI toolkit, and it it is not obvious in which order things are happening.

Thanks!

JP

[Stefano Therisod]

Hi JP,

things always look much easyer if you aren't the one doing them... :)

About the XP installation:

I have been able to install the "FlatCAM-Win32-Alpha4-Install.exe" program but when launching it I get right away the following error message: "FlatCAM: 2D post-processing for manufacturing. has encountered a problem and needs to close.  We are sorry for the inconvenience."

I then tryed to install manually the program following the instructions on your website.

The first two packages installed fine but when trying to install: "pygi-aio-3.10.2-win32_rev18-setup.exe", after the file extraction, when trying to launch "zenity.exe" I did get the following error message: "zenity.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close.  We are sorry for the inconvenience."

My operating system is a 32bit Windosw XP version 2002 with SP3

Hope this might help.

Thank you again,

   Stefano

[Horst Mueller]

Hi JP,

Gerber is o.k. now.  But could you have a look at my Excellon drill file. It was produced by DIPTRACE.

It hangs while parsing.

kind regards

Horst

On Wednesday, March 19, 2014 3:20:45 PM UTC+1, jpcaram wrote:

[jpcaram]

Horst,

Indeed it hangs. I was not parsing the "+" in front of numbers. I will have it fixed in the next release. In the meantime if you can suppress the "+" in front of positive numbers you should be able to continue normally.

Thanks,

JP

[Mueller]

JP,

 

I was surprised that the “+ “was causing the problem, because I had the same idea and  removed it already before I filed this problem to you, however it did not work.

Now I figured out what I did wrong. My mistake was, while removing the “+” I also changed the X and Y from capital to small letters by accident.

Flatcam seems to not accept small X/Y letters ???  I do not know what the Excellon Specification requires, but other programs do not bother

With +/- and/or capital/small letters.

Kind regards

Horst

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "flatcam" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/flatcam/HQOATjDFl90/unsubscribe.
To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to flatcam+u...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[jpcaram]

l will add support for lower-case letters too.
Thanks,
JP

[lees...@gmail.com]

Hello, now I'm trying to use Alpha 4,

it's ok to read small sized gerber files(tried up to 15kb),

but when I try to read 96kb, 77kb..

the SW got stuck showing the message "parsing..."

is there file size limit? I was waiting for long time..(half day..-_-;;)

still can't read out. do I have to more??

[jpcaram]

Please send me the file so I can see what is causing the problem. Most likely the parser failed at some point in the file (and sadly I haven't implemented a good way to notify the user about this yet). There is no file size limit and the time it takes to parse and plot should be proportional to the size.

Thanks,

JP

[Paul Waterfield]

RS free software 'design spark' outputs it's drill files with its Tool in the format T001 etc, this causes the parser to freeze. Changing it to T01 works.
This program looks very good, thanks
Paul

[jpcaram]

Hi Paul, thanks for your interest. I have added this issue to the roadmap.

Cheers,

JP

[Paul Waterfield]

cut my first pcbs today they came out well considering I hadn't held the copper down very well.

a few observations / requests

can you include a spindle speed setting in the menus?

an ability to mirror the gerber would be nice, unless im missing something.

I thought I had a problem in that I was changing the feed rate, regenerating and reloading the G-Code, and the feed rate wasnt changing. I realised that because the file was open in Mach3, flatcam wasnt saving the file, but was giving no warning.

thanks again

Paul

[Paul Waterfield]

oh and one more thing, I had to turn off Hardware Arcs (G74,G75) in gerber output options in DesignSpark before it would Parse.

you will regret me using this soon ;-)

Paul

[Juan Pablo Caram]

Hi Paul,

These are good observations. I respond inline below.

> can you include a spindle speed setting in the menus?

Yes, I can do that. I will add that to the roadmap but I don't think I can do that for Alpha 5. By the way, what would be a topical speed for for cutting PCBs? Any guidelines?

> an ability to mirror the gerber would be nice, unless im missing something.

That is in Tools → Double-Sided PCB tool. Is it too hidden?

> I thought I had a problem in that I was changing the feed rate, regenerating and reloading the G-Code, and the feed rate wasnt changing. I realised that because the file was open in Mach3, flatcam wasnt saving the file, but was giving no warning.

I need to do a better job providing error and warning messages. Right now they are all going to the terminal, so if you are using the Windows' version you are probably not seeing any. I'm working on moving those to dialog boxes.

Thanks for your interest and feedback.

JP

[Juan Pablo Caram]

Paul,

FlatCAM supports arcs. Please send me a sample Gerber that won't load so l can see what's going on.

Thanks,

JP

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "flatcam" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to flatcam+u...@googlegroups.com.

[Paul Waterfield]

On Sunday, April 6, 2014 9:54:07 PM UTC+1, jpcaram wrote:
> Hi Paul,
>
> These are good observations. I respond inline below.
>
> > can you include a spindle speed setting in the menus?
>
> Yes, I can do that. I will add that to the roadmap but I don't think I can do that for Alpha 5. By the way, what would be a topical speed for for cutting PCBs? Any guidelines?

I've got a high speed spindle which ranges From 30000 to 60000 RPM, generally isolation is at 60000.

>
> > an ability to mirror the gerber would be nice, unless im missing something.
>
> That is in Tools → Double-Sided PCB tool. Is it too hidden?
>

I found it after posting, but I was doing a single sided and hadn't thought of looking there.

> > I thought I had a problem in that I was changing the feed rate, regenerating and reloading the G-Code, and the feed rate wasnt changing. I realised that because the file was open in Mach3, flatcam wasnt saving the file, but was giving no warning.
>
>
> I need to do a better job providing error and warning messages. Right now they are all going to the terminal, so if you are using the Windows' version you are probably not seeing any. I'm working on moving those to dialog boxes.
>
>
> Thanks for your interest and feedback.
>
> JP

Thanks paul

[Paul Waterfield]

On Sunday, April 6, 2014 9:57:48 PM UTC+1, jpcaram wrote:

Paul,

FlatCAM supports arcs. Please send me a sample Gerber that won't load so l can see what's going on.

Thanks,

JP

i tried again and for some bizarre reason it is now working! mostly, I include a gerber that does parse but not fully, it is a circular PCB the right side of the circle is there but the left side isnt.

regards Paul

[jpcaram]

Paul,

It's in fact a bug. I've added it to the list of issues with high priority.

Cheers,

JP

[jpcaram]

Oh, I take that back. It's not a bug, it's incorrect Gerber. The line causing the problem was: G02Y630635J315000*, which is missing an operation code D01 or D02 at the end. I will add support for it anyway as I've already done it for linear interpolation (G01) with operation code missing.

Cheers,

JP