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OpenSCAM Logo

OpenSCAM is an ​Open-Source software which can simulate 3-axis NC machining. It is a fast, flexible and user friendly simulation software for the DIY and Open-Source community. OpenSCAM works on Linux, OS-X and Windows.

At home manufacturing is one of the next big technology revolutions. Much like the PC was 30 years ago. There have been major advances in desktop 3D printing (e.g. ​Maker Bot) yet uptake of desktop CNCs has lagged despite the availability of ​cheap CNC machines. One of the major reasons for this is a lack of Open-Source simulation and CAM (3D model to tool path conversion) software. CAM and NC machine simulation present some very difficult programming problems, as is evidenced by 30+ years of academic papers on these topics. Whereas, 3D printing simulation and tool path generation are much easier. Such software is essential to using a CNC.

Being able to simulate is a critical part of creating CNC tool paths. Programming a CNC with out a simulator is cutting with out measuring; it's both dangerous and expensive. With OpenSCAM you can preview the results of your cutting operation before you fire up your machine. This will save you time and money and open up a world of creative possibilities by allowing you to rapidly visualize and improve upon designs with out wasting material or breaking tools.

See http://openscam.org/

License

GNU General Public License version 2+. See the file COPYING.

Prerequisites

On Debian based systems all the prerequisites, including thoese needed by C!, can be installed with the following command line:

sudo apt-get install scons build-essential libbz2-dev zlib1g-dev \
  libexpat1-dev libssl-dev libboost-iostreams-dev libboost-system-dev \
  libboost-filesystem-dev libboost-regex-dev libsqlite3-dev libv8-dev \
  qt4-dev-tools libqt4-dev libqt4-opengl-dev libcairo2-dev git

Building from Source

This section describes how to build OpenSCAM from source on Debian based systems such as Ubuntu and Mint Linux. If you are running Windows or OSX it is much easier to simply install prebuilt packages which can be found at http://openscam.org/downloads There are also prebuilt Debian packages you can try.

Building C!

Clone the C! git repository, build the software using scons and set the environment variable CBANG_HOME so the OpenSCAM build system can find it later:

git clone https://github.com/CauldronDevelopmentLLC/cbang.git
scons -C cbang
export CBANG_HOME=$PWD/cbang

Building OpenSCAM

Clone the OpenSCAM git repository and build the software using scons:

git clone https://github.com/CauldronDevelopmentLLC/OpenSCAM.git
cd OpenSCAM
scons

Building & Installing the Debian Package

In the OpenSCAM source code directory run:

scons package
sudo dpkg -i openscam_*.deb

Build Warnings/Errors

If you get any build warnings, by default, the build will stop. If you have problems building, especially with warnings related to the boost library you can ignore these warnings by building cbang and/or OpenSCAM with scons strict=0. This disables strict checking. For example:

scons -C cbang strict=0
cd OpenSCAM
scons strict=0

Using OpenSCAM

If you've installed the Debian package you should find OpenSCAM in your menu under Other. Also you can simply run openscam on the command line.

If you did not install the package, open a command line, go to the directory where you built OpenSCAM and run ./openscam

Try the Examples

Try out some of the examples in OpenSCAM's File -> Examples menu.

No Icons in Menus in Linux

If you don't see icons in OpenSCAM menus in Linux try running the following command and restarting OpenSCAM:

gconftool-2 --type boolean --set /desktop/gnome/interface/menus_have_icons true