| And, where that tooling does provide for modern conventions, it often goes unused. Same inertia in play that we have been discussing. I have only a quibble or two with 3mf. Curved triangle representation is one, and lack of source topology is the other. At some point, we need to generate real curves, and frankly I would be pleased with second degree curves. (The analytic ones, arc, comic, hyperbole, parabola) When describing small features, and when coupled with machine process requirements, chordial deviation becomes a real issue. We either end up overloading path planner subsystem with a crazy number of too small line segments, or accept a cutoff of 16 ish and deal with undersized radii. As far as I understand, we do not yet have those features in the output file specs just yet, and it sure would be nice if we did. Frankly, arc and potentially second degree curves in general, fitting makes some sense at this point just to make use of firmware that supports it. Software I am involved with has headed down this road to both resolve small features correctly so that they are printed correctly, and to enable feature discrimination so that tool paths can be generated with higher order formulas intended to improve on both machine performance and part quality, consistency. |