[texhax] OT: has anyone looked at interfacing CNC mills w/ TeX?

[William Adams]

I know, this intersects w/ the world of fantasy and Dr. Knuth's San Francisco presentation, but it's where I'm at.

I'd like to find a way to preview CNC projects w/in TeX environments. The easiest way would be if there was a gcode2pdf converter --- I did find gcode2eps:

http://code.google.com/p/gcode2eps/

but that will involve converting the eps to display somehow (I really miss my NeXT Cube and Display PostScript). I'm also not having any luck getting that compiled....

Another option would be converting Asymptote or METAPOST to g-code. There are options for this, but AFAICT, all of them ``cheat'' by creating a polyline instead of approximating a Bézier curve as arcs (I'd love to be wrong on this).

If there're any other CNC mill users who use TeX who would like to compare notes, I'd be glad of it.

William

-- 
William Adams
senior graphic designer
Fry Communications
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.