Casmate pro for signmaking?

[beacon14]

Dose anyone know the current status of using Casmate Pro to generate .dxf files for the Shopbot?
A search of this forum turned up several posts from a couple of years ago indicating problems, and an attempt to solve them, but no follow up posts.
I have Casmate lite, and have found a deal on upgrading to Casmate Pro, they also have a module called EnRoute for 3-D milling. I have only a little experience with Casmate, but it seems to have all the functions I am reading about in this forum for processing logos, island fill, etc.
The 3-D would be nice to have, but for now all we really want to be able to do is routed signs with logos and lettering.
Any feedback would be appreciated.

[pjldesigns@hotmail.com]

I use Casmate pro all the time to program for use on shopbot. The best is the generate the toolpath using a fanuc driver in the setup. This will allow you to save a g-code file from Casmate. You then convert to shopbot file using the file convert that's built-in to Shopbot and run.

This is pretty sketchy but if you need more info just e-mail me at:

pjldesigns@hotmail.com (mailto:pjldesigns@hotmail.com)

[winggo@aol.com]

I've used Casemate for 6 or 7 years now for vinyl cutting and for small routing jobs on my engraving machines. Just got my Shopbot two weeks ago and have been able to do some parts cutting and basic stuff by editing shopbot parts files. But I need to do some larger signs that I have designed on Casemate. I've been trying to run the dxf files through Vector Cam and have not had much luck. Admittedly, I am not very familiar with Vector yet but it seems kind of cumbersome. Is anyone doing what I am trying to do? If so, Can I get some advice?

My email address is: winggo@aol.com (mailto:winggo@aol.com)

[winggo@aol.com]

I have made some progress using Casemate to create the layout with cutter paths and cutter offsets. then I export from casemate to dxf and import into Vector. I cut everything that is to be engraved or routed and paste it back at the z offset of .125 to get the depth I want. Then I do the conect Z command and that is where the trouble is. Instead of staying down and routing the whole area the cutter is constantly being moved up to the up Z possition and then back down again to make a short cut, then back up again, and on and on. It looks like Vector is putting a raise Z command at just about every point in a shape. The cutter should drop down to the cut depth and finish routing the whole shape before it moves to the up Z possition and jogs to the next down Z point.

Can anyone help me on this. Thanks in advance.

George
winggo@aol.com (mailto:winggo@aol.com)

[imserv@imsrv.com]

Vector has control over direction and order of selection. Before you add the connect-at-Z, your selection must be in order and in the desired direction. You can use Shift-Select to accomplish this. It is described on page 8 of the "Learning Vector in 2 Hours" manual. RULE 4.

If you have not read it, that is probably why you are having trouble. This manual is available to ALL Vector customers. It is in a PDF file on the distribution CD's.

If your selection is extremely complicated, and you are not concerned if you move from one end of the table to another without cutting, you can Box select or select-all then use the Change-Reorganize function to re-order the entities within all selected chains. This may take a long time to process with complex layouts and slow computers. Reorganize will also remove duplicated lines and arcs, and recombine broken or subdivided arcs and lines into a single composite entity.

If your problem is caused by actual gaps in the chains, you will have to trim-extend the entities to eliminate the unneeded connect at Z's. Shift Selecting will show you exactly where the gaps have been generated in the other program.

Test the order of selection by using the Special-Simulate. It will number the entities that you have selected. It will NOT tell you if you have selected lines or arcs pointing backwards, just the order of selection.

[olivier]

George
Noticed the same problem : "sometimes" at the end of large selections, instead of cutting the path and then raise Z, Vector starts to raise in between, each segments of the path.
I have not find any solution exept reselecting a smaller selection and redoing the "connect at z".

Olivier

[Gerald D]

I have the same problem as George and Olivier.

Yes, I have read the manual.

I am using VCarvz into Vector where I have no control over individually selecting and connecting.

I had worded this post differently about 3 hours ago, but it was removed from the board. In that post I apologised for the irritation that I displayed, but the facts still remain.

[rgengrave@aol.com]

George you can do this in Casmate,just select the bit you want, enter your depth,use the fanuc driver and save the files with a name.NC

Now just use the g-code converter and cut the file.

If you do not have the fanuc driver intalled? you will need to do this first.


Ron

[rgengrave@aol.com]

George I must have misread your post, why would you want to export from 1 Cad/Cam program to another? If you use casmate you can make your machine dance to any tune

All you need to do is have the Fanuc drivers installed,and use them to make your file.

I will email you the complete steps for you, if you have any problems let me know.

Ron

[winggo@aol.com]

The reason I want to use Vector is that I do not have the engraveing 2d or 3d function with my Casmate. I called Casmate, they said that the 2d function is $500 add on and the 3d is $1100. I have already paid for Vector when I bought the Shopbot so I would like to make that work if possible.

I just got my Shopbot two weeks ago and have spent a great deal of time going throught the manuals for Vector and trying to make Vector work like it is supposed to. But like many software packages the documentions was written by idiots. I've been working with CAD and CAS programs for over 10 years and Vector is about the most uncomprehensable that I have come across. The documenation sucks. The organization of the program itself makes little logical sense.

I will keep trying to work with Vector for the time being. But I may, in the end, have to spend money on a cam program that works for me.

[uniguard@pamlico.net]

I to can relate to all the difficulties shopbotters have trying to understand the documentation that came with the Vector Software. I even looked at other CAD/CAM Software packages and the prices turned me away so instead I thought I would give Vector one last chance. As one that considers myself fairly proficient with computers I am the type that believe the manuals are for people that have never used a computer before. I like the idea of being able to point and click to see what the software will do and learn from there. Well with Vector that simply is not going to happen. I guess I learned the hard way and with Vector its either Vectors way or no way at all. Although I dreaded it, I started to read through the manuals and doing each exercise and illustrated. I followed up by reading post on Vector and I must say that many of the Post from John Fornery and Fred Smith were a great help. After a little time I began to get the hang of Vector and now I find it a very valuable tool in the production of our parts. Oh! Believe me I have a long way to go with learning the additional features that Vector offers but I now realize its potential and ultimate benefits.

At this time Vector maybe a little to far over my head to design work and therefore I rely mostly on Turbo Cad and Corel for layout. However, once the project is the way I want it I use Vector to fine tune it and create my cutting files.

By the way I just received my Vector 9 upgrade and although the documentation is a little brief it seems Imservice has been listening to the feed back regarding their documentation and the new manual is much clearer and easier to understand.

Vector owners stay with it eventually you’ll realize all the benefits. Now if Vector to come out with some sort of easy to use nesting routine it would really make my day.

[rgengrave@aol.com]

Ken I agree, Vector might be an ok program in the long run? but I find that it is simple to use a cad program to draw your files in and use Vector to do the Tool Path,but it you draw in a cad program you can set the tool path there,Turbocad 4.1 will let you do this with 1 click of the mouse, I just select 1 or all and set the offset to the bit I will be using and it is done.

There is a shopbotter that is selling his machine and was going to give the Vector, I passed on the offer, if I could not learn it with the 30 day demo then I did not need it, I have tried Master Cam and it only took me less then 2 days and I was able to make anything, but the guy down the road moved and master cam with with him )-:

My needs are for only 2d files, I will stay away from making 3d files because of the time it takes to cut, I can not see what a price would be for a file to take 10 hours to cut.

I checked out Fred Smiths page and feel he is on the right track now, this gives a good example of the power behind Vevtor,I feel if there were more files like that on the site? there might be more interest with Vector?.The down side is all the steps we have to perform to do the file, and with any program you use! you will still have to remember the steps.

Ron

[danhamm]

I am going to add my 2bits here, I agree with Ron,
I bought a $7500.00 3/d everything inclusive prog.
and can't afford to use it,it just takes to long
anything youmake with it is to exspensive no one
will buy it,I have found that I can make things in adifferent way to assimilate 3/d I use coreldraw and signlab, I use the shopbot converter,If you make your cut files in the order you want them to cut then you don't have to reorganize just convert ..

[garbob]

When I purchased the PRT96 I had the silly notion that this would be easy to set up, use and cut things, figuring about 3 weeks from start to finish. After much fussing, I realized that I was not going to get the machine set-up without many hundreds of hours of my time and a lot more tools that I owned at the time. Keep in mind that I know nothing about mechanics, and I mean nothing. So that nice Ted sent me an installer and off I went on my new machine think "Ah, here we go!". I was very excited, I'm sure that you all know the feeling.

Patiently I tried each and every kind of software package available. Cad, Cam, Cas they are all black holes of time. They are complicated to the extreme, they ALL have specific ways of doing the same function. They have the worst documentation and tutorials known to man. Most of them don't even work properly. They are truly horrible. And most are VERY expensive. Did I mention that I also have had no education in cad. I have used Corel Draw for years for print media.

My award for the worst software package of all time in ANY category goes to TurboCad. I started with v5 and upgrade to 6.5. The doc'n was absolutely terrible, the tutorials incorrect. I struggled with it for a long time (always seeing people on this and other forums saying how wonderful it is). I then figured "Ah, I know, I'll get trained on this." Wrong. The only source of Tcad training material at that time was a book put out by knowledge something which cost me $160 cdn, delivered by mule (8 days). All the errors in the tutorials in the Tcad manual were duplicated in this book. Oh. they had added some other incorrect, misleading tutorials of their own, too.

I then thought that I would try Vector, as I had purchased it with the machine. Pretty much a ditto for vector, but I could almost do a few things consistently. Again the lack of decent doc'n killed me. I then tried the Vcarvz demo. Bad doc'n, but finally thought that I would make the plunge and buy Vcarvz. I did BUT the Vector had to be updated to 8.1. After that I had so many problems that I just gave up and figured I'd sell the machine or just go and beat it to death with a hammer!

I did keep looking at things and some seemed useful. I tried some more packages and was left wanting. All this was a result of my thinking that I could use Corel Draw to design and then run the dxf output into SB's converter. "Oh, how come my drawing is showing up in the wrong place on the material?". If you've tried the converter you now know why. I'm not into mental abuse. If I pick up a hammer to drive a nail I should be able to. I shouldn't have to have a medicine man or swami come and hover over it chanting all the while and then be told that I have to pick it up in a certain manner and then wave it around a few times in an exact figure 8 first! I just want to drive a nail with the hammer.

It seemed to me that there must be a way for the PRT96 to be able to do what I wanted without all of the conversions and mumbo jumbo! By the way TED, it's quite the machine. Your a smart fellow!

Well finally I get to the point! There is such a way to have the machine do my bidding. It's called Corel Draw with output exported as an .eps file. AND THEN open the file in RAMS SOFTWARE and cut exactly what you want, when you want it, where you want it and how you want it. Compared to other packages that I have tried (ProfileLab, Vector, SignLAb, EngraveLab, Enroute and a bunch of cad packages this stuff is like the holy grail. I'm finally using my machine to do EVERYTHING that I want it to. I haven't tried doing everything in RAMS so far, in fact I haven't even bought it yet. I am so leary of plunking down anything over the several thousand dollars (yes, it's only cdn. money, but it's 1.6 times more of it than Americans pay for the same product or service) that I have spent so far, not to mention the hundreds and hundreds of hours of sheer frustration that I have spent (35 hours of REAL TIME on learn Vector in "1 day" I think it was that this time I am going to satisfy myself thoroughly FIRST.

Sorry for the verbosity, BUT I just had to tell someone. David Ford at Rams Software is getting sick of me telling him how wonderful his product is, I'm sure. I'm not a gushy type of person BUT this software has changed my life! No longer do I have to listen to my wife groan everytime I mention the white elephant that I bought! The absolute bestest thing about this whole package is the support. Would you believe that there is real, live telephone support? If you have to leave a message, you are called back REAL SOON.

I just can't say enough and I'm plugging up the air waves or the forum waves, or whatever.

[jkforney]

Gary
I am glad you got your machine up and running. I am also glad that you found software that works for you, but many of us use the software you found so difficult and don't share your views.

Many of the people use all the different software packages you mention and find them easy to learn and use. Many people post on the shopbot forum about their favorite software and describe the other packages as "hard, difficult, impossible" and always mention the lack of good manuals.

I would point out that not everyone finds a particular package acceptable but to disparage all other software is, in my opinion, nothing more than hyperbole. It is enough to say that you like and use a certain software. What works works.

Again, I am delighted that you have found software that works for you and now you can use your shopbot to make money with instead having it raise your blood pressure.

John Forney

[rgengrave@aol.com]

Gary I have been on the phone a few times with David Ford, real nice guy, he explained Rams Software to me and how it worked, he went out of his way to make me some files I sent him, he is going to send me the steps in Screen Cam on how it was done, I will post them as soon as they come in, I will have them on the server to, from what I have seen so far? just a few cilick of the mouse and it is done, real nice.

As for Turbocad you should have called me? I just spent 4 hours on the phone with a member of the server, I showed him everything in Turbocad, he too was lost by reading the books on it, he now knows how to do anything 2d and some 3d, he told me that he spent two weeks playing with it and reading, he could not even do Text, but after a phone call he is now a master of the program, life can not be better then that.

He bought a cable machine from someone and explained his needs to me, he is now getting a upgrade to R/P.

He now knows the power of the server we have, just call it a 1 time stop for anything you need to do.

There are 375 shopbotter on it and 3 more just got on this week, They tell me what it is they want to do and I show them how with the programs they have, they learn more in 1 hour then they can in 6 months of reading.

We have members that have MASTERCAN, ARTCAM, MODELMILL, SIGNLAB,PROFILELAB,AUTOCAD, CASMATE PRO,MILWIZARD,Turbocad, the list goes on, we try to save the shopbotters time on how to draw.

Best part about it is you do not need to pay $$$$$$ to buy the software to make a file, tell us what you need made? and send a picture? and we spread the word and the file is made and sent to you, we show you how to do it in the program you have or what we had to use to make it. We now make movies on how it was done, real simple to follow.

I am getting ready to post a lot of ready to cut 3d file soon, I just need to get the info on the size and depth and who made them and with what program.

I am thinking of storing over 20 gigs of 2d and 3d files on the server with pictures, this will be a 1 stop shoping for files in dxf format, they can then be downloaded free for members.

We have members that send in 20 to 30 3d files a week, some are real nice work.

Ron

[douglashahn]

Ron,

What is the Server Address?

Douglas

[rgengrave@aol.com]

You can get to the server here, but you will need to be a member to get in, you can check out the sample server to see how it is layed out, I do not update the sample site so you will not see all the new things added.

http://www.rngengravers.com

Ron

[joseph]

I have a casmate basic and a signwizard pro.
my sign wizard pro has a 3d function for routing, How can I use this directly to shopbot driver to route.., since signwizzard has no G code convertion

I use my casmate for designing logos,Is there a shortcut way to rout this without going to vector.

thanks

[danhamm@abccom.bc.ca]

Joseph,
Export your files from the programs as DXF.files
and use the shopbot converter to create sbp.files
make sure your text is converted to lines or curves or the export filter from your programs
will do a tearing line thingy with the files..

[larry]

I have 10 years of programing a laser with mechanical desktop. I am looking to bye a shopbot but can i use mechanical desk top? is vector any good?I wounld like to think i am good at progaming but it seems that the programs for this will not work good.What progams work good with 3d letters?
thanks,for any help I am lost! Larry

[danhamm@abccom.bc.ca]

Larry I don't know anything about Mechanical desktop.. But if you can make a cut file for a
laser you should have no problem with a cut file for the shopbot!! The only difference would be in the 4 micron cut versus the 1/4 or whatever of the
router bit..you probably are already used to using colors for different cut depths so that will come in handy with the shopbot as well..
If your program will save a file as DXF. it will work with the shopbot...
As for vector I personally don't know but there are a lot of shopbotters using it and turning out good products so that kinda speaks for it..
Also I have a couple of lasers and they work hand in glove with the shopbot I use coreldraw for both
and the registration works for both..example is I can cut a picture frame or a box or whatever with
the shopbot then take it to the laser and do the fine detail with it..

[debekker]

Larry,
I just Bought my first shop bot but I have had alot of Exp with other routers and software.
If Mech Desk top will out put Gcode you should be fine. If I remember right it does. I use Signlab/Engrave Lab, Artcam and Mastercam and between those programs I can do just about anything you can dream of. I would Have to say is to save your money and get Artcam it does the chisel letters your looking for. It is a good all around program for doing signs unless you have a unlimited budget then I would go for the Signlab and Artcam.
(I could Ramble on for hours about programs) Email me if you have other questions