If you are a woodworker and maybe a user of the OpenCutList extension, this topic that talk about the futur of OpenCutList may interest you.
OpenCutList is Open Source and Crowdfunded extension.
One cool thing with SketchUp is that it’s a versatile 3D software. You can draw a building as a small furniture with the same light and powerful user interface.
In its specific domain, OpenCutList try to improve this experience for woodworkers who prefer to spend more time on modeling their projects than generating cutlist, cutting diagrams with multiple external tools.
One unified tool that keep your models as clean as possible and that do not reinvent the wheel may bring some limits in customization, but can be very helpful if you prefer to spend your time in front of a piece of wood instead of a computer
That’s what the OpenCutList team have in mind when they prototyping a feature that will allow you to easily export parts or faces to 2D (DXF, SVG) or 3D (DXF, STL, OBJ) external files directly by clicking on it.
This feature could be part of next 6.0 release, if we reach its financial goal.
I once knew how to do it in AutoLisp but have forgotten. A polyline is essentially a list of vertices. I think they had flags that determined if the next segment was special (arc or spline…). If you have access to AutoCad, you could try drawing a simple polyline with an arc segment, export that to DXF and look at the result in a text editor. I seem to remember that it is not rocket science but still a bit convoluted.
More details about the algorithm :
OpenCutList will compute 2D projection in the plane of the face the user has pointed to, to “watch” the part as a “router bit” will.
Here are some examples that the algorithm could be able to export.
@Anssi, after some research, I discovered that polylines can contain arcs through attribute “42” that can be defined on each vertex, but cannot seem to contain ellipse portions.
Yes, I remember that too, using it in some simple lisp tool. I think splines can also be created with these group codes, but the steps involved are beyond my capabilities.
I love this idea and am backing it. We are using IMOS (a very very powerful CAD based AutoCad program) for most of our furniture needs but you need to have some sort of a degree to wrap your head around that one. We do all of our designs in Sketchup and every once in a while you go like: WHY exactly do we need to redraw this in IMOS, again? Version 6 of OpenCutlist will be a game-changer for my workflow!
Hi Boris. IMOS is completely database driven and powers our entire furniture production. Cutting lists, edge lists, CNC-programs etc. It’s VERY complex and no fun at all. Basically you don’t draw furniture, you program furniture. For every part you need to set up a subroutine, so that the software nows where to put what connector. It’s also very advanced, like you can set up materials so that the software knows what cutting strategy to use (like hard materials - more runs and so on.) We will never and should never attempt to replicate this with Sketchup / OpenCutList.
As said - all our designers use Sketchup and try to be as precise as possible - after that we give that into the saltmines of IMOS to prepare it for production.
We DO however also have “one-off” as well as non-furnuture projects where connector logic isn’t relevant at all - and for this we go from Sketchup straight to Production via OpenCutList. So far that unfortunately always meant redrawing a lot of parts in AutoCad because the DWG Export of Sketchup is so subpar.
I’ll attach a screenshot of a project where I got some wall parts out of Sketchup and I actually used OpenCutList to prepare the data.
Sure - here are a few parts of that project… From what I’ve seen from your screenshots you are absolutely on the right track. You did mention export of single parts as well as nested-sheets. What would need be nice would be if you could mass-export multiple parts, generating one DXF for each part.
In this example all projected faces are exported to DXF polylines. That means each face or hole create a polygon where all edges are connected.
Unfortunately, I i want to export “curves” I can’t use polylines. Because polylines can connect only segments and arcs of circle, not ellipses (or I didn’t find how).
