Copyright (C) 1986-2008 by Daniel H. Hudgins, All Rights Reserved.

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This Web site is dedicated to the thousands of "users" of my programs, those who have helped test my programs over the last 22 or so years, and especially those who shared their experiences with me.

You must read this notice: This is a licensed Web site (HTML document and associated files). You must read and agree to be legally bound in contract by the Terms of Use and conditions given in the End User License Agreement ("EULA"), Legal Notices, Instructions, Warnings, Disclaimers, and all other text in "SECTION: 0" of "This Web Site" (HTML document and associated files) before reading or using any of the information, software programs, and or files, contained in, linked to, and or associated with, "This Web Site" (HTML document and associated files). Any use or "Beta Testing" of "This Web Site" constitutes your acknowledgment of your full agreement with the current End User License Agreement ("EULA") and your decision to have this current license supersede all prior and contemporaneous agreements and understandings. Information and files in "This Web Site" (HTML document and associated files) have been placed here so that long time users of "The Author's" programs DANCAD3D.COM (tm) , DANCAM.EXE (tm) , or DANPLOT.EXE (tm) could help proofread the text of the documentation files or screens displayed, and also help test data files, example files, and or any software programs that might be made available from time to time, to aid "The Author" in finding mistakes, bugs, and other errors, omissions, defects, mistakes, and faults. Everything in "This Web Site" (HTML document and associated files) is "Beta Test", "Beta Code", Experimental, Preliminary, requires proofreading, or is being evaluated for possible revision, and is NOT warranted to be free of defect. To help "The Author" report any bugs, foul-ups, defects, or mistakes that you find, see "SECTION: 8" for instructions. "This Web Site" (HTML document and associated files) and all other files and programs by Daniel H. Hudgins are made available "AS IS" without warranty of any kind express, expressed, or implied. All offers and specifications are subject to change or discontinuation without notice of any kind. Please read "SECTION: 8" of "This Web Site" (HTML document and associated files) before trying to contact "The Author."

SECTION: 1 has some "general" information about my CAD and CAM programs, information about this Web site (HTML document), and "news" relating to the aforementioned. See also the program files in your distribution of my programs and the other parts of this HTML documentation (Web site) for information more specifically about how my programs operate and their commands.

About 22 years ago (circa 1985-1986) I was preparing some drawings for a paper I was going to present about some 3D video display system designs that I was investigating that would display auto-stereoscopic images with parallax, something like a video hologram. The publisher of the proceedings required camera ready art work which was difficult for me to draw by hand since the drawings required many narrow straight lines. I had drawn the illustrations for a previous paper by hand and was anxious to find an easier way to make the drawings. My brother had just purchased a IBM PCjr (tm) computer. At that time there were few if any inexpensive drawing programs that could produce high quality drawings. Pen plotters at that time were also very expensive. I purchased a 8 pin dot matrix printer, and noticed that the printer had commands that would allow it to position the wires of the print head 1/3 the distance between the print wires so that if I have the print head make three passes I could interlace the print lines 3:1 and end up with 216 lines per inch vertically, and 240 lines per inch horizontally. The scale of 240 points to the inch, in DANCAD3D.COM (tm), came from the dot matrix printer resolution, so that with a scale of 1 each drawing unit was one point on the drawing. There may have been some other program offering that high print quality on 8 pin dot matrix printers at that time, but I do not recall having heard of any. The original version of DANCAD3D.COM (tm) (pre v1.0) was a 2D integer program, in which the drawings were made on graph paper and the values for the end points were entered manually, if you look in the [N]umerical menu you will see some of the original commands, e.g. [E]nter, [I]nsert, and [D]elete. Once the drawing was in the workspace the [O]ffset, [M]agnify, and [R]otate commands could be used to position the elements. At the time I thought this was just a weekend programming project for making my illustrations. After I printed the illustrations out as large a possible, I had them photographically reduced at a process camera (lithographic) shop making the resolution about 1000 lines per inch, and pasted the photostats of my drawings into the camera ready forms for my paper.

Around that time I had just heard of a few companies that were distributing "public domain", and "user supported" programs on floppy disks by mail, and that such companies would accept submissions for distribution in their collections. I thought that since I had written this nice dot matrix printer plotting program, I might be able to dress it up with some menus and let other people who could not afford expensive drawing programs, but who wanted to make fine line drawings on the printer they now had, use my program. Since operating the program interactively was very slow on a PCjr (tm) I added a scripting language. The program was converted to 3D with real number storage. When looping was added to the scripting language computer animation became easier to write. Eventually DANCAD3D.COM v1.1 (tm) evolved and was the first version to go into wide distribution by the "shareware" vendors. Version v1.1 is basically about the same program as the current version, except for the addition of more features, many of the basic internal structures of the program have never needed to be changed.

At the time DANCAD3D.COM v1.1 (tm) was introduced there were not any other PC shareware programs that I know of that could produce 3D wire-frame animation with high quality print out. I mailed the program out to about three or four of the shareware vendors that advertised in magazines thinking that it might sell a dozen or so copies per year. Only one of the shareware vendors I mailed it to accepted it for distribution. For about six months I heard nothing from users until one day I got a letter from someone that started something like this "Pardon me for taking your time I know that you must get many such requests for support...", wow somebody thought enough of my feeble program to write to me, it was very flattering. One quality of v1.1 is that it would probably crash if you made any kind of mistake! As more and more letters pored in from people complaining about bugs I began to realize that I had better try to fix some of the bugs, or I would be answering a lot of letters. DANCAD3D.COM (tm) evolved quickly through v1.2 to v1.33. DANMOVIE (tm) was introduced to play back animations quickly on the PC's screen. Thousands of copies of these early versions were distributed by the shareware vendors. I did not require registration for the programs, so only a tiny percentage of the users bothered to contact me, perhaps one in two hundred (it seemed silly to demand registration since people would do what they wanted anyway).

Around 1988 it became apparent from the mail that I was receiving that most of the people that were purchasing the "shareware" disks were not using the 3D or animation aspects of DANCAD3D.COM (tm), but were just interested in drawing simple 2D line drawings.

Because of the large number of complaints that I got about the bugs in v1.x I worked on a highly evolved version 2.0 that would make some major changes. Version 1.x was not really intended to be used as an interactive drawing tool, rather it was intended that the drawing would be made one element at a time, and then a macro (*.MAC) script program would be written to arrange the elements and make the print out. Since printing at the high resolution on a 8088 4.7MHz computer could take 6 hours or more, the macro script control would allow the printing of several drawings overnight, with the program running itself. That was all well and good, but most people wanted a program that would allow them to work with the elements on the screen, using the mouse to move the elements around. So I changed the [D]raw command to have many new commands that would allow the drawing to be worked on without having to go back out to the main menu as much. Around 1988 the 80286 clones started to become popular, and better graphics cards such as Hercules (tm) and EGA (tm) video came into use.

Version 1.x only had one line width, so in DANCAD3D.COM v2.x I added the ability to make the lines thicker by having more than 250 line thicknesses. The macro script language was changed to support variables, and the IF THEN construction, so better programs could be written, rather than just having to use the [O]ffset, [M]agnify, or [R]otate command repeatedly to manipulate elements. Support for loading fonts, and drawing symbol sets was added to make drawing better and easier.

I had an interest in writing a program that could read tool path files created with DANCAD3D.COM (tm) and turn stepper or servo motors to do engraving or other machining tasks. Around 1989 I wrote two programs that could read my ASCII drawing file format and operate machine tools. I wanted to make the CAM programs as simple as possible, and use DANCAD3D.COM (tm) to prepare the tool path files. Although I was not the first to write a motion control program that used the parallel port, the combination of my CAD program with the new CAM programs offered a complete solution to automating some types of machine tools. In order to try to make my CAM programs be as simple and inexpensive as possible I cultivated and then operated, at that time, from these ten principles and goals:

1. The system would be cheep to hook-up, simple to use, and ubiquitous.

2. When used with DANCAD3D.COM (tm) and DOS no other programs would be needed.

3. The CAM programs would fit on floppy disk with DOS and a small tool path.

4. The CAM programs would run on 4.7MHz 8088 and other "junk" computers.

5. G codes would not be needed since it can be simpler to draw the tool path.

6. Universal Step pulse and Direction signals from the parallel port would be used.

7. No particular brand of motor translator/driver would be required.

8. The programs would be configure-able for many machine types and sizes.

9. That either purchased or home built electronics would be usable.

10. That an "open" ASCII tool path file format would be used allowing user access.

Around 1989 most of the small CAM systems I was aware of used proprietary interfaces, so the software they were selling could not be used on computers that did not have their special interface card in one of the computer's ISA slots. After some experimentation with that sort of interface, I decided that it would be better to make my system as cheep as possible and to only use the standard parallel port, and later the standard Joy- stick port. I found that there were just enough input and output pins on the parallel port to support three motors and four relays, or four motors and two relays as well as three home switches (some versions of DANPLOT.EXE (tm) can use four home switches in some hook-up arrangements), and one pin that could be used for pause or error, servo sensitivity to load, and to signal any one of six out of range limit switches. Since many manufactures supply stepper or servo motor drivers that can read step pulse and direction signals, that signal format seemed to be able to give users the widest range of choices in picking the motor drive electronics. Hobbyists that had the knowledge to build their own motor driver circuits could do so since no special interface card was required. Since the parallel port uses TTL signals it would be simple to directly connect home and limit switches, as well as solid state relays to control the spindle motor and such.

Around 1989 people were upgrading from 8088 computers to 80286 computers so many people had old computers that they did not use any more. I thought that these old computers would work great as machine shop CNC control computers, since if they were damaged it would be cheep to replace them. Since harddisks might fail in environments with high humidity, oil mist, and from age, being able to run the CAM programs off of a single floppy drive seemed important at that time. Today it might be argued that harddisks are so cheep and reliable that keeping the CAM programs small is unimportant, perhaps, but the general idea was to use DANCAD3D.COM (tm) on the "office" fast computer, and have some old slower "junk" computers in the shop running machines.

Most CNC machines built then and now use G codes. Manually writing a complex tool path made of G codes using a text editor seemed to me in 1989 both beyond many hobbyists knowledge, and un-necessary. Un-necessary because DANCAD3D.COM (tm) was able to draw lines and other shapes made of short lines, retain the order lines were drawn in, and manipulate those lines in 3D space, when used properly. Since a tool path is just a path of lines or points through 3D space, DANCAD3D.COM (tm) could be used to draw the tool motions required to make just about any part within the limits of the 3 axis machine to be automated. Being able to visually see the lines used in the tool motions, on the computer screen, should also have made major mistakes in the tool path less of a problem, as apposed to running a G code file to cut metal without having any way to test the G code program file before hand. Although G codes can be useful, especially today when automatic tool path generating programs are available, DANCAD3D.COM (tm) can also be useful for preparing tool paths for two reasons, DANCAD3D.COM (tm) is inexpensive (sometimes free), and DANCAD3D.COM (tm) allows total control of every part of the 3D tool path design, where as an automatic tool path generation program may not take into account all of the special needs of your machine with regard to backlash, unevenly warn parts, and incremental small distance movements needed in the final cuts.

At first there was very little interest in my super cheep CAM system. People who had grown up thinking that G codes were the only way to do things thought any program that did not use them was silly. Over time though people who were not in the CAM main stream, but wanted to automate various tasks began to get their systems running by using my programs, and showed them to their friends, some of whom became converts to my way of doing things and a small but growing group of hobbyists adopted the super cheap and simple CAM idea. I think I recall one user who contacted me to convey to me that he had spent what must have been more than a thousand dollars setting up a machine and was surprised that "the program worked," I was glad of that, but if he thought I was a fraud, why did he spend the money in the first place? There are always bugs in the programs, but I did try to make something usable.

To extend file exchange possibilities I have since that time added and revised commands in v2.7 for both Loading and Saving files with a sub-set of G code commands. These Load and Save G code commands might be used to convert G code files for use with my CAM programs, or to edit and create G code tool path files. Some support for other Industry file types was also added in newer versions to allow for file exchange, conversion for display on the internet, and printing drawings in color.

An interesting phenomenon seemed to have evolved, after a few dozen users got their automated machines working, I think I recall that, some seemed to forget all about the parts they had built their machine to make, and decided that building machines to sell and possibly writing CAM software similar to mine was the way to pass their time before the inevitable. Apparently there are now many companies offering low cost CAM software that sends step pulse and direction signals through the parallel port. I guess this confirms, in part, some of the validity of my approach, if you do something as cheaply as possible it is inevitable that that will become the normal method. There were apparently two other CAM programs that used the parallel port in the market before I wrote my CAM programs, from what I gather one was apparently a terminate and stay resident program with its own motion control language command set, and another was apparently a G code interpreter that sent the motor phase outputs through the parallel port to amplifiers, and so would not directly work with universal translator drivers that use step pulse and direction signals to run stepper or servo motors. The fellow with the G code interpreter was selling his software with a small milling machine I believe, for the educational and training market. Actually I wrote a ASCII to G code converter program, back then, so people using software like his could experiment with using DANCAD3D.COM (tm) to operate small G code driven machines, this code that I wrote later became the G code export command in DANCAD3D.COM (tm).

One of my customers from years ago apparently established a corporation that started out by selling, as one of its first products, a motor driver circuit board designed to be driven from my CAM programs. I believe he now has a successful CAM business offering CAM software from other companies with his hardware. I think I recall that some of my other customers through the years have told me that they got jobs and other positive ventures as a result of what they learned from using my programs and my documentation. There seem to be many non-printer types of devices that use the computer's parallel port now.

With the introduction of DANCAD3D.COM (tm) v2.6 I rewrote the way drawings are stored in the program so that the program creates a form of virtual memory, so the workspace size is then limited by the size of one of the harddisks on the system. If you have an 8.4GB harddisk you can use one of the four partitions just for the drawing workspace file and edit very complex tool paths or drawings. In previous versions it was possible to work on large drawings but you had to break them into smaller parts.

Along the way from 1986 to now I have made many pen pals and answered what must be several thousand letters. I have learned much from everyone who has been kind enough to share their experiences with my programs.

Many of my original ideas about what my CAM programs might be used to make have been carried out by one or another user. It might be nice if users would start to post their tool path files, or macros to generate their tool path files, on the internet as Public Domain information files, so that other hobbyists can download the files to make the same project on their machine, and thereby learn from each others methods.

Since about 2003 the protected memory mode program versions e.g. v3.7 have had new features added such as high resolution video modes for the Drawing editor command, Audio processing commands, and later the Digital Cinema commands in the Files Utilities Kinema sub-menu.

Relating to the Digital Cinema commands the programs DANCINEL.EXE (tm) and DANCINES.EXE (tm) were introduced to allow the Digital Intermediate edited with the Kinema commands to be output to 35mm film for projection and for digital frame images to be scanned from 35mm film for processing with the Kinema commands in DANCAD3D.EXE (tm).

Many of the changes to the programs since 2000 have been noted in the What's New section of this Web site, so you can check that for details on the more recent history. As for the future I am looking into various issues with various OS and may port some of the code for use under Linux and other OS to improve throughput with some of the Kinema commands used for Digital Cinema batch processing. Check the What's New section from time to time if you are helping to "Beta Test" so that you can know about changes and updates.

This www.DANCAD3D.com (sm) Web site has replaced the postal newsletters for dissemination of news about the programs, it also now takes care of general support and general program updates.

I would like to say "thank-you" to all of my users who each their own way encouraged me to make progress to the current state. I wish you success in your projects, and am glad if you find something in this Web site to help you on your way. You should continue to report bugs and issues so that I can be aware of them.