sheetcam.com

The way we use our router is probably different than most. We don't post a sheet of cutting and then cut 100 sheets. Every one of our sheets is typically used only once.

For each of our sheets, the layers and corresponding operations are standard. We read in an dxf, tab the parts, post process the sheet and load the next sheet. We desperately need a batch mode that will create a set of Sheetcam jobs whose names match the names of all the files (dxf's) in a folder. It then needs to open each job, import the corresponding dxf, pause for manual tabbing (if autotab is set to no), save the job, post process it and start again with the next file. This would save countless hours, as well as eliminate a major source of errors during a very repetitve and tedious procss.

I am checking to see if others have the same need. If there are others that share this need, maybe there is reason for Les to add this functionality. If I am the only one, I will continue to investigate Windows(tm) application automation tools such as RoboTask and perform
this type of "screen scraping" to make it happen. If anyone has any specific screen-scraping experience, I would also like to hear from you.

Thanks so much,

I have been thinking on this one. I think I could write a plugin that would show a window with a list of all the drawings in a given folder. If you double click on a drawing it loads that drawing. It could also have a button that runs the post processor then saves the job.

This would at least save you manually opening each drawing and you would be less likely to lose track of which drawing you have already done.

Yes I have the need for this Batch Mode

The Idea with the plugin sounds great!
It would be great if you could add a dublicate function to the plugin.

And... If we can find a way to automatically extract cut depth info from the dxf via line weight or layer name, this will have all the production power of alphacam and some very costly competitors!

Simply extract the Z depth from the Z value of the DXF (;-)

(;-) TP

Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see how that can be done in sheetcam.

Les would have to allow Scam to read the Z value. And if he did there are many things Scam could use that value for.

(;-) TP

I don't currently intend to try extracting the Z from the drawing. However batch loading as described in the first post is now available in SheetCam. Go to Plugins->quick load. It allows you to quickly load multiple drawings.