CNC simulators?

1

I’ve used camotics in the past, with some success, but these days it doesn’t run out of the box on Ubuntu (20.04) – missing libraries. I could spend the time to track down all the dependencies, but maybe someone can offer another alternative? I’m looking for a full simulation, showing the tool’s cuts, not just a G-code visualizer.

My mill is a simply X/Y/Z 2D carver, with manual tool changes, so my needs are basic. I don’t own Windows or a Mac, so the difficult part is that it needs to be linux- or cloud-based.

Anything come to mind?

paul

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2

This is certainly a pain point. I would really like to implement milling visualization in Kiri in the next couple of months. I already know how I would do it. It’s just down to finding the time. Some of the core refactoring that I’m working on (alluded to in another post) will make this much easier. So progress is being made toward it, if not directly.

But I would also like to hear if there are other options in the meantime.

BTW, if there is desire for new top level categories for other discussions (software, maker spaces and tech, etc), I’m open to adding them.

3

Grblgru is a prohect by someone who frequents the V1 forums. I think it has a decent sim in it and it supports oddball machine types like 5 axis stuff.

There is a Marlin for Linux that does simulation. I have only seen it in the discord and it was focused on printing. But I expect the hard parts are already done.

4

FreeCAD does basic simulation: https://wiki.freecadweb.org/Path_Workbench

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I agree with all the other comments regarding alternatives, but if you like camotics then why not keep using it? On my *ubuntu 20.04 system it was just a few commands to get it running:

sudo apt-get install -y gdebi libqt5websockets5-dev
wget http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/pool/universe/libv/libv8-3.14/libv8-3.14.5_3.14.5.8-5ubuntu2_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i libv8-3.14.5_3.14.5.8-5ubuntu2_amd64.deb
wget https://camotics.org/builds/release/debian-stable-64bit/camotics_1.2.0_amd64.deb
sudo gdebi camotics_1.2.0_amd64.deb
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6

Thanks for all the suggestions. I’ll take a look at all of them.

And, thanks for the camotics recipe. I was part way there, it turns out. I’ll try again. (I was unfamiliar with gdebi – it looks useful. So thanks for that, too.)

paul

7

Have you looked at Bowler Studio? It’s a full robot builder, simulator and exporter(STL) but also supports some 3D printers from what I’ve read breifly. By “supports” I mean it has pre-built machines and even outputs gcode. But it’s a robot simulator so forking an existing machine and customizing to represent your machine might be doable. Especially if a supported design is more like an i3 rather than a delta.

It runs on all platforms( I’ve installed it on KUbuntu 18.04 ).

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