jukumagic

Perttu Ahola, who has contributed to HeeksCNC, has made some free software for stripboard/veroboard design called jukumagic, http://code.google.com/p/jukumagic/. He has copied some of my code from HeeksCAD. It looks like a good start.

solid datum arrows

A work colleague asked me about how we make sure the little "origin" appears on top of everything else, so I did some experiments by adding a solid datum with solid arrows and little X, Y, Z text in HeeksCAD.

bezier triangle meshes

I have made a separate add-in to HeeksCAD called HeeksArt.
It allows you to stretch some triangle patches using grippers.
You can split a triangle into two triangles to make more of them.
see http://code.google.com/p/heeksart/

Real machining again

celeron55 did some milling of wood with his homemade machine, using HeeksCNC software, which prompted me to do some machining on my machine. It was good being able to have my little Dell Mini 9 computer near to the machine, so that I could remember where the X0 Y0 position is in relation to the drawing. My machine requires a M3 code on the spindle speed line, otherwise the spindle doesn't start. It was a good thing I did a dry run 5mm above the material, first. See the video on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rH5VNbBSR-E

HeeksCNC Windows download

I made an installation HeeksCNC 0.6.0.exe, which also has Python2.5 with it, so that anyone can try it out. It's got loads of bugs in it, but you can make some toolpath and NC code.
http://code.google.com/p/heekscnc/downloads/list

sketch as boundary for adaptive roughing

You can now use a sketch as a boundary for adaptive roughing. I have hidden the cuboid that is under this sketch, because the toolpath was inside it. Thanks to celeron55.

Profile a section of a sketch

I can now profile part of a sketch by specifying the start and end points in the profile operation's properties.
It has been a good weekend for HeeksCNC. Someone called celeron55 joined #cam chat channel on FreeNode and did lot of good work on HeeksCNC, including fixing the German decimal point problem and adding the Adaptive Roughing operation to the tree . Also "fenn" added a lot of easy to repeat bugs to the HeeksCAD bug list http://code.google.com/p/heekscad/issues/list