iPad Pro + Apple Pencil.....Workflow in general

[WillAdams (William Adams (Carbide 3D))]

CNC CAD and CAM are simple — it’s drawing which is hard.

The usual programs I’d suggest are:

• Serif’s Affinity Designer
• Cenon
• Inkscape
• Macromedia Flash (yes, I know Adobe sells it, but I can’t accept that)

all of which are Mac OS X desktop apps (and available for Windows and/or Linux).

You’ll want an SVG drawing program — I’m sure that there are some for the iPad — then you need to draw/create an SVG which:

• is a proper outline representation of the paths which you want the machine to consider for cutting
• has correct winding (outermost paths are counter-clockwise, next is clockwise and alternating
• is appropriate to the style of cutting which you wish to do — if you want to do through cuts w/ a square or ball-nosed endmill, then you’ll need for any corners or angles to be suitable rounded

I’d really suggest starting w/ Carbide Create — it will help you to understand some of the concepts of vector drawing — once you have those down, you can find a suitable app for the iPad, use that to create the SVG, then import the SVG into Carbide Create and do CAM there.

These links may help:

Let's make a coaster

The prototypical first job for a Shapeoko is to cut a coaster — here we do this using Carbide Create, trying to make the job as simple as possible, but adding a bit of interest with an inlay, and increasing the utility of the object by rounding off the corners. Before any real setup it will be best to go into Job Setup and Clear the drawing, and set the measurement units — please use mm (metric) for this tutorial. Note that the feeds and speeds in the Carbide 3D charts are given in Imperial inc…

Let's draw an "ellipse" with new users

(the title of this post hearkens back to a small book / card which Warren Chappell created, “Let’s make a “B” for Bennet” — I was fortunate to meet Mr. Chappell when he was Artist-in-Residence at UVA on a school field trip when I was young, and he was the author, along with his cousin Oscar Ogg, of a number of books I remember from my youth.) Note that the below is obsoleted in current versions of Carbide Create by the ability to asymmetrically scale a circle into an oval/ellipse. Okay, step-b…

• Shapeoko CNC Router, Rigid, Accurate, Reliable, and Affordable
• Inlay (beginning) Inlay Work (Woodworking) - #2 by WillAdams — balance is at: Inlay Work (Woodworking) - #25 by WillAdams

Help please with design carving protocol / setup in Carbide Create / Motion

Okay, glad to. First step is to open the file in Carbide Create: [image] (I am going to do this in as much detail as I can manage — please skip over the boring / obvious parts) Select the perimeter path, set the proxy point to the upper right corner, and get the dimensions for the project: [image] Click on the gear icon, enter the appropriate values and click OK: [image] Click on the …

There are some iPad-specific apps on the App store which may be of use — Shapeoko CNC Router, Rigid, Accurate, Reliable, and Affordable — or perhaps not — if you find them to be useful, or find others, please let us know (I’m a big believer in pen computing, and have been tempted by the idea of an iPad, but I find it hard to limit myself to Apple’s “walled garden”)

Additionally you may want to look into: http://www.indeeo.com/idraw/ and https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/freeform-vector-drawing-app/id364875544?mt=8