SVG Desgins and Cnc.

Post below was meant to be sent off to email@shopbot tools, in the hopes that it will pass the secretary, but they've hidden their email so I'll just give it a try here.

L.S.

Via Fablab Amsterdam, I have learned about cnc routing, your tools and your company. In my spare time I've leveraged my day to day job as a programmer and I've build a web application for interactively and customizable displaying construction models. I think i'm only 5 cm (2 inches) away from unique (lets call it revolutionary) new way of presenting online customizable construction models, and I hope you can help me bridge those last 2 inches. In return I can offer you a front seat in my open source vehicle, leaving competitors in the dust, and if you arrive in time at the SVGOpen a front seat for my presentation.

My web application is called http://www.iscriptdesign.com, it is completely open source and I'm invited to present it at the SVGOpen 2011 ( SvgOpen 2011/) in Cambridge Ma, in a 30 minutes time slot. SVGOpen is all about Scalable Vector Graphics which is the fundamental technique for iScriptDesign, hence the invitation. I do plan to keep my presentation rather technical however I do hope to include 1 or 2 real life applications in my talk, and that's why I'm contacting your company to see whether you can assist me in converting SVG to gCode or your own cnc instruction set.

Before I continue I would like to introduce myself: As mentioned before, in my day to day life I'm a programmer, and as a hobby I'm designing furniture and other gadgets. Being faithful to my profession and not willing to spend too much on professional cad software (yes I'm Dutch), I'm scripting my designs, and i wrote an web application for displaying my designs. I think that this application offers a unique new way of presenting designs as it allows designers/programmers to make their design parameterizable, customizable and to reuse third party or own components. The graphics format for this website is SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) and SVG is gaining more and more momentum as finally Microsoft has also adopted this free open format for their browser.

iScriptDesign allows you to export plain svg files, which can be directly used by a lasercutter. Currently I'm not aware of ways to convert svg directly to cnc input (dxf or gcode), but to use commercial software. As far as I can tell from google searches, a website allowing direct download of cnc input files based on customizable designs would be a tremendous asset for any cnc shop. Thanks to our local Fablab in Amsterdam, I do have some experience with cnc routing, and I have gained knowledge about the SVG format and ways for programatic modification. On my website iScritpDesign you'll find reports on earlier research in this direction. (Fabmoments -> pen joints shows experiments with variable bit radius), and using some calculus I can convert splines to a variable number of straight lines.

What I would like from you is a description of the cnc instruction set and if possible more assistance and ideas with the implementation. As the demonstration will be a short movie fragment, the implementation can be minimal (straight lines and splines). As iscriptdesign is open source I'm sure that it will initiate coding efforts by fellow developers.

Regarding my website:
iscriptdesign it works with Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera, it has not been tested with IE 9 and I doubt that it will work with that browser.

Picture of artefacts created with iscriptdesign are at
sofatable or
second one (both cut out with a watercutter and commercial assistance).
iScriptDesign is fully open source and the code is available at
http://code.google.com/p/iscriptdesign
(the website is an exact mirror of trunk's head)
The abstract which was submitted to svgopen is available in the src trunk of google code or at
http://www.iscriptdesign.com/abstractsvg.html
A very fast-paced youtube movie about iscriptdesign (a bit more impressive than the available menu items) can be found at:
youtube

The presentation itself is not scheduled yet but I assume is likely to fall within the timeframe of the conference (17-19 oct)

I hope to hear from you,
Kind regards,

Jeroen.

From now on dxf export is possible (only straight lines, and only Google Chrome). See Projects->iPath->DXF->gears and pen joints.

Hope it is useful for some, feedback is appreciated.

Hello,
A few things are not real clear to me, so i need some clarification. I understand that SVG is a scalable vector graphic (used by inkscape) but based on the youtube link you provided, a video with no audio, the only thing i can guess from this is that you have some type of application that works to create parts but does it output Gcode that you are wanting someone to test?

There are several 3rd party programs that can take vectors and create gcode to cut the part. If this is a web based gcode production application then i think you need to maybe put audio to the instructional video so that someone can try it out. I could not make sense of the video due to the resolution and no audio. I think many here would be willing betatesters if we could figure it out.....maybe it's just me?:confused:

also a couple of your links for the samples does not work