I haven’t dug into the CAM stuff in F360 yet, but I thought this might be useful to watch. Even though the Glowforge doesn’t take G-code, maybe watching the preview could help detect double cuts?
12 Likes
I played with it for a couple of minutes on my design the other day. Pretty neat!
Am I wrong in remembering that the GFUI has a job simulator?
1 Like
The cut lines (“toolpaths”) that you create with the tools shown in the video could be saved as SVG files using the SVG-creating post processor in Fusion 360 CAM*. You could then load those SVGs into the Glowforge UI.
It would basically amount to automatic kerf compensation without needing to bastardize your design files with extraneous geometry. Automatic kerf compensation would be immensely helpful for mechanical designs and last I heard that feature wasn’t implemented in the GFUI yet (actually, it’s not clear to me whether it even remains a planned feature or not).
The biggest problem is that the SVGs created by the post processor are merely a collection of individual line segments that share endpoints, they are not collections of joined shapes. In other words, a square would be four separate lines, not one square. Some machines, Glowforge included (last I heard), end up cutting individual lines in a seemingly random, oftentimes extremely inefficient, disjointed manor which ends up taking longer to complete and jeopardizes design integrity. Many design programs are also unable to join these individual lines in a logical manor, which exacerbates this problem.
This topic has been broached a few times on the forum, but I’m not sure if it’s even been discussed further than “yeah, this is possible”.
*or the other Autodesk “HSM” software that uses the same post processors
4 Likes