Curious: What language is Carbide Create written in?

Also, will there ever be any option to open source a branch of the software?

I believe it’s C++ and seems to use the QT toolkit.

I doubt it will be opensourced, folks have asked, and it’s viewed as a competitive advantage.

There are a number of other opensource CAM tools which could use help though, see the list at: https://wiki.shapeoko.com/index.php/CAM

In particular, MakerCAM looks like low-hanging fruit and really needs to be ported to node.js or something similar.

FWIW, I’ve been working on a hybrid system which uses OpenSCAD as a front-end and then some other tool (LuaLaTeX and METAPOST for one iteration, currently experimenting with TPL (see https://tplang.org/ ) and am considering some other options — hope to submit it to Kickstarter at the beginning of next week.

Been there, asked that question, got that answer. While quite understandable, this is the single regret I have about anything Shapeoko. CC/CM would be more polished/bug free if they were open sourced. Still a great starter kit into the CAD/CAM world though

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While I can understand making it open-sourced being out of the question, I still think it would be a great move if they released some api’s, or some functionality for 3rd-party plugins to be able to be integrated into CC.

Lots of opensource projects for folks to contribute to — the most promising ones / most analogous to CC/CM to my mind would be bCNC and MakerCAM — that latter in particular would benefit from being ported to something like node.js

I guess my hope was that there might be someway to address the few dozen UI bugs that tend to frustrate new users:

  • Clicking a file opens Carbide Create, but doesn’t open the actual file
  • No warning if you close a project without saving
  • No option to open a New file
  • No saving of settings (except oddly the size of the last project)
  • Saving a library of tools, but not the preferred speeds or a display name for the list
  • No personal library of shapes
    etc.

These seem like simple things to address (and yes, I write code for a living), but they really frustrate new users and make it harder to use the Shapeoko. Don’t get me wrong, I use it and I think it is a very nice and useful piece of software, but I hate watching a newbie user abandon the machine over frustrations with not being able to do things 99% of normal (Non CNC) programs do.

Just my 2 cents.

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CC also seems to remember the last tool used in a toolpath.

Work-around for the personal library of shapes (which is a great suggestion) is to save a file of them as a template, or use the nifty merge software which was recently worked up:

(listed at: https://wiki.shapeoko.com/index.php/Carbide_Create#Resources )

Hopefully @robgrz and @edwardrford will peek in here and take note of the suggestions.

I could not agree more, I could have written the exact same post (and I used to do SW for a living too, so it may be our sw bias talking)

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