DIYLILCNC

1. T4b
   Member

   I've been searching for a good solution to draw graphs of mathematical functions in CAD programs but have found none. For example a sun dial can be described in a few functions, or a parabolic reflector could be generated from a parabola.
   For the sun dial I successfully used gnuplot to draw the graphs, put them into a dxf and engrave them on a piece of plastic. But it's really not that great; there are inaccuracies in the dxf files generated by gnuplot (for a reason I don't know).

   So I wonder how you guys would do this?

   Posted 1 year ago #

2. Chris
   Key Master

   T4b, great question! Off the top of my head, I know you could use Maya's MEL scripting feature to generate curves/geometry from math functions. If you are a student, the educational version is free. You could also use Processing; depending on what you want there are a few libraries that could work: DXF Export for 2D, Surfacelib or Modelbuilder for 3D.

   Definitely show us some photos if you are successful!

   Posted 1 year ago #

3. Taylor
   Key Master

   Here's a website that talks about running more complex mathematical functions in Gcode. The site focuses on Fanuc/Mach3, so you'll have to experiment to see if the syntax plays well with EMC2.

   Posted 12 months ago #

4. T4b
   Member

   http://files.t4b.me/sundial.jpg
   This is a picture of my sun dial, generated with gnuplot (not the picture, the plans for the sun dial). I think I got rid of the worst of the inaccuracies. In theory I guess this sun dial should be accurate to a few minutes, but I haven't tested it yet. It's heavily tilted to the west, that's why it starts around noon.
   I'll post some more pictures and information when I'm really finished with it.
   I've looked at processing and it looked quite nice, maybe I'm trying that out too.
   Directly doing it in gcode could also be worth a try, sooner or later I'll look at that.
   The problem with those free Autodesk products is that they don't run on Linux - I've run AutoCad in a virtual machine, it's usable but not really that much fun. Lags now and again and it's Windows...

   Posted 12 months ago #

5. gera229
   Member

   AutoCad doesn't lag to me on my machine. Probably because I have a good PC. If you know how to use it then it won't be a problem.

   By the way the link to the picture is broken.

   Posted 12 months ago #

6. T4b
   Member

   The link isn't broken, my webhosting is broken. ;-)
   It should be up again in a few minutes, I just forgot to pay fast enough and not a second after the deadline it went down...

   My PC is good enough, it's the virtual machine which lags. It certainly wouldn't if I was running Windows in hardware, but I won't install Windows in Hardware. I don't like Microsoft and Windows is just really horrible to use (it's possible, but every simple task takes twice as long at the very least. Furthermore it can't mount software RAIDs and I have most of my data in one of them).

   Edit 2 seconds later: Link is up again.

   Posted 12 months ago #

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