My first evening with CamBam

[Ben Jackson]

I downloaded 0.9.7f last night and tried a few simple things in it.  I'm trying to select a CAM program to use with Techshop Portland's various CNC equipment.

Since I am about to launch into a laundry list of nitpicking, let me first say that CamBam was a relative pleasure to us compared to many offerings in the CAD, CAM and CNC world.  I was pleased that it suck generally with standard Windows conventions and didn't invent while new ways of doing things (as CAD programs love to do).  The reliable 'undo' is a huge boon to anyone experimenting with a new program.  And it didn't crash with any of my unsual input.

Here are some observations after one evening of playing with it:

• When things Go Wrong there is generally no feedback.  For example, if you pocket with a cutter that is too big to fit in the pocket you get no errors and no toolpath and you have no idea what to look for.
• ...and the default tool size is 0 which produces strange results and no error.
• One of the few things I absolutely had to look up and could not guess just from playing around was the whole 'copy MOP to template' way of defining tools.  Initially saying 'Template: Default' doesn't even clue you in about what you're templating.
• ...and typing in that pulldown to either rename or create a template is not obvious and feels clunky.
• ...and the dialog that pops up should be customzied.  When you have to say things like 'No means rename' that's a clue that the buttons should have custom text and not yes/no/cancel
• ...and it's annoying that not every templatable parameter can be set from every machining operation, so even if you set everything available and then set your template you can be tripped up by other parameters available under other operations.
• Since there is a very good 'undo' feature, I think the program should not prompt to delete objects.
• ...but when it does pop up modal dialogs they should be centered on the window (on my 30" lcd the delete windows did not even overlap with the main window)
• Several of the options for the various machine operations are missing the 'short help', for example everything  under HoldingTabs, LeadInMove.  (Noting the sign of HoldingTabs Height would be nice, or just disallow negative numbers).
• Converting an object (eg to polyline) does not update the machining steps that use that object to point at the new one
• Right-clicking on the tree nodes (under layers/machining/etc) should show more than Delete
• Undo and Redo should name the operation (eg 'Undo Scale').  This is especially helpful if you're not sure you actually just *did* anything (eg accidentally drag in most programs)
• Edit|Undo is at the top of the menu in most programs
• Scaling should offer scale by factor and not just to target size.  Negative factors should work (for some reason 'mirror' is grayed out, too)
• There should be an option for pocket cutting to allow the cut to spill outside the outer line.  The area outside the line may already have a lower level or may be part of the cutout.  Without a 'spill' option you have to create new geometry (or use a profile if that happens to work)
• Zoom to fit should fit machining operations (at least if they're visible)

[blowlamp]

Hi Ben.
I think the fact you've only played with CamBam for one evening means that some of your observations are incorrect and you need a bit longer to find all its strengths.

For instance:

"Right-clicking on the tree nodes (under layers/machining/etc) should show more than Delete
== It does, a menu appears with about ten options."

"Scaling should offer scale by factor and not just to target size.  Negative factors should work (for some reason 'mirror' is grayed out, too) "
== You can scale by factor, amongst other things as well. You just need to access the Transformation Edit Box by highlighting a drawing entity  and then clicking where shown in Pic 1. The box is shown in Pic 2.

"There should be an option for pocket cutting to allow the cut to spill outside the outer line.  The area outside the line may already have a lower level or may be part of the cutout.  Without a 'spill' option you have to create new geometry (or use a profile if that happens to work)"
== I don't see how you can define a pocket and cut outside of it, whilst being limited to its boundary. Just draw the shape you wish to cut to include all areas to be removed.


All the best.
Martin.

[Bubba]

Hi Ben,
Perhaps you should start here first .
 http://www.cambam.co.uk/forum/index.php?board=13.0

After short session, you will find CamBam absolutely pleasure to work with.

Good luck.

[Ben Jackson]

Hi Ben.
I think the fact you've only played with CamBam for one evening means that some of your observations are incorrect and you need a bit longer to find all its strengths.

Actually, having only played with it for a few hours makes me an ideal candidate to say what a new user's first impressions are.

For instance:

"Right-clicking on the tree nodes (under layers/machining/etc) should show more than Delete
== It does, a menu appears with about ten options."

Not on the drawing objects, only on the machining operations.

"Scaling should offer scale by factor and not just to target size.  Negative factors should work (for some reason 'mirror' is grayed out, too) "
== You can scale by factor, amongst other things as well. You just need to access the Transformation Edit Box by highlighting a drawing entity  and then clicking where shown in Pic 1. The box is shown in Pic 2.

Thanks for pointing that out.  I would have assumed that matrix would be applied on top of the internal geometry, based on how it is presented to the user.  However, I would still think that the 'edit|scale' (or wherever it is, I don't grok the categorization of the draw/edit menus) should make it possible to scale by factors.

"There should be an option for pocket cutting to allow the cut to spill outside the outer line.  The area outside the line may already have a lower level or may be part of the cutout.  Without a 'spill' option you have to create new geometry (or use a profile if that happens to work)"
== I don't see how you can define a pocket and cut outside of it, whilst being limited to its boundary. Just draw the shape you wish to cut to include all areas to be removed.

I guess that was a bit unclear.  I was referring to a case where you have an oddly shaped part or a part with a thin shoulder where you want a 'facing' operation such as you might execute with the pocketing tool where you don't care about the area outside the outer outline of your part so you don't care if the cutter is forced to go there.  As you say, you can just make a larger outline and control that directly.  Unfortunately, 0.9.7f seems to have a bug that does not compute pocketing operations with holes correctly.  The cut spirals in from the outer profile and simply lifts over the inner profile wherever the tool would collide, rather than steering around the edge of it or even coming back to make another cleanup cut.

[blowlamp]

Ben
Can you post the .cb file of an example of the Pocketing bug you've found?

Martin.

[dwc]

  Unfortunately, 0.9.7f seems to have a bug that does not compute pocketing operations with holes correctly.  The cut spirals in from the outer profile and simply lifts over the inner profile wherever the tool would collide, rather than steering around the edge of it or even coming back to make another cleanup cut.

I think we need to consider the relation of price to performance of this program.  You did not need to take out a second mortgage on your house for it and for that at times need to do some cleaning up.  I make a simple profile around all internal islands to clean them up and all is well. 

In general I know of no other program in this price range that works as well as CAMBAM.  It does all that it claims and has never once crashed on me.  For those who can afford a full featured CAM program CAMBAM certainly has some catching up to do.  For the rest of us it is a tremendious time-saver at small cost.  And it continues to get better with each new version.  Bravo Andy!

On the other hand I can also read your comments to the effect that there are mostly only minor details that you describe, many of those things you will be used to in 2 days and will never think of again, like every time you try out a new program.  And I notice that many of those things have been discussed here before on the forum and are probably on some secret to-do list already.

Enjoy using CAMBAM!
Don

[Bertram]

Unfortunately, 0.9.7f seems to have a bug that does not compute pocketing operations with holes correctly.  The cut spirals in from the outer profile and simply lifts over the inner profile wherever the tool would collide, rather than steering around the edge of it or even coming back to make another cleanup cut.

This particular feature and a method to work around it was mentioned here: http://www.cambam.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=912.msg4847#msg4847

While true that Cambam has its quirks, Andy is very responsive to bug reports and feature requests. From the post to which I have just linked, it appears that this particular concern is on the "to do" list.

[Ben Jackson]

  Unfortunately, 0.9.7f seems to have a bug that does not compute pocketing operations with holes correctly.  The cut spirals in from the outer profile and simply lifts over the inner profile wherever the tool would collide, rather than steering around the edge of it or even coming back to make another cleanup cut.

I think we need to consider the relation of price to performance of this program.  You did not need to take out a second mortgage on your house for it and for that at times need to do some cleaning up.  I make a simple profile around all internal islands to clean them up and all is well. 

Oh, is that intentional?  I must have misinterpreted some tutorials.

In general I know of no other program in this price range that works as well as CAMBAM.  It does all that it claims and has never once crashed on me.  For those who can afford a full featured CAM program CAMBAM certainly has some catching up to do.  For the rest of us it is a tremendious time-saver at small cost.  And it continues to get better with each new version.  Bravo Andy!

It is an impressive product for a one-man operation.  It feels very "clean" and avoids many of the foibles that most niche software suffers from.  Unlike most demos I try, I am more inclined to buy the software after using the demo.  But it does have a direct competitor at the same price:  Cut2D.

On the other hand I can also read your comments to the effect that there are mostly only minor details that you describe, many of those things you will be used to in 2 days and will never think of again, like every time you try out a new program.

You only get one chance to make a first impression.  I'm a software engineer and *I* would be very happy to get feedback such as I wrote in the first post.  I trust the author will take it in the spirit I intended.  There's no need for anyone else to leap to his defense!

[Ben Jackson]

You can scale by factor, amongst other things as well. You just need to access the Transformation Edit Box by highlighting a drawing entity  and then clicking where shown in Pic 1. The box is shown in Pic 2.

Turns out my intuition about the object transformation is correct.  That is a 'layer' on top of the internal geometry of the part.  If you do a scale -1 of a polyline you can't successfully pocket it unless 'Edit|Transform|Apply Transformation' works*.  That *almost* works for arcs.  It looks like it would work if only the signs of the bulges got flipped.

* I kind of expected it to work if I applied a flip to the MOP but the geometry is broken.  Turns out what I could have done is made a duplicate MOP for the original object and applied the transform to *that*.  Depends on what you're trying to do.

[blowlamp]

Ben.

Unlike most demos I try, I am more inclined to buy the software after using the demo.  But it does have a direct competitor at the same price:  Cut2D

I hope you do buy CamBam because I believe you'll be making the right choice and find it to be more capable than it perhaps first seems.
Just a quick comment about the competition and Cut2D.
From what I can remember of the demo and from what I've heard, I think it is an excellent 2D program, so no one should feel cheated for buying it. But don't forget that CamBam has excellent 2D AND 3D functionality so might also be compared to Cut3D, which is substantially more expensive. I used to think the 3D features in CamBam would be something I'd never really use and that they wouldn't stand comparision with other software, but now in my opinion they do, the 2 closest rivals being Cut3D and Meshcam. I've done plenty of mould work with CamBam and one thing I like is the ability to cut either the 3D solid itself or a mould from it without having to go back to CAD.


Martin.

[10bulls]

Hello Ben,

Firstly I would like to say I am very grateful for your detailed feedback and first impressions.
You are correct in assuming that to a software developer such comments are invaluable.  Feedback like yours has certainly made my life easier in developing CamBam ...listen well, stay awake and keep typing! 

Many of your comments relate to items on the development list, so you should see progress with many of them in the coming releases.  If I don't specifically reply to an observation here, assume it is 'on the list'.
Other points have had been replied to and workarounds mentioned above  ...However, I would add, that if some features can't be figured out with an evening's tinkering, then they should be made simpler.  Improved ease of use and creating an intuitive interface is definitely a top priority.

Templates are a very powerful and often overlooked feature of CamBam.  However, they have not changed much since their first incarnation so there is definitely some clunks and quirks related to them.  This should improve considerably with version 0.9.8 (currently in development), where they will take on a much more key role.

The only thing I am a little confused about is your pocketing comments.
I think I get your 'spill over' comment... for something like a facing operation, you can specify a negative RoughingClearance to cut over the selected shapes.  This is a borderline 'dirty hack', but I must confess that is an elegant and simple solution (rather than adding yet another machining option).  Maybe better documentation is called for on this one?
However, things get complicated when you only want to spill over certain edges (for example with a slot), which I think is how this topic came into it...
http://www.cambam.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=912.msg4847#msg4847
This is a tricky one and I can't see an easy way around this other than ...overdraw the required shape to include a spillover area (moderately tedious) OR add an extra option to select edges of a polyline to allow spillover (sounds like it would be hard to make this intuitive).?
...But then you also mentioned

Unfortunately, 0.9.7f seems to have a bug that does not compute pocketing operations with holes correctly.  The cut spirals in from the outer profile and simply lifts over the inner profile wherever the tool would collide, rather than steering around the edge of it or even coming back to make another cleanup cut.

Which I take to refer to the way the pocketing operation works with Island pockets?  If so, then yes, the need to add an extra profile operation to tidy around the islands is a drag (the original justification was that is may be more efficient to do this as an extra profile at full depth rather than as part of the pocket operation at each depth level).  There is an alternative method to make a profile operation behave as a pocket by using a large cut-width...this results in a nice efficient toolpath that also completely machines around the 'islands'.  This will become an option to the standard pocket operation in a coming release... this will be along the lines of the 3D Profile machine operation RegionFillStyle option.

I hope this helps, apologies if I have misunderstood anything and please please please, feel free to pick those nits! 

[Ben Jackson]

Another one that keeps tripping me up:  Once you select a drawing operation, the *only* way out is to hit escape.  You can't click on 'circle' and then oops, click on 'polyline'.

[10bulls]

Yes, someone else pointed this out to me recently and, you guess it, it's on the list!

Another way to end a current drawing operation is to press the center mouse button (If your mouse is so blessed).
This is similar to pressing the Enter key, but if you haven't started to draw the the effect is the same as Escape.

[Ben Jackson]

Woah, I was reading the plugin forum and someone said "template editing is in 0.9x".  So I pull up cambam and search all the menus, try right clicking various places... FINALLY find that clicking the 'label' Template pops up an editor!  I'm really glad to see that feature, but wow is that unobvious.  There's an excellent book about human interaction called The Design of Everyday Things.  One of the concepts in there is "affordances":  the way certain things invite themselves to be used.  A label does not afford clicking!

[blowlamp]

"...FINALLY find that clicking the 'label' Template pops up an editor!  I'm really glad to see that feature, but wow is that unobvious.  One of the concepts in there is "affordances":  the way certain things invite themselves to be used."

Well I did say you'd need a bit longer than an evening to find its strengths  .
I suspect you're having a bit of fun with us now by underlining that book title to make us think it's clickable eh? .


Martin.