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

No part of "This Web Site" (HTML document), including associated files, may be: distributed, sublicensed, transmitted, copied, archived, mirrored, modified, bundled, embedded, sold, given away, rented, loaned, or shared in any form without express written permission in a formal Vendor agreement contract dated and signed in ink obtained directly from Daniel H. Hudgins by registered postal mail. All agreements for permission to distribute expire after a period no greater than one year from the date of the signing of the agreement by Daniel H. Hudgins. See the current "EULA" for information regarding limited copying and storage for the purpose of "Beta Testing" "This Web Site."

To view or use the current version of this Web page you may need to reload or refresh the display of this page by your browser. Just clicking on the browser's [Reload] or [Refresh] icon may not be enough to insure that all of the page's most current contents have been cached and displayed. Some browsers may have additional commands to help display the page's most current contents such as: holding down the [Shift] key and clicking on the [Reload] icon, holding down the [Control] key and clicking on the [Refresh] icon, holding down the [Control] and [Shift] keys and clicking on the [Refresh] icon, pressing the [Control] and [F5] keys, pressing [Control] and the [R] key, or some other combination of keys or clicks. Check to see which commands your HTML browser uses to load the most current page contents into its cache and then to display them onto the screen.

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."

The CAD and CAM programs for v2.7 and v3.7 come in different *.ZIP file distributions in Section: 9. Since some of the Examples associated with v2.7 and v3.7 look much the same the illustrations here from v2.7 or v3.7 should serve to show what the programs generate in general. The program versions currently available for download may produce output that looks different from the output made by the program versions used to make these illustrations.

DANCAD3D.COM (tm)'s macro commands let you try to write a macro script file to produce and control 3D shaded computer graphics saved in 24 bit "true-color" to a BMP or animation Pixel file. This macro shows how the Z-Buffer can be filled more than once to build up a scene with "unlimited" polygons. New features introduced in v2.7F and v2.7G allow anti-aliasing oversampling, sub- pixel resolution undersampling, and image tone dithering to smooth the image shading to be used when saving rendered images to a 24 bit per pixel type BMP or Pixel file. A 24 bit per pixel "true-color" image can be used as a background to render elements over, here the 24 bit per pixel "true-color" background image was automatically generated by the updated CRT BACKGROUND command.

This macro illustrates the use of several of the display options introduced in v2.7F including, shading of mutated text, shading of edge outlines, and selective edge outlining of just some elements in a rendering. See file INFOV27F.TXT in Section: 3.3.7.6 and INFOV27G.TXT in Section: 3.3.7.7 for information on display options in those versions.

This macro requires quite a bit of free disk space to run, as it comes. You can edit the values used in the macro to reduce the image size, and such, to reduce the free disk space requirements, if need be. You can try to render images like this by entering commands through DANCAD3D.COM (tm)'s menus, but since there are many values to enter it is easier to show you how to do it by writing a macro file.

The Z-Buffer used is kept in a file on your harddisk, and so no special video board is required when the output is to a BMP file, you should be able to make images like this with any video board installed, even just CGA or Hercules (tm) monochrome graphics, so long as you have enough harddisk space free for the image size you want to produce. The program can save images to BMP files in variable size, so the output image can be screen shape, wide screen, or tall portrait shape.

The Z-Buffer can be kept and re-used so that only the parts of the scene that change need to be sorted and filled for each frame when doing animation. The Z-Buffer lets elements intersect, as can be seen in this example image, and the image points are sorted by depth for each image pixel, thereby simplifying drawing the triangle elements and reducing the need to sub-divide the triangles to avoid sorting errors.

The appearance of the version of the ZBUFFER1.MAC (tm) macro in the DANCAD3D.ZIP (tm) file may look or display somewhat differently, or display different text messages, so be sure to look at the actual display by the DANCAD3D (tm) Macro file in the DANCAD3D.ZIP (tm) file you downloaded or copied. The BMP file made by the CAD program was converted to JPG for display here in a graphics program that came with one of my scanners, and so may look a little worse or different than the original file.

The BMP graphics mode, introduced in v2.7F, that you can use with the Preview or DISPLAY commands has an option to load a 24 bit color BMP image file into the Z-Buffer as a background over which the drawing elements can be rendered in 24 bit color by using the hidden line perspective display modes. In v2.7G this background option was extended for use with SVGA VESA 15, 16, 24, and 32 bpp video mode Pixel files for animation, etcetera.

In this image the piston elements from the DEMO1.MAC (tm) macro were rendered over a photo that I took and scanned on my flat bed scanner in 24 bit color mode. The size, brightness, color, and sharpness of the background image should be adjusted by using your scanner software before you save the background image file so that they will match the elements that you will render over the background image. The X pixels and Y pixels size of the background image must match the size you enter for the Z-Buffer when you use the Preview or DISPLAY commands, so you will need to crop and resize the background image by using the software that came with your scanner, or enter values for the size of the Z-Buffer that match the background image. Some programs may refer to pixels as pels. In general the background image should be saved so that the pixels are square, but if the video board aspect adjustment has been set to a special value you may need to distort the background image to match the elements you are going to render over it. If the X shift or Y shift perspective display values are used to shift the center of the displayed image in the CAD programs you may want to shift the center of the background image to match. Also you may get a more pleasing result if you move the light source for the display to match the general direction of the light in the background image.

The large segmentation of the curved parts of the elements displayed is not a result of some limitation of the programs it is just how these elements were drawn originally. If you look at the ring in the ZBUFFER1.MAC (tm) rendering it looks more curved because smaller triangles were used. Increasing the number of triangles increases the rendering time and disk space required somewhat, and since I do not know how much free disk space users have some of the demo files use elements that are a bit chunky. If you have the room and time you can try to use more triangles to get your curves smoother if you like.

The appearance of the rendered images produced by the version or revision of the programs in the current distribution may look or display somewhat differently, or display different text messages, so be sure to look at the actual display by the current programs in the DANCAD3D.ZIP (tm) file you downloaded or copied. The BMP file made by the CAD program was converted to JPG for display here in a graphics program that came with one of my scanners, and so may look a little worse or different than the original file.

DANCAD3D.COM (tm)'s macro commands let you write a macro script file to produce and control 3D shaded computer animation. Since you can draw almost any type of shape as a 3D element, and have the elements move almost any way, you can simulate a variety of mechanical system types. You can also make 3D color animated motion pictures automatically, the computer sends a "beep" signal through the computer's speaker to advance the motion picture camera to photograph the next frame. The animation can be displayed in color up to 1600 by 1200 pixels for recording on 35mm motion picture film. You can also output the animation frames as BMP graphics files for conversion by some other program into other graphics file types, such as possibly GIF or MPG.

The link above labeled DEMO1E.ASC shows a conversion of the ASCII file DEMO1.ASC that you can select to have saved during the running of DEMO1.MAC. This represents the general appearance of printout generated by the program on Dot matrix or Laser printers using the perspective display mode 70 which shows the flagged edges as dark lines, and the shading as random dots of varying density.

The animated *.GIF files need to download all of their frames before the animation will display at full speed. If it takes about 30 seconds for each frame to download and the animated *.GIF file contains 37 frames, then it will take about 19 minutes for all of the frames to download, after which the frames should be read from the computer's memory at a faster speed. Computers with 500 MHz or faster processors may be required to display such animated *.GIF files at full speed. Also you may need to close all other programs to free the processor for display of the animated *.GIF file. When the original Pixel files are displayed by the Animate command in my CAD programs the files are read from a disk drive and the animation begins, displayed full screen, with the first frame without all of the frames needing to be downloaded first. The animated *.GIF files are just a representation of what the animation looks like when displayed by the CAD programs using the original Pixel files, my CAD programs do not make animated *.GIF files at the present time. Longer animations made of Pixel frame files can be displayed by using the Animate or Macro commands in my CAD programs. Some computers may not be able to display animated *.GIF files that are as large as ones included in this Web site because of memory or other limitations, if you encounter problems displaying the animated *.GIF files try using another computer or a computer that uses a different operating system.

If you interrupt the downloading of the animated *.GIF file your browser may not load all of the frames the next time you try to view that *.GIF file. If you clear the disk and memory cache in your browser it may download all of the frames in the animated *.GIF file, but if not you can try to download the *.ZIP version of the animated *.GIF file, un-zip the animated *.GIF file and view the animated *.GIF file from your harddisk. Do not confuse the animated *.GIF file *.ZIP file with the *.ZIP file that has the DANCAD3D (tm) Macro file, i.e. *.MAC, in it that made the frames for the animation, they are two different things.

The appearance of the version of the DEMO1.MAC (tm) macro in the DANCAD3D.ZIP (tm) file may look or display somewhat differently, or display different text messages, so be sure to look at the actual display by the DANCAD3D (tm) Macro file in the DANCAD3D.ZIP (tm) file you downloaded or copied.

The example macro SIMLATHE.MAC (tm) demonstrates how the lathe option of the SIMULATE command might be used to show an animated simulation of cutting on a lathe, e.g. as a test of a tool path drawn to operate a computerized lathe by using DANCAM.EXE (tm) or by using some other CAM system through the saving of the tool path file as G code with the SAVE GCODE command.

In this simulation the white outline of the lathe tool bit is seen to move along the tool path lines, while the material is "removed" by the tool from the raw material background. The order of the motions executed in the simulation is the same as the order the cuts will be taken when the tool path is executed in the CAM machine. If you forget what the part looks like when made with a tool path file, you might use SIMULATE to display a representation of the finished part's outlines.

You might draw a special tool bit outlines so that the simulation will accurately match the profile of the finished part for the tool bits you will actually be using. Several example tool bit outlines, both pointed and round nose, are supplied that might be used in turning and facing simulations, and also in the simulation of using the boring bar for internal turning. The size of the tool bit outline might be scaled for different size work-pieces.

The tool path to be simulated might be drawn by using the drawing editor in DANCAD3D.COM (tm) and DANCAD87.COM (tm), by loading a G code file with the LOAD GCODE command, or by using the teach mode in DANCAM.EXE (tm) to jog the machine around and save the tool path lines before, or during, the cutting of the first part.

The appearance of the version of the SIMLATHE.MAC (tm) macro in the DANCAD3D.ZIP (tm) file may look or display somewhat differently, or display different text messages, so be sure to look at the actual display by the DANCAD3D (tm) Macro file in the DANCAD3D.ZIP (tm) file you downloaded or copied.

The example macro SIMVMILL.MAC (tm) demonstrates how the option for vertical mill simulations of the SIMULATE command might be used to make an animated simulation of cutting on a vertical milling machine, e.g. as a test of a tool path drawn to operate a computerized vertical milling machine by using DANCAM.EXE (tm) or by using some other CAM system through the saving of the tool path file as G code with the SAVE GCODE command.

In this simulation the white outline of the end mill is seen to move along the tool path lines, while the material is "removed" by the tool from the raw material background. The order of the motions executed in the simulation is the same as the order the cuts will be taken when the tool path is executed in the CAM machine. If you forget what the part looks like when made with a tool path file, you might use SIMULATE to display a representation of the finished part's outlines.

The macro SIMVMILL.MAC (tm) also shows a simulation of an end mill from the side view showing cuts to different depths. The WINDOW command might be used to clip parts of the tool path for the simulation in order to make the portion of the tool path you are checking display without unwanted portions of the tool path drawing over what you want to view.

In addition to displaying the raw material element, and the tool motion simulation element, you might also display the tool path element, under or over the tool motion simulation element. If you display the tool path element under the tool motion simulation element you will see the tool path lines "eaten" by the blinking tool outline as the tool outline follows the tool path around. In the simulation shown in the illustration above, the red lines represent the tool path lines that have not yet been executed, as the illustration was extracted mid way through the simulation.

You might draw outlines for odd shaped cutter profiles, and use those outlines in the simulation. The simulation might be from the top, bottom, or viewing the work-piece from one of the sides.

The tool path to be simulated might be drawn by using the drawing editor in DANCAD3D.COM (tm) and DANCAD87.COM (tm), by loading a G code file with the LOAD GCODE command, or by using the teach mode in DANCAM.EXE (tm) to jog the machine around and save the tool path lines before, or during, the cutting of the first part.

The appearance of the version of the SIMVMILL.MAC (tm) macro in the DANCAD3D.ZIP (tm) file may look or display somewhat differently, or display different text messages, so be sure to look at the actual display by the DANCAD3D (tm) Macro file in the DANCAD3D.ZIP (tm) file you downloaded or copied.

Early versions of DANCAD3D.COM (tm) had a built in Graphing command that was taken out and made into a separate utility program, in order to help the CAD program fit on the "Shareware" distribution disks. The Graphing command has been re-incorporated, with several improvements, into the updated CAD programs in v2.7I.

The updated Graphing command can read graphing point data from the original obsolete *.DTA graphing data format file, or from current *.ASC ASCII drawing files if they are drawn in a special way, see INFOV27I.TXT for details about the graphing point data file formatting.

The updated Graphing command allows for the selection of line colors, line widths, the adjustment of the graphing area size and shape, and for both Log and Linear plots. The DANCAD3D.COM (tm) type *.FON font files can be used to select different fonts for the text in the graph, including international text, Greek text, and Russian type text.

The graph properties are setup by using the Graphing command to enter commands into a *.GTF Graphing Template File. The *.GTF file is read and the Graphing command outputs the graph to an *.ASC drawing file. The *.ASC file can then be loaded into the workspace and the main menu Preview command can be used to convert the graph image into a *.BMP file. Such a *.BMP file might then be converted into a *.GIF or *.JPG file in your scanner's software or printed out in color using another graphics program that works with the driver for your color printer. The Graphing command is located in the ASCII sub-menu of the Utilities sub-menu of the Files sub-menu of the CAD programs. There is also a corresponding GRAPHING macro command that might be used to generate a graph from within a macro program file.

The Graphing command can plot solid lines, dotted lines, dashed lines, and symbols. You can create your own symbols or use the supplied symbol files for circle, square, triangle, pulse, and dot. EXAMPLE1.GTF (tm) uses all of the plot types, but you can select the ones that you want without using the others at the same time. There is also an EXAMPLE2.GTF and EXAMPLE3.GTF supplied to show other style graphs.

The appearance of the illustrations of the program's output may be somewhat different than what the current program revision produces, and such illustrations may have been edited for or during conversion to other file types for display through this Web site.

The appearance of the version of this program from the *.ZIP file may look somewhat different, or display different text messages, so be sure to look at the actual display by the program in the *.ZIP file you downloaded or copied.