Ganpati in MyCam!

This is just to demonstrate the 'beautiful' jobs that can be cut through MyCam. The side image shows the shape of a Ganpati that has been imported into
MyCam. The actual drawing has been done in AutoCad and converted into a universal accepted format of AutoCad called DXF. Since my software
understands DXF, it can easily import it and pass ahead to convert it into GCode and cut it.








This side editor screen shows the GCode for Ganpati as well as its drawing. Once this GCode
is read by the CNC, an actual Ganpati of metal will be cut and fall into your hands!! Isn't this WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get)??

2-D Editor Completed!

In my CAD-CAM software, I completed the editor for viewing the WC i.e. G-Code of 2-D (rather straight cut) profile. The snapshot is shown aside.

The left frame shows the G-Code and the right frame shows the drawing corresponding to that G-Code.

You can actually get a feel (simulation) of how the profile will be cut on CNC. You can play, pause and stop the tracing of the drawing as per your wish.

Zoom and Pan completed

I have completed Zoom and Pan options. Now Zoom-In,Zoom-Out,Zoom-All and Zoom-Window all are working smooth. Just like in AutoCAD!! Currently working on the CAM system... some cases of 2-D are pending, which hopefully I'll complete this week. And then move to the interesting part of taper!!

Zooooommmmm.........!!!!!!!

Today I completed with a major stuff of Zoom operation - Zoom-In and Zoom-Out. That is, after you draw something, you should be able to zoom-in (make larger) the drawing. This should happen as you scroll the mouse.

Not only should the drawing be zoomed, but the point around which zooming takes place is important as well. That is, while zooming, only the portion of the drawing where mouse pointer currently lies should get focus. This is exactly what happens in softwares like AutoCad. And now its happening in my software!!

Pending tasks - complete zoom-all and zoom-window.

Other Line Drawing Options

Parallel Line:

Suppose I draw a Line:


If I want to draw a line parallel to this line at a distance of 20mm to its left, how do I do it? Use: Line -> Line parallel to given line and at given offset. Select side by clicking to the left of the line. In the offset box, specify offset as 20. And you get a parallel line.

Note: Even if the distance in the screen-shot does not appear to be 20 mm, it is actually 20mm when fed to the CNC machine. The distance on the screen is not in mm and moreover, it is scaled, so you will never feel it as 20 mm.

Perpendicular Line:

Similarly, if I want to draw a perpendicular to a given line how do I do it?
Select: Line ->Line perpendicular to given line and from given point.

Select the line to which you want to draw perpendicular and the point from which you want perpendicular.



















Line Tangent to two circles:

Suppose I have two circles on my screen:


If I want to draw a line tangent to both these circles, I select: Line->Line Tangent To Two Circles/Arcs.

After that I select the two circles. Then a line is

drawn in Green tangent to both the circles.

And a dialog box pops-up in the bottom-right

corner of the Drawing Screen, saying "Is it OK?"

and two buttons: Yes, No.

This means that there are more than one possible lines which are tangent to two circles.




If I click No, then another possible line is

drawn in Green which is tangent to both the

circles. Again the dialog box is shown asking for

whether this is the Line you wanted or show

you the next possible line.






Now if I click Yes, this line is made final and now

the Dialog Box disappears. The circles become

Green again. This indicates end of the operation.












I have just drawn all the possible lines (4 lines in all) which are tangent to the two circles:

The Line Menu

Lets get started with the menus. Lets consider Draw menu first.

In Draw, there are 3 main options. Line, Circle and Arc drawing.

In Line there are 12 sub-menus. That means there are 12 ways in which you can draw a line. Which to select, depends on your requirement.


Lets look at Line Using Two Points option. In this, first you click on any point on the screen. And then a line is drawn from that point to the point where your mouse is hovering. Its a Magenta line. It gives you a feel of how your line will look after you select the second point.


After you click second point, the final line is drawn in Green color. You can also see through which points the line was drawn in the botton White text area. There you see the
Point selected: x,y text which tells the point which you selected on screen.


We can also draw line by directly entering its co-ordinates in the White text-box in the bottom.
For example, to draw line from (0,0) to (100,100) we enter the points as shown in the following image and the line is drawn.

Back with MyCam!!

Hello Friends!! I am back again after a long~ gap! Why didn't I blog in the meantime? Simple.. 'cause I couldn't blog... there was nothing to blog! So, there was silence!

But now, I am back... with full energy. This time I have a lot to show and talk. In fact there's lot to show. What will I show? Only that which is created can be shown. So, here I am... to show you my creation. Its My Cam!! I mean MyCam!!

Whats this MyCam? Nothing!! Simply call it as yet another PaintBrush program! But there is lot more beyong PaintBrush that my program has to do. What's that? You'll come to know.

MyCam is nothing but a CAD+CAM software developed by me. CAD means Computer Aided Design and CAM means Computer Aided Manufacturing. In the CAD part, you draw things. And in the CAM part, you produce what you have drawn using a machine.

Basically whatever you draw in my software can be given as an input to CNC machine which will cut the material as per the drawing and give you what you wanted: your job.

Let me explain my software starting with the CAD part. The CAD part of MyCam consists of operations like Drawing, Modifying, Transforming, Editing, Connecting of profiles. Profile means whatever drawing you draw on the screen of MyCam.

The side screen-shot shows the basic screen that is shown as soon as you open MyCam. There are menus like File, Edit, View, Draw, Modify, Transform, Connect, etc.

Basic Drawing Screen

My Nagpur Trip...

On the 4th,5th and 6th of March 2006, I was at Nagpur with my friend
Neeraj. This was my second visit to the city after 12 long-years!!
Nagpur had changed a lot since my last visit.

Basically, we had gone for a National-Level Technical Symposium at the
"RamdeoBaba College of Enginering,Nagpur". The college was situated on
the Ramdeo Tekdi at Gittikhadan, Nagpur. The college had a huge campus,
occupying acres of land, with many buildings and each building
dedicated to 'one' department. The details of the college can be found at: http://www.rknec.edu/

The Technical Symposium
(known as TechnoVision-2006, link: www.srknectechnovision.com)
consisted of many events: TechGallore, TechCode, TechCzar, TechXegis
etc..etc. We participated in 'TechGallore', which was a Project Competition,
where participants had to explain their projects (developed before) to the
judges and prizes were to be given for the Top-2 Projects which the judges
give maximum points.

Although we didn't bag any prizes, the experience was more important to
us than anything. For those who don't know, my project is developing a
Framework, which we call as 'Communication Framework', meant for
developing Network Protocols like USS,TCP,FTP. At the time I am writing
this blog, this Framework has been developed so as to successfully
implement the USS Protocol. The other popular ones like TCP,FTP, are
yet to be tried. Speaking at the grass-root-level, to understand our
project, you need to be OO-literate. If you happen to be amongst those
people who use terms like frameworks, design-patterns, MVC, cleanliness,
scalability, extensibility, etc at the design-level and stress more on
the interfaces/abstract classes and their 'organization' at the code
level; then it will hardly take 15 minutes for you to understand this
project. But if you are unfamiliar, I'll need to spend first 45-minutes
explaining you what frameworks are, what design-patterns are, how to
analyze a framework project, and then move towards explanation of the
actual project in 10-15 minutes. And that's exactly what we did at
Nagpur. We went over to explain OO to the judges on the paper first and
then gave 10-15 minutes for demonstrating the actual project.

There was a judge who would constantly ask us to 'run' the project and
had no interest in our OO-explanation. That was natural since he
happened to be a professor at some college in Amravati University and
didn't have any industrial-experience. While the other one from
"Lambent Technologies Ltd" listened to our explanation with
full-attention and came up with remarks like,"This is a complex-project
and you people have put in tremendous efforts in developing such a
complex product. No other project here happens to be so complex." And
that was a natural remark as per my expectations
(REASON: all the other projects in that room were just 'applications'
and ours was the only 'framework'!!)

Other than the one from Lambard, the other person whom we explained our
project was a Project Leader from Maya Software (the one we use for
animations) She had done here PG (I don't know the course name, whether
MS or MBA) from an American University and had also worked in Microsoft
for a few-years. She was actually an ex-student of the same college
(SRKNEC). She wasn't a judge, yet, was eager in knowing our project and
happened to be the only person who undersood our framework and
design-patterns (especially the MVC that I used to develop the
Swing-Tables and Text-boxes) very-well. Due to shortage of time, we had
to culminate our explanation, yet she asked us to continue working on
the framework and asked us to contact her for further support.

Apart from the Project Competition, there were events like Paper
Presentation, Best-CEO contest (a management contest), Programming
Contests and much more. Also, every evening we could enjoy a movie in
the open-theatre inside the college campus. One was a Jim-Carrey movie
and the other was a horror-one.

We didn't need to worry about accomodation and food at all 'cause the
college had taken care of everything in their hostels. The food was
spicy and delicious having paneer, rotis, puris, dals and even
sweets-dishes. Regarding accomodation and food facilities, the
organizers deserved full-marks.

Apart from this, there were speeches, lectures and seminars organized
during the inaugaral as well as the closing ceremony. Professors from
IITs were called to enlighten us. The one which I liked and will always
remember was by the "Director of Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of
Management, Gandhinagar, Gujarat". I will speak more about his speech
in a separate blog.

Before closing, I would comment about what I liked in Nagpur. The one
place which I enjoyed the most and would prefer to go first, the next
time I step in Nagpur, is The Haldiram Bhujiawala's "Planet Food"
located at SitaBardi. If you ask me about the taste, quantity, quality
and price at this Restaurant, I'd say, it not only beats the
Mc'Donalds; but its also worth any restaurant/cafe in Paris, London,
Las-Vegas, you always see in your dreams and die for. Here you get to
taste the Real-Indian-Taste!!

Bye!!

--
Mukul Lanke