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New Dimension For Windows: Microsoft Puts 3D Printing Support Directly Into OS
- JumpCrisscross 13y agoIt is telling that I am more excited about Windows 8,1 than iOS 7.
- cududa 13y agoI mean to me, all it indicates is Jobs and Hillel Cooperman were the only good benevolent product and aesthetic guys in the OS space.
- angersock 13y agoHm. I wonder if it exports G-code, or simply says "Hey, let's write some proprietary drivers! It'll be fun!" For once--for once--we had a chance to break away from the lowest pit of IT hell: printing. We could have done something beautiful, we could've made the world a better place--and yet, I fear that Microsoft is now just going to extend the failures of 2D printing into the third dimension, quite literally piling on layers of sadness.
- jianshen 13y ago3d Printing needs as much software iteration as hardware iteration. G-Code generation/slicing algorithms don't receive enough attention IMO. I just tried finding the Skeinforge repo and came up empty [1]. :( [1] http://fabmetheus.crsndoo.com/ http://fabmetheus.crsndoo.com/
- Metrop0218 13y agoYou may be speaking too soon. Let's reserve judgement for after we know the details.
- gecko 13y agoI'm a Windows dev at build, but I know nothing about 3D printing. If you can you give me an idea what G-code is, then I'll ask or look at the SDK.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- Mikeb85 13y agoG-code converts a 3D model into printing instructions for a 3D printer. http://reprap.org/wiki/G-code http://reprap.org/wiki/G-code
- Someone 13y agoNo, it describes how to make an object with a CNC machine. I hadn't heard about G-code until 5 minutes ago, but from what I see, there is a huge mismatch between G-code and the way 3D printers operate. Who cares about the zillion times one has to cut away a piece of wood using a lathe to create a sphere if one uses a device that _adds_ material to the object? Yes, it is good that there is software that understands G-code for 3D printers, but using it as _the_ data format? Ridiculous. That would be as if one used plotter instructions to print in 2D; instead of "here is a rectangle; fill it with pure red", one would have zillions of "move pen to x,y; draw to x,z; move to x,y+0.01; draw to x,z+0.01; move to x,y+0.02,…" instructions. Also, I don't even think G-code is that good of an idea for generic CNC files. Suppose your file says "use a 10mm bit", while your CNC machine only supports bits up to 5mm. You can sort-of emulate the larger one, but it will be inefficient and lead to lower quality cuts.
- tmuir 13y agoG-code is indeed an old language, but it's the industry standard because it's better than all of the alternatives. There are complex G-codes, such as threading, which allows you to define the pitch, thread depth, cutting style, the distance to move away from the material between passes the distance to cut the thread, etc. But a lot of G-code files do consist of thousands of discrete lines. The reduction of a 3d shape to motor signals will eventually come to a stage that deals with lots discrete vectors, regardless of how you represent the data, G-code or not. G-code files consisting of thousands of lines are usually created by a CAM software anyways, not by hand. Your strawman argument of a 10mm bit when only a 5mm bit is available extends to just about any type of standardized process that consists of instructions being evaluated.
- glhaynes 13y agoDramatic post for something you seem to know nearly nothing about.
- angersock 13y agoAnd I may ask, what leads you to this conclusion?
- glhaynes 13y agoIts dramatic lamentations over conclusions you've drawn apparently without basis.
- angersock 13y agoI'm sorry, I assumed that it was common knowledge that getting printers setup, especially in a team or enterprise environment, was some of the fucking worst and most annoying work you'll ever run into in IT. That it was common knowledge that proprietary driver bundles and features and whatnot are the bane of any consumer, and that interoperability was a fucking joke beyond the most basic of printing features (if then). I figured it was also plainly obvious that the article suggests strategic partnerships creating this support, which very strongly indicates that the print support will be either some gnarly plug-and-play driver nonsense or weird stilted API defined by Microsoft. I'm rather fond of the current "give me g-code I'll emit parts" model, as it is very open and hackable. EDIT: By all means, downvote me. We all know printing sucks.
- Glyptodon 13y agoThis seems like it could be bad news - they might be trying to make some sort of proprietary 'postscript for 3-D' to lock down the whole industry. Though I'm guessing my worry is probably unfounded.
- drcoopster 13y agoPostScript is a well-defined, well-documented programming language. Introducing a new layer for 3D printing would be very cool, but in the end, G-code is the "native" language for most of the hobby (and maybe other) 3D printers out there.
- Jack000 13y agoI didn't see any reference to G-code in the article. I think the worry is that they will introduce a closed, proprietary standard in an attempt to build their platform. I'm a bit conflicted. On the one hand, G-code is very compatible with the open source ethos, but on the other it's a very old standard that was originally intended for plotters. I'd love to see something better replace it that can say, use bezier curves.
- seanmcdirmid 13y agoThis. G-code is more like Logo than PostScript. Something based on meshes and computational-computed surfaces (e.g. bezier curves) would work better. In fact, we could get most of the way there with OpenGL/DirectX at a low-level (meshes to specify a few vertex positions, hull shaders to to extrapolate additional vertices based on whatever algorithm you want).
- seclorum 13y agoOpenSCAD: http://openscad.org/ http://openscad.org/ Its about as close to being a "3D Postscript" as you could find these days ..
- Zikes 13y agoThat's the first thing that came to mind for me. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish
- Mikeb85 13y agoIn practice, how is this different than simply being able to install a package? Furthermore, Ubuntu has 3d printing packages in the standard repositories, are we to believe this gives MS any sort of practical advantage?
- kryten 13y agoWell mainly because all the decent 3d modelling packages run on Windows? (Solidworks basically)
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- lampe3 13y agofedora 19: 100% 3D Printing Bring 3D printing tools to Fedora and allow users of 3D printers, such as RepRap, to be fully satisfied with software in the repositories, without having to download binary blobs or run Python code from git.
- jlarocco 13y agoAll of the big CAD packages (Solidworks, CATIA, Solid Edge, Pro-Engineer, Rhino, SpaceClaim, ...) are Windows only. Lately OSX has gotten some traction, but it's still pretty marginal. There are translators (e.g. SolidWorks -> STEP, SolidWorks -> STL) that run on Linux, but the better ones, and the ones that support the proprietary formats (SolidWorks, CATIA, etc.) all cost money and couldn't be included in a Linux distro's software repository. So even if Linux supported 3D printing out of the box, it wouldn't be as useful as if Windows did, IMO.
- ibisum 13y agohttp://openscad.org/ http://openscad.org/ Linux can do 3D printing out of the box.
- brianbreslin 13y agoI think this is excellent news (I am biased, I am working on a 3d printing startup). This will bring more awareness and accessibility to 3d printing to the masses.
- JakeSc 13y ago> I am working on a 3d printing startup What sort of startup?
- brianbreslin 13y agop2p marketplace for 3d printing. http://makermarket.co http://makermarket.co
- tmuir 13y agoIn PC based CNC systems, there is almost always dedicated hardware separate from the PC that is feeding the motor drivers, because Windows and Linux are not true real time operating systems. A cnc system must have a timing resolution much finer than is available in traditional general purpose operating systems. In general terms, a cnc system must convert high level instructions, like G-code, in to voltage pulses that are fed to either stepper or servo motors. Some of these calculations are performed on the PC, others are performed on the dedicated hardware. Do steps 1, 2, and 3, send step 3's result over usb to the controller, then perform steps 4 through 10. Not everyone agrees where to place that barrier. In the case of GRBL, which is the firmware that runs most of these hobbyist level 3D printers, the entire process happens on an 8 bit microcontroller, from G-code to steps. Other cnc systems perform almost all of the calculations on the PC, and sends a representation of the timing information to the controller. Still other systems decode the G-code into vectors and other intermediate representations, and let the controller do most of the heavy lifting. Some systems transmit their data over USB, a standard ill equipped for industrial environments or cable lengths more than about 10ft. Others use ethernet. I'm sure there are others that use RS-485, or even proprietary protocols. Is Microsoft accounting for any of these variations, or are they going to standardize everyone to whats popular today, which is usb and 8 bit microcontrollers that can't even create 50,000 steps per second?
- jacquesm 13y agoIt's easy to do realtime control on a linux box, simply run your program as root and disable interrupts. Every time you're 'safe' (stopped, or very low speeds) you can safely enable/disable interrupts to make sure all your hardware gets serviced and to poll for UI input. I've controlled a 3D mill/plasma cutter like this at very high speeds.
- tmuir 13y agoThat's not going to sell a lot of units, though. Its hard enough to get a machinist to set up a cnc system with a full gui. You want him to disable interrupts on Linux? Just shoot me now.
- samstave 13y agoWith this support embedded into the OS, now the NSA can get a direct report whenever you print a 3D gun part! Yay! /I kid, they won't be real-time reports... Just batches.