CAD Entities
Polyline
Polylines consist of multiple straight line and circular arc segments.
Polylines are used internally to represent toolpath shapes as they currespond well to gcode G1 (line) and G2,G3 (arc) moves.
Properties
| Closed |
True | False
Open polylines have two ends and no defined inside or outside.
Closed polylines are where the first and last points are the same and have a well defined inside and outside.
Note Polylines with first and last points having the same coordinates are not neccesarily closed. The closed marker should
be set to True for these shapes otherwise unexpected results may occur.
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| Points |
This property contains a collection of polyline points. Clicking the [...] button to the right of the property will open up
a window where the points can be editted directly.
Each point contains an X,Y and Z coordinate and a bulge parameter.
Bulge is defined as tan(sweepangle/4) for arc segments, where bulge=0 is a straight line.
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Region
A region consists of a closed outer shape and a number of internal holes.
To create a region, select inner and outer shapes then use the Edit - Convert - To Region menu option, or press CTRL+R
Note: Currently, some shapes such as circles will need to be converted to polylines first before being used to create a region.
Circle
Properties
| CenterPoint |
The coordinates of the center of the circle
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| Diameter |
The diameter of the circle.
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PointList
Point lists are useful for defining points to be used for drilling operations.
As well as drawing directly, they can be created from the Draw-Point List menu operations
| Divide Geometry |
Evenly divides a selected shape into a given number and inserts a point at each division.
This is useful for generating a bolt hole pattern.
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| Step Around Geometry |
Inserts a point at given distances around a selected shape.
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| Fill Geometry |
Fills a closed shape with points.
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| Offset Fill Geometry |
Fills a closed shape with points where alternating rows are offset by half the stepping distance.
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| Centers |
Inserts a point at the center of each selected object.
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| Extents |
Inserts a point at the extremities and center of a boundry rectangle enclosing each selected object.
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Properties
| Points |
This property contains a collection of points. Clicking the [...] button to the right of the property will open up
a window where the points can be editted directly.
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Rectangle
Properties
| CornerRadius |
New! This will round the corners of the rectangle to a given radius.
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| Height |
The height of the rectangle.
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| LowerLeftPoint |
The coordinates of the lower left corner of the rectangle.
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| Width |
The width of the rectangle.
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Text
Properties
| Location (P1) | This is the first and at the moment, only alignment point. The TextAlignmentH and TextAlignmentV options are all relative to this point. |
| Location2 (P2) | This point is not currently used. The intention is to use it to define alignment options that evenly spread the text between two points, or perhaps as an alernative to the Rotate option. |
| CharSpace | This option scales the width used for each character. The default is 1. A setting of 2 would double the space used for each character (but not the character itself). |
| LineSpace | This scales the distance between each text line. The default is 1. |
| Font | This is the font name to use for the text. For a bit of fun, try clicking on this option, select a font, then use the up and down arrow to try different options. |
| Height | This is the text height in drawing units. |
| Text | The text to enter. To enter multi line text, click the [...] button after this property. |
| TextAlignmentH | Left, Center or Right (relative to Location). |
| TextAlignmentV | Top, Center or Bottom (relative to Location).
NOTE: Bottom is actually the baseline of the text. As per DXF I may add other options to differentiate absolute bottom and baseline. |
| Bold | Bold Font Style. |
| Italic | Italic Font Style. |
| Regular | Regular Font Style. |
| StrikeOut | StrikeOut Font Style. Not currently supported. |
| Underline | Underline Font Style. Not currently supported. |
Arc
Properties
| CenterPoint |
The center of the arc.
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| Radius |
The radius of the arc.
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| Start |
The start angle in degrees of the first arc point. Angle = 0 is along the positive X axis.
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| Sweep |
The sweep angle in degrees from the first to seconf arc point. Positive angles are counter clockwise and negative angles clockwise.
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Line
Lines have multiple segments, similar to polylines, but can only contain straight sections.
Surface
Surfaces are triangle face meshes imported from STL and 3DS files.
Spline
Splines (or NURBS) can currently only be imported from DXF files. Spline drawing is not yet supported.