709 is up at: https://carbide3d.com/carbidecreate/beta
Hey. New guy here again. Getting a little confused. I have CC Pro 648. I don’t know if this V7 Beta is something I should download? What’s the difference between Pro and Beta, etc.
Kelly - download the new version of CC and give it a spin - because you have pro, you aren’t required to update carbide motion as well (because you can save gcode directly). But I would suggest updating to the latest version of CM as long as you’re at it.
As a Pro user I can tell you that saving one file (c2d) and loading that same file into motion was sort of a game changer for me. Felt like I got to totally skip a step AND it maintains the state of my design file and my gcode - so no more “file.nc, file2.nc, file 3_final.nc, etc.
If I’m being totally honest here, I thought I would never use the feature. It felt foreign for me to load a “design file” into the control software, but now that I’ve been doing it for a week, I can’t imagine going back.
I also want to mention, that although it’s a paradigm change, applying toolpaths to layers (instead of vectors) absolutely changed the way I think about designing. If anyone wants an example of this, let me know and I’ll do a short write up.
I’ll take you up on that. Thanks!
I’m having some difficulty seeing the full value in the measurement tool - even with the change to keep the line available after the second click.
Seems to me there are two major reasons for using a measuring stick: Measuring how big a gap or object is, and determining a location that is ‘x’ units away from another.
The tool will work for the former, but it will not work for the latter. The problem with trying to locate a position that’s a specified distance is that the measurement line disappears as soon as you grab another object or try to draw something in that location.
If I had my druthers, the measurement line would look different than all other lines (maybe dashed and colored) and would remain in place with a distance indicated on it until I clicked it specifically to remove it. It would have an “X” on it to allow me to remove it. Sort of like this:
Working on a box design which will use this feature at:
Im still struggling with the design software. Ive been cutting simple cutting boards out of corian and a few parts out of plywood for my dust collection. To be honest, i didnt even understand a lot of what you said. All of the CC lingo is a foreign language to me. I havent figured out 3d, v carve or a lot of different functions in the software. Im set up pretty good in my cnc area, just cant do a lot with it.
Trying to simplify — Carbide Create runs in two modes:
We have just gotten to version 7, which is in open beta testing (this is a computer science term for a program which is not yet ready for final release, but which may be usable, and which has been placed into public testing) — the new version 7 adds a few new features, and one major change — where previous versions required that one export from one’s .c2d source file to a G-code file so as to be able to send movement/cutting instructions to the machine, v7 integrates these into the .c2d file, simplifying things so that if one has updated to the new Carbide Motion, one can send the toolpaths which are in a v7 .c2d file to the machine by selecting it.
I’ve tried to spell out all of the terminology for Carbide Create at:
and any terms which were missed should be at:
If you have any questions, or any difficulties, feel free to post them here in a new thread, or to ask at support@carbide3d.com — we have a standing offer: if you get stuck on a file or project, just ask and we’ll do our best to walk through it w/ you.
So not to beat the G-code issue up anymore. I agree C3D makes great products and has great people. It just makes me wonder about the values of the company going forward. The main reason I pick this product is I really liked the the company values and how they were fairly open and sharing with others. I saw many suggestions to use other peoples CAD and Sender programs if C3D’s CC and CM did not meet your needs or you can mix and match them. There are many reference and links to others resources on the site. I felt C3D offered the most flexibility and I would not be painting myself into a corner or getting in to a marriage.
It just seems to be a bit of a hypocritical move as it is OK to use others companies programs and resources but we are are going to a propriety file format and method ??? This change in values just really shocked me base on what I thought C3D stood for. So G-code issue aside, what is next ? Is the door going to close more ? 
Kelly,
With time and practice and patience you will advance in your knowledge. No one this forum or in this post were born with any knowledge of the CNC.
I like your shop set up. I downloaded the picture and blew it up to figure out what was on the wall. I am supposing it is a cleat system to hold stuff. Please let me know if I am right.
Back to your point about your knowledge level. Only pushing yourself will advance you knowledge. You could try going to cutrocket.com and check the ready made projects. No copying someone else will help with your set and cutting but it wont advance your knowledge of the software. If you do download projects from cutrocket.com try to draw up and create your own project. The good thing about having a master template is you know what you are trying to achieve. If you just start from scratch you dont know what you dont know. What ever you do keep trying and you will learn. Sometimes the school of hard knocks is the best teacher. You can read in a book how to do something but until you actually do it and do it successfully can you say you understand what you are doing.
Good Luck
Doesn’t seem too bad to me. I look at it as “you dance with the one that brought you”. In the past, they had the bandwidth or whatever to handle both paying and non-paying customers. However, if a non-paying customer is getting in the way of handling someone that has paid you money in the past (and therefore is way more likely to pay you money in the future), well, we all have bills to pay.
I’m not sure what free CAD/Sender programs people are recommending here, other than stuff by Vectric and Autodesk. Both of those companies aren’t shy about collecting money either, with the latter definitely doing it as a way to get people trained on their software for free before they’re locked in and need to pay the $600 or so per year. Vectric is about $360 last I checked, and that was just one of the pieces of software. Both I’m sure are incredibly capable, but we all have bills to pay.
If you have one of their machines, there’s really nothing here that’s going to bite you that hard, IMO. I’m certainly open to being wrong there, but if your Shapeoko is your small unit, and you have a 4x8 or whatever for big jobs, you’re likely not just using CC/CM. I personally got turned onto CC when I had a 3018, and I’m sure they’ve done the math on losing that upgrade path (on the Pro XXL now), but again, that’s on them. They’re big boys, they didn’t owe me free software back then, and they don’t really owe it to anyone that hasn’t paid them now.
For something that isn’t g-code, what’s the level of difficulty in making custom preview color options? That is, I put something I did with burning pine recently in the “what did you make today” topic. If there were a way to make the very top surface dark like a walnut, but anything that got trimmed would be pine, that would be super. Of course, custom colors & behavior heights would be welcome, not just the dark/light I’ve mentioned.
Yea, that is a French Cleat Wall. That was right after i built it. I had the cleats for the tool holders placed in the cleats on the wall to keep them from getting bowed while i was making tool holders.
We’re looking at adding a lot more rendering options in V7, but we’re still working through the technical and user interface problems so I’m not sure what we’ll end up implementing.
- (NEW) Polyline tool shows angles and length of prior span to help build construction geometry.
Looks a lot like the measure tool. Nice
- (FIX) Clean up left pane scroll behavior.
Works perfect now.
- (FIX) Trace command updates. (Had it fixed, then broke it in the prior build)
Nice. Much quicker to dial an image in.
- (FIX) Allow a second click to lock the positions in the Measure command.
Also nice. This is intuitive & easy to use.
- (FIX) Disable snaps on hidden layers.
Still some situations where it would be nice to toggle off “Snap to node” similar to “Snap to grid”
I could probably live with inconvenience of a web page G-code extractor. That said, this appears to be a treatment for the effect, not the cause. If the issue is support, why not set up a web page restriction for support, instead of a page for G-code export?
I, like others, was deeply disappointed in the message sent by removing the ability to generate G-code. I understand the concern about folks using CC on hardware not sold by Carbide Create, but that was part of the appeal. A company truly so open was refreshing, and the youth of the home CNC industry means there is no guarantee any of the current manufacturers will exist long term. Has anyone considered the significant downside to the company and to our community of all the non-C3D folk who most likely will abandon CC?
In the interest of full disclosure… My Shapeoko 3 was the smallest version, and I found I needed something a bit larger. So I now own a second machine that is not from Carbide3D, but continue to use my Shapeoko in parallel (which was no small decision, since I am really space bound). Not only would I like to use one CADCAM system for both machines, but I have also discovered past CC bugs by reading the G-Code and on a couple of occasions have needed to edit G-code. A proprietary file may help work flow, but the cost is too great for me.
I didn’t read the problem as this at all. I thought it was non-customers using support that was the issue.
Not non-customers using the software. ???
So the problem/opportunity statement should be, “How do we limit support to only our customers, or at least give customers priority over non-customers?”
Which leads into the first question, “How do we identify customers vs non-customers?”
I have a login on my.carbide3d.com, as well as here on the forum. I provided my email when I bought my machine. Seems there should be a relatively easy way to make a connection. ??
If you interpreted my comment to mean that C3D employees were concerned about non-customer use of CC, I’m sorry. That was not my intent. However, there have been postings by others on this forum that I interpret to imply such concern. More importantly, the proposed solution applies to non-customers and not specifically non-customers seeking support …which was my main premiss. Regardless of whether anyone worries about non-customer usage, I see the elimination of G-code export as potential collateral damage by reducing the size of the user community, as well as tarnishing the C3D corporate image in the eyes of those of us who value open systems.
Hello, Many good feature improvements and new features. However, I have submitted multiple requests to have previous version of CC fixed so a .dxf file is opened with the correct scaling. I have submitted detail examples of why it doesn’t work correctly. If you open a .dxf file that is scaled for inches, the object vectors of the .dxf file are scaled to mm and visa versa. Why can’t this be fixed in CC V7. These example files open correctly scaled in other 3rd party CAD software like LibreCAD. Seems the vectors should follow the scale settings in the setup panel. You want the file job setup window set to inches, then all the vectors should be scaled to inches. The way it is now, you get tiny vectors that are 25.4 times smaller than they are supposed to be. This seems like a simple code fix to resolve this. Would hope this could finally be resolve in one of the upcoming V7 versions.
Yep. Especially this of us who do drag engraving, at least with non-Carbide bits. The software still forces you to edit out the M3 commands in the gcode. This plus Rob’s suggesting I get a raspberry pi or Windows laptop to run the new version of CM which will be required.
Is the idea here that former freeloaders will now rush to buy Carbide machines?
