Hello all, I am hoping that you can give me a bit of guidance.
I had to take care of other business for the last four or five months. Couldn’t be helped. But when I came back to my Shapeoko Pro today, I find that I am so out of touch with these new releases. And I can’t seem to get Carbide Create (Rel 756) to send the toolpath file to Carbide Motion (rel 579). Not to mention that the interface for Motion looks, well, different.
The frustrating part is that the Create manual hasn’t been updated since 2021, so I am guessing that is not where to start.
My question is…where is a good place to go to get back up to speed?
People have had the send to Shapeoko broken for some time. Not sure if they have fixed that feature. Others will chime in. Depending how far back you were V7 only makes separate gcode files if you have the Pro edition. In V6 and below separate gcode files were made and send via Carbide Motion to the Shapeoko. Starting v7 the gcode is encrypted into the c2d file. You can view the gcode in the preview of a file and job started in Carbide Motion. So in V7 you use Carbide Motion to send the c2d file to the Shapeoko.
Off the top of my head here are a few of the changed in CC v7 Updates
If you want to use the bottom of the material for a contour or pocket you can select that or use the “t” without the quotation marks. This feature was added in CC v6. The advantage of this is that if you change the material height all you have to do is save the file and the gcode is updated in v7. If you use the bottom of material then in v6 and below you had to edit the tool path to get an update. Not sure about v7 if you use bottom of material and not “t” but using the “t” is fool proof if you want to cut through the material.
When creating a circle you can input the radius by doing the math or if you want a 2" diameter circle instead of entering 1.0 radius just enter 2/2 and you get the radius without having to do math.
In the Pro version of CC they added rest machining. So for this to work you have a rectangle and you pocket it with a 1/4" bit. Because it is an inside cut you get a 1/8" radius at the corners. With rest machining you check it and tell the new tool path the previous tool and enter a tool that is smaller and you get just the corners machined and not the whole pocket machined.
They have added a new inlay feature. I have used but but not sure of the results as yet. You still have to have two files, one for the female pocket and one for the male inlay. You check the “Inlay” box for the male inlay and set the gap at the bottom of the female pocket for glue squeeze out. The CC program is doing an offset to get the male plug slightly smaller so it will fit further down inside the female pocket.
They have added a tiling feature. I have not used it yet so I cannot comment on it.
There are likely other new features but those are what I can recall right now.
Gdon,
Thank you.
I know that older versions of CM aren’t available. I do have the download file still on my PC. Does it make sense to go back and load that version (build 566)?
I just can’t seem to get my PC to see the gcode files from CC v7.
Will, I’m back online and CNC is working. Using CM build 566 and seems to be working fine. I will need to investigate why the latest CM was giving me problems. Thanks for your help!
GDon, I’m back online and CNC is working. Using CM build 566 and seems to be working fine. I will need to investigate why the latest CM was giving me problems. Thanks for your help!
V7 only makes gcode separate files if you pay for the pro version and then only through a separate process. V7 free and pro encrypt the gcode inside the c2d file.