Re: [PyCAM-devel] Suggestions for non-interactive / scripted usage?

[Lars K. <li...@su...>]

Hi Sebastian,


Am Thu, 16 Mar 2017 09:52:39 -0600
schrieb Sebastian Kuzminsky <se...@hi...>:

> In 'models', isn't 'type: file' just a special case of 'type: url'?

I am not sure. I wanted to avoid auto detection of the method for file
retrieval. But since this code already exists in pycam, we can also just unify
this.
What other kind of sources could be there?
* clipboard
* "thingiverse-ID" (without intention to promote this specific provider ...)
* ???


> In 'tools', the field called 'feedrate' is commonly called just 'feed', 
> and 'spindlespeed' is commonly called 'speed'.  I think this 
> nomenclature is universal in the machining world.

Fixed.


> In 'bounds' you introduce units on the numbers, 'absolute' bounds are 
> specified in implicit linear units while 'margins' bounds are specified 
> in percent.

Regarding the margins I intented to support both relative (suffix "%") and
absolute (no suffix) values. Margins relate to model bounds.
The "absolute" term refers to limits that are not related to model bounds.
Could we phrase this more clearly?


>  Is there interest in supporting 'mm' and 'inch' for the linear units.
> (Sorry to open this can of worms, it's just that our tools and tooling on
> this side of the pond is usually in imperial units...)

A great can of worms! :)
I appreciate any real-world practical feedback here.

In my world I am used to modeling in mm and configuring pycam for mm.
Thus I am fine with a "unit-less" approach in software.

What could we do here?
* define a global default for the whole file (to be used whenever a unit
  suffix is missing)
* auto-detect units in input files (but allow to override this with an
  attribute in the "source" field of a model)
* optionally (or mandatory?) support unit suffixes for all numbers everywhere

Or how else could we handle units?


> I would like it if the different top-level parts of that yaml document 
> (models, tools, processes, etc) could come from different files on disk. 
>   That would let me reuse (for example) the tool table between different 
> machining projects.

This will be possible, I think.
Maybe even something like this could be useful:
 https://pypi.python.org/pypi/HiYaPyCo/
(hierarchical merge of yaml data structures)


> I intend to use this feature mostly from Makefiles and scripts, [..]

This was also my target use case.

Cheers,
Lars