Saturday, August 15, 2009

Other Line Drawing Options

Parallel Line:

Suppose I draw a Line:


If I want to draw a line parallel to this line at a distance of 20mm to its left, how do I do it? Use: Line -> Line parallel to given line and at given offset. Select side by clicking to the left of the line. In the offset box, specify offset as 20. And you get a parallel line.

Note: Even if the distance in the screen-shot does not appear to be 20 mm, it is actually 20mm when fed to the CNC machine. The distance on the screen is not in mm and moreover, it is scaled, so you will never feel it as 20 mm.

Perpendicular Line:

Similarly, if I want to draw a perpendicular to a given line how do I do it?
Select: Line ->Line perpendicular to given line and from given point.

Select the line to which you want to draw perpendicular and the point from which you want perpendicular.



















Line Tangent to two circles:

Suppose I have two circles on my screen:


If I want to draw a line tangent to both these circles, I select: Line->Line Tangent To Two Circles/Arcs.

After that I select the two circles. Then a line is

drawn in Green tangent to both the circles.

And a dialog box pops-up in the bottom-right

corner of the Drawing Screen, saying "Is it OK?"

and two buttons: Yes, No.

This means that there are more than one possible lines which are tangent to two circles.




If I click No, then another possible line is

drawn in Green which is tangent to both the

circles. Again the dialog box is shown asking for

whether this is the Line you wanted or show

you the next possible line.






Now if I click Yes, this line is made final and now

the Dialog Box disappears. The circles become

Green again. This indicates end of the operation.












I have just drawn all the possible lines (4 lines in all) which are tangent to the two circles:

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

The Line Menu

Lets get started with the menus. Lets consider Draw menu first.

In Draw, there are 3 main options. Line, Circle and Arc drawing.

In Line there are 12 sub-menus. That means there are 12 ways in which you can draw a line. Which to select, depends on your requirement.


Lets look at Line Using Two Points option. In this, first you click on any point on the screen. And then a line is drawn from that point to the point where your mouse is hovering. Its a Magenta line. It gives you a feel of how your line will look after you select the second point.


After you click second point, the final line is drawn in Green color. You can also see through which points the line was drawn in the botton White text area. There you see the
Point selected: x,y text which tells the point which you selected on screen.


We can also draw line by directly entering its co-ordinates in the White text-box in the bottom.
For example, to draw line from (0,0) to (100,100) we enter the points as shown in the following image and the line is drawn.

Monday, August 10, 2009

Back with MyCam!!

Hello Friends!! I am back again after a long~ gap! Why didn't I blog in the meantime? Simple.. 'cause I couldn't blog... there was nothing to blog! So, there was silence!

But now, I am back... with full energy. This time I have a lot to show and talk. In fact there's lot to show. What will I show? Only that which is created can be shown. So, here I am... to show you my creation. Its My Cam!! I mean MyCam!!

Whats this MyCam? Nothing!! Simply call it as yet another PaintBrush program! But there is lot more beyong PaintBrush that my program has to do. What's that? You'll come to know.

MyCam is nothing but a CAD+CAM software developed by me. CAD means Computer Aided Design and CAM means Computer Aided Manufacturing. In the CAD part, you draw things. And in the CAM part, you produce what you have drawn using a machine.

Basically whatever you draw in my software can be given as an input to CNC machine which will cut the material as per the drawing and give you what you wanted: your job.

Let me explain my software starting with the CAD part. The CAD part of MyCam consists of operations like Drawing, Modifying, Transforming, Editing, Connecting of profiles. Profile means whatever drawing you draw on the screen of MyCam.

The side screen-shot shows the basic screen that is shown as soon as you open MyCam. There are menus like File, Edit, View, Draw, Modify, Transform, Connect, etc.



Basic Drawing Screen

Ganpati in MyCam!

This is just to demonstrate the 'beautiful' jobs that can be cut through MyCam. The side image shows the shape of a Ganpati that ha...