This release features the completion of major 4th axis CAM work, including lathe mode, as well as a host of other CAM improvements. There remain interesting but not yet documented features that will come to light in small point releases along with companion videos. I just haven’t had the time to do it all justice. FDM work was largely constrained to bug fixes.
With the start of 4.x development, nothing is off the table. I’m expecting hard-level refactoring and re-writes with an eye toward performance and future functionality. WASM, WebGPU, and other languages will be explored. Possibly a new UI framework. There is a lot of “if I had only known this (or had it been available) 10 years ago” stuff for which ever-so-clever patching and workarounds have evolved into a magnificent Gordian Knot. Buckle-up. It’s going to be fun. Any devs out there looking for a project, this is the best time to hop on board.
Details (from release.md)
- More graceful handling of security contexts blocking SharedArrayBuffer
- FDM refactor the ‘detect’ support feature for auto-placing manual supports
- FDM fix supports in belt mode
- CAM fix issue #230 shared tool numbers cause animation errors
- CAM fix surface / trace selection copy on hover/pop/new op
- CAM decrease cutting speed when entire tool is engaged in roughing
- CAM add dogbones support to traces ops
- CAM add scripted contour filtering (to be extended to other ops)
- CAM add calculation of taper length from angle
- CAM add open poly-line offsetting with trace op
- CAM clearly delineate ops reachable or not on timeline
- CAM add 4th axis lathe operation for debug and testing (can be optimized)
- CAM add rough all stock to aid lathe mode
- CAM stock is now always on, whether offset or absolute
- CAM add lathe worker parallelization (2x - 6x speedup)
- CAM fix pocket/trace selection with flip op