Unknown character when opening c2d files

Software Carbide Motion
1

I downloaded the latest Carbide Create for my Nomad 883, build 831. Then I create this file:
http://www.frank-buss.de/tmp/hole.c2d
and saved the toolpaths to the same file, since the G-Code export is not free anymore now. Then I installed the latest Carbide Motion, build 649, and it doesn’t load the file, says a lot of “unknown character” messages. How to fix this?

The old version I had installed some years ago worked fine, with g-code export, but I got a problem and wanted to test the latest version, will post another message when I tested it with the latest version if the problem persists.

2

Where is the file being stored when it is loaded into Carbide Motion? Please provide the compleat path.

3

The full path was W:\projects\kerberos.org\cnc\hole.c2d, network mapped drive. But I also tried c:\tmp\hole.c2d and same problem.

4

The error message I get is:

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when loading from

"C:\tmp\hole.c2d"

Exporting G-code doesn’t show anything unusual on those lines:

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and the exported file:

hole.nc (11.1 KB)

loaded as expected:

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Opening the file in Carbide Create and writing out the toolpaths as a .c2d file:

hole_v8.c2d (44 KB)

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also loaded as expected:

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image2880×1728 163 KB

so there would seem to be some sort of problem on your computer with how toolpaths are being generated and saved into a .c2d file.

If you have this problem again, please send the file in to support@carbide3d.com and we will do our best to look into it.

EDIT: I did have one thought — what is your decimal separator set to? If comma, please change to period, re-save the file and try again.

5

Thanks, this was the problem with the decimal separator. I guess because I tried to open an old C2D file, which failed, that somehow it was set to comma after this. I started Carbide Creator new, create a new file from scratch, and it works now here, too.

6

If the commas are already in the file, there’s not much we can do, but this beta might handle one edge case a little better, if this was something that came up in 831:

EDIT- You’ll need to reload and save the file in that new build of Carbide Create.

1 Like
7

We uploaded a new CM build too, since the code is shared there too Carbide Motion Beta Downloads

1 Like
8

Yeah, no problem, I have only a handful of simple files, I just re-create them. Previous version was Carbide Create 316, lots of improvements, I like it, great work!

The other problem I had was solved with it: it did always a movement to bottom left at start of a job, ignoring the retract height, which made it difficult to use clamps, and wasted time, and also just one tool measure now instead of 2 per job. And I’m running it in a VM, the old version was very laggy, the new version is super smooth.

9

Just fyi if someone reads it: with version 831 of Carbide Create there was still the bug in it that when you created a file on a Windows machine with German locale setting (comma as decimal separator), create a circle with a dot in the radius, then save the file, then quit Create and restart it, then open the file, then the dots in the circle radius was a comma. But looks like this is fixed in the beta version 832.

Best would be probably for the user interface to use the right locales, but easiest would be probably to do it as it is now, and use just dots everywhere and ignore the locale, technical users use dots anyway all the time.

10

BTW, I was too lazy to create the new c2d file again with version 832, so I extracted the gcode first with Extract GCode from Carbide Create V7 and then vibe coded a script with Claude Code to convert the commas to dots:
Converts commas in a gcode nc file to dots for the decimal separator · GitHub
Use it at your own risk, Claude makes sometimes silly mistakes which could destroy your drill bits or head, but worked for me.

How much money does Carbide make with the Create Pro version? Maybe would be better to just release it as open source, then others could improve it as well, and in the end it might be even cheaper for Carbide, because less maintenance cost. And of course would be a big PR news.

I tried to parse the new c2d format, nice that it is now changed to sqlite from json, but couldn’t decode the integrated gcode so far, I guess it is somehow encrypted, to encourage buying the pro version :wink: