hmmm... Maybe Jovian could shed some light to this one. I thought it was taken care of in the past.
Thank you for finding this
Mark and Trish

 

I just tried to get it to work in the metric system and it keeps everything as imperial like you said.

 

Take a look here and see if this can help out at all. Just at a quick glance I really don't think it will for the 3D but it may give you some ideas for using a post processor to convert the code to metric until we can get this fixed in SketchUcam. Thank you for the testing offer, we will be sure to keep it in mind.
Thank you
Mark and Trish

 

Great find BR/ahd71! Thank you for sharing the link for others
Mark and Trish

 

Mark will this work for your big CNC?

Cheers
E-T

 

Not sure Glen, kinda scary to try it out on that one. But I really have no need for 3D on that machine at all. I do have a post processor that I use for that machine that is working very well.
Mark and Trish

 

Just want to re-post here real quick and say that I tried to output metric gcode from SketchUcam just by changing the Units in SketchUp as well as re-applying the safe cutting area and it worked just fine for metric router.
It may just be the 3D that is having this problem? I only tried the 2.5 D
Mark and Trish

 

Yeah it was just the 3d part of it.

 

Ok thanks Shaun May be something Nick can look at when he gets the time.
Mark and Trish

 

Got it thanks BR
Mark and Trish

 

I started looking at making the 3D module output metric, yesterday.
So far I have put in a quick check that the model maxZ is not higher than the material thickness.
If it is too low, the G0 X0 y0 at the end of the program may cut some part of the model.

I'm not sure at this point which is better:
to warn (and abort or carry on regardless?)
or
to reset material thickness and carry on

I also imported the little routine that formats numbers for output using the @precision set in phlatmill.rb
and changed the .puts instructions to use the new formats (because trailing 0's annoy me .
maybe that routine needs to be put in a common library?

Next I'll look at metrifying the output. I'm a little slow at this because ruby is not my native language and I keep having to look up language contructs online.

Once I have some progress, what is the best way to submit the changes?

 

I second that

 

scary
the 3D trig stuff is beyond my meagre math skills. I was looking at pocketing some years back. very interesting problem, especially the non-convex polygon case, but proved to be quite beyond my brain capacity. I know what I want to do though = split the polygon into the minimum number of polys that are all convex, then pocket each of those polygons, then cut the outline as usual.

 

I found someone who maybe able to help us with the pocketing http://www.anderswallin.net/cam/
He has some interesting projects in the works and is looking to apply his machining algorithms to a GUI. He is posting under a GPL so It should be OK to try and apply these to SketchUcam.
I really have not got the time to contact him now (too many projects on the plate) but if someone wants to help get the ball rolling that would be cool Could lead to great new features for SketchUcam!
Thanks
Mark and Trish

 

aye, his blog is interesting indeed and I think that drop-Z algorithm would make 3D surfaces much nicer.
possible problem is it needs triangulated surface input, which Sketchup does not always do by itself.

I will read more as time allows.