Status Update

[ArtF]

Hi All:

  Thanks to everyone who replied on the recent test of GT for display purposes. Very soon, a video
will be online to show the use of GT in the next release. A great amount has been added and completed. Plans have firmed up for the new release. At the moment, pulleys, sprockets, indicators and round gears ( bevels, spurs and helicals ) can be made. Projects may be saved or loaded. DXF, STL and Paper outputs have been completed. New spoke types have been added as well as a collection of clock hands and indicators in the new indicators module.
    The accuracy and comformance to industry standards has been tightened a great deal and things like helicals now allow for both normalised techniques a well as transverse calc's. Bevels have Gleason as well as standard types and have been verified several ways for accuracy as have the helicals. 
    The program will totally replace GM by the spring of 2014, and from next release onwards will focus on giving all GM's functions one by one till GM is fully replaced.  On release there will be no G-Code output, that will be the top priority and current work will focus on its coding. It will be a fully graphical utility offering many more options than previously. The priority schedule is as follows after next release.

  G-Code module,
  Escapements,
  Ratchets,
  non circular gears,
  plating and boxing.
  Roots blowers and such.
 
 
  Each module is taking quite a bit of time as GT is NOT a repackaging of GM, it is a complete rewrite of 90% of GM's code,  each module is carefully considered as to how to make it better, more accurate, and more usefull. I think any GM user will be impressed at the upgrade. Its been 9 months or so of hard coding to get to current level and I suspect another 6 months  will be required to take us beyond GM's capability. As of the next update, GT's licenseing facility will be active and your GM license will make it go. The demo will do everything except output as with GM. While it cannot yet do Gcode, Im releasing it anyway as its  proven itself usefull to me so it may be usefull to many others while the Gcode module is written. 

    You will now be able to delete gears in the middle of a mechanism, move gears and shafts within a design and when all is done be able to  inject torque from any gear to the train to be considered in the simulation. GT ( or whatever it ends up named ) will be the final incarnation  of the software and will continue to grow its abilities as I will use it for all future coding on any topic, from lithophanes to graphics utilties to 3d programs and helper tools, anything I code will be included in GT. So it may get a bit eclectic, but should be interesting. :)

Thx
Art

 

[John S]

Awesome,

Pity you were not writing Mach4  :P

[Ya-Nvr-No]

Everything that we created in GM will load or import into GT?

And then we can edit the GM created file?

[ArtF]

Hi:
 
  ( John, Ive always lived in fear of someone accusing me of vapourware, its why I try very very hard never to promise anything
  but usually tell in advance of what Im attempting as many things a single developer like myself attempt turns out too hard for
  one person to do. Im so far extremely happy with GT and its progression though, so as long as G-Code functionallity doesnt bite
  me too hard I think we're on track to be one of the best gearing programs out there for the hobbiest. :) )
 
    As to importing from GM, Im unsure as yet how that will work. There is a problem where the GM project files
dont contain enough information to load properly. The new framework is pretty different. That having been said, I started it all
off by making the framework load all types, so it is capable, though some things and types of rotations then dont work not that
the softwae is getting to a sophisticated level.
When GM is fully retired no-one will ever again want to load a GM project so I dont want to slow development too much to get that
part right. ( Im being very very picky about GTs code in terms of working well.). So..what I'll probably do is have a secret
key combination that will load a GM project with the understanding that the user who uses this key combination understands he
may have to do many linkage fixups to get it to run. ( Linkages may be changed in GT as youll see if the video soon. ).
    Id love to have it seemless but GM just doesnt have all the information that GT objects have that allow some of new
features. We'll see how that goes and I will help as much as I can of course with any errors that pop up. In theory one could
load a gm project and one by one replace its objects with the GT equivalent..

Art

   

[Bob Stack]

Sounds great!