AutoCAD <-> ShopBot Conversions

[LiquidAnarchy@aol.com]

I&#39;m a student @ Spokane High School, and we recently got a shopbot router for our shop class. When we come across the problem of, when we convert SOME drawing from AutoCAD to ShopBot, it doesn&#39;t give the option to set the z-depth of our cuts. Is this something that we&#39;re doing wrong? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[treats@net-link.net]

JIM, Im sure all that I&#39;m going to mention has already been covered in the forum at one time or another, but here goes ... Not sure what version of Acad your using, but when I use ver14 or LT97 I save my DXF&#39;s as REL 12. This is Very important. Next if you have multiple z-depths, change your line colors &#40;Layers are not important&#41; Red = 1, Yellow = 2, Green = 3, etc. When you run the SB FC command to convert the DXF to SB you will need to know these Color/Number refs. I ususally offset half the Dia for my toolpath and if this is my outside cut then I make it Red. Hope this helps. Do word searches in the forum and I think you&#39;ll find alot of the help you need. This forum is Fantastic and there is alot of Great Experience/ Help out there. Happy New Year to all my fellow Botters!

[donna@shopbottools.com]

Jim, I&#39;m so happy to see students using the forum. If you look to the left of the screen under Forum Menu you will see Keyword Search. If you type in z depth you will find quite a few messages from the archives. Please feel free to call us or email if you are unable to convert your files from the information Jim gave you. If you, or any of your teachers have ideas about what they would like to see in a CNC curriculum please e-mail me your suggestions at donna@shopbottools.com (mailto:donna@shopbottools.com) THANKS AGAIN!

[mechtron@iafrica.com]

Donna, the keyword search route can consume a lot of internet hours. Just try typing in z depth &#40;as you suggested above&#41; and see the flood! Adding &#34; &#39;s and &#43; &#39;s helps a little bit.

Students are often allocated limited computer access time and the quickest way to get the answer is to ask the question - especially on the ShopBot Forum where there are many willing advisors. However, this is not conducive to teaching students how to do research!

In this country, as in many others, we cannot get unlimited internet access at a fixed monthly cost. We pay by the minute! &#40;I even disconnect the telephone line while typing this message, or reading a long thread&#41;.

The Forum is great, but it is not a substitute for good manuals or a good telephone help-desk. When you call a help-desk, you do not want to hear recordings of other callers who used the same keywords in the last two years!

[jkforney]

Jim Gallaher
If you got Vector Cad Cam with your shopbot all you need to do is:
1. Open your dxf in Vector
2. Shift-Select the area you want at a certain Z
depth.
3. Edit-Cut
4. Edit-paste
5. Fill in the dialog box and give a -z depth. &#40;if you want more than one cut to get to that depth also fill in the Copies box i.e. -3/4 z depth and 3 copies makes 3 1/4&#34; deep cuts&#41;
6. Special-Insert nc
7. Select shopbot
8. In the Right Side Window Select Macro Start
9. On the tool bar Select the far right icon &#40;generate nc codes&#41;
10. Select macro end
11. Export the file with a .sbp

This will give you the file to cut what you selected without using the shopbot DXF translator. If you want to use the shopbot translator stop after line 5 and save the file as a dxf.

John Forney

[cmrtom]

Converting AutoCad files is easy. If you are working with DXF files. ShopBot does not convert AutoCad 14 DWG files as of yet. If working with DWG files you must export the file as a dxf file. I have found the easiest export is in AutoCad 13 format. Then just run the ShopBot conversion program and PRESTO CHANGO there is your program. GO in and add a few pauses and details and run the program. I really could not believe how easy it really was!