SketchUp and VCarve Pro / Aspire

[BrianM]

Last month I was at the SketchUp 3D Basecamp conference in Vail, Colorado. At the conference I showed the SketchUp import into VCarve Pro along with some automated dog-boning and toolpath creation using some gadgets which are under development. The context of the presentation was 'Printing a House' and we had John Bacus from SketchUp, Nick Ierodiaconou from WikiHouse (http://www.wikihouse.cc) and Eric Schimelpfenig from Sketchthis.net who has been designing his WikiShed (http://sketchthis.net/wikished-model-tutorial/) based on the WikiHouse concepts. Before the conference I had been working with Eric on the SketchUp importer to support his models and he certainly stretched it's capabilities.

I cut a 28% full scale model of the frame of Eric's model and took it to the conference, I've attached a couple of images of it below.

I created a couple of videos to show the process and Sara has been showing the process at Jim McGrew's Aspire camp. We thought they may be of interest to a wider audience, so here they are ...

Introductory Video (6 minutes) ...

http://www.vectric.com/support/training ... erview.mp4

Detailed Video (20 Minutes)

http://www.vectric.com/support/training ... tailed.mp4

Robert Alsup at Laguna tools has also created a video showing the importer being used for cabinets created in Aspire and this video is available here ...

http://www.lagunatools.com/company/videos


We are pretty excited about the SketchUp import, directly importing .SKP models, and the the automated flattening, boundary creation along with the arc and circle refitting really shortens the time required to go from a SketchUp model to the cut parts. The importer has also been used by Bill Young to create the parts for the SketchUp kiosk at the Maker Faire in San Francisco this weekend and we will post some pictures later.

The dog-bone gadget should work with any imported data when we release it.

Cheers

Brian

[dansfoundry]

This is huge and innovative and just shows that wizards at Vectric are truly passionate about cnc. Dan

[BDM]

Any plans for Cut3D to be able to read in SketchUp files? I'm guessing no, but never hurts to ask

[makecnc]

HI

is there a time frame to see this new filleting gadget ?
our life here would be seriously changed by such a gadget as we fillet hundreds of projects if and have a 200 job backlog
so PLEASE make us a beta Tester it would mean we can get twice as many new projects for people to make up on the site in half the time

[crash5050]

Where does one get the dog bone gadget?

[Adrian]

It hasn't been released yet.

[erikwinkler]

I have one question, why does this feature have to be gadget and why will it not be in a free update.
Seems so strange that great features are in gadgets and not in the basis of the program.

[Adrian]

I think the thinking is that by adding some functionality that is specialised as gadgets it stops the program as a whole becoming bloated and more complex for new customers.

You've only got to look at some of the public domain programs to see what happens when every feature that every person wants is built into the main program. The menus and option dialogs are so complex new users give up in frustration.

[cac67]

I just got around to trying this and it didn't work. I got a message that said "Overflow. Too many parts to be nested." I was trying with this file. I suppose I could probably do it piecemeal but that would kind of defeat the purpose of nesting.

Settings

Error

[Beamer]

Chris,

Holy cow that model has a lot of components and edges/surfaces in it. That's almost certainly why. Maybe the vectric guys can chime in on the limitations of the importer...

[BrianM]

I just got around to trying this and it didn't work. I got a message that said "Overflow. Too many parts to be nested." I was trying with this file. I suppose I could probably do it piecemeal but that would kind of defeat the purpose of nesting.

Hi,

The next release of VCarve Pro / Aspire currently being tested can load this model, but does need to fall back on a rectangular layout algorithm for the initial import as the true shape nesting can't handle the number of parts involved in this model in one go. As at least half of these parts are actually pegs and wedges which would almost certainly not be cut nested within the larger parts, deselecting these after importing allows the rest of the job to be nested over 122 sheets as shown in the attached screen shot. We would love to see some pictures if you are going to cut this!

Brian

[makecnc]

HI Brian

can you explain what the new dogbone Gadget does exactly and when it will be released ?

or point us to somewhere for more info on it

thanks

[Adrian]

14 minutes and 20 seconds into the detailed video in Brians first post explains the dogbone gadget.

[makecnc]

thanks for that info Adrian

thats got to be about the most important gadget i have seen yet for vectric products as 99% of flatpack pattern tool paths require dogbones
any idea when this will be released on the gadget page ?

[makecnc]

any news on the toolpath corner compensation gadget or the dogbone gadget ? is this going to be released or do we need to look at writing one ?