QCAD CAM

[RatonLaveur]

Hi folks, I vaguely follow the work of the QCAD team because that's still the preferred 2D drafting tool used around me. (Although I'm making a push for FC Draft WB )

Generally, the workflow was QCAD-->Proprietary CAM software to perform tool paths, but recently we noticed QCAD's offering CAM capabilities. They seem simple and rather intuitive.

Anyway, I thought some of the Path gurus might be interested in seeing how that workflow looks like:
https://www.qcad.org/en/tutorial-qcad-cam

I especially like the look of the OP definition menus, they are quite intuitive with the diagrams and limited set of options. (read limited in terms of polish but also in terms of "FreeCAD has more").

Something I had not quite thought of, is that PathWB is constrained on screen by the Task panel, but QCAD automatically pops-up a large window for setting up the OP, and that actually makes the UI a lot more visual and manageable. Enables the liberal use of diagrams, also gives immediately overview of all aspects of the OP definition, without having to scroll up-and-down or expand/reduce sections.

Anyhow. This post is not a "grass is greener", far from it. It's more a take inspiration from the whole ecosystem.

Added goodies: they seem to work on nesting
https://www.qcad.org/en/tutorial-nesting

Bear in mind I cannot comment yet on usability since I'm a FC honcho and therefore do not use Q-CAD regularly.

EDIT: I have missed the part where the CAM part is based on Q-Cad professional and therefore is a pay to play implement. Although with a rather generous license (permanent, and rather cheap).

[troyp76]

Bear in mind I cannot comment yet on usability since I'm a FC honcho and therefore do not use Q-CAD regularly.

I have used QCAD and it's CAM function off and on for the last couple of years to generate job files for industrial 2D laser cutting and performance demonstrations.

• Compared to other commercial 2D cutting CAM packages I find QCAD/CAM cleaner and more intuitive as a occasional user.

• The automatic path generation is acceptable but the power comes from how easy it is to manually control the exact paths taken between contours.
  Useful when optimising a job file to extract the best performance (cycle time and cut quality) out of CNC machines.

I have only used it for 2D cutting so I can not make any observations about the milling operations.

Otherwise I echo RatonLaveur's suggestion that it would at least be worth having a look.
I would be happy to put some GIF's together to show the 2D workflow that I use if there was any interest.

Cheers,
Troy

[sliptonic]

I used Qcad years ago and I still use its open-source version librecad from time to time. I'm glad to see some CAM being added there. 2D CAM is a lot easier to implement than 2.5D or 3D CAM but it is also sufficient for many hobbyists.

I would be happy to put some GIF's together to show the 2D workflow that I use if there was any interest.

Thanks for the offer but I would prefer to avoid studying other CAMs that way. I think it's fine to learn from other applications by understanding what problems they're trying to solve and what solutions they use but it should be done at a conceptual level. Looking too closely at screens and menus puts the emphasis on implementation and can inadvertently lead to copying.

Implementation is very dependent on the environment you're working in. Path is the way it is because, in large part, of the way FreeCAD is written. Implementation details of Qcad aren't exactly helpful anyway.

So if you see Qcad's CAM solving problems in a novel way, I would like to understand the problem and solution .

[troyp76]

Thanks for the offer but I would prefer to avoid studying other CAMs that way. I think it's fine to learn from other applications by understanding what problems they're trying to solve and what solutions they use but it should be done at a conceptual level. Looking too closely at screens and menus puts the emphasis on implementation and can inadvertently lead to copying.

Fully understand and agree.

So if you see Qcad's CAM solving problems in a novel way, I would like to understand the problem and solution .

So far I have used Path as a way to learn more about 2.5 milling so I have not been too picky on how the gcode is actually generated.
The couple of times I have tried Path for 2D cutting I have reverted back to QCAD/CAM simply because it is more efficient for what I needed to do in the moment.

As time permits, I will try to perform the same task in both QCAD and FreeCAD and then post any conceptual gaps and possible solutions.

(I would eventually like to contribute to the solution directly but I am not quite there yet)