The metal shaper man’s blog

Well the paper cutter that I have access too is a Pazzles Inspiration.  Interesting machine.  I’m looking forward to playing with it a bit.

The Inspiration uses a WPC file format.  I downloaded a file off the net to peek into it. I was hoping that it might something like G-code or DXF but unfortunately no such luck.  It’s a binary ;(.
I opened it up in hexedit and I can see patterns in the data, but it’s not worth it to me to figure out how to write directly to a WPC.  Supposedly the Middleware  can convert various file formats to WPC.  Over labor day I’m visiting,  so I’m planning on checking this out and giving it a whirl.

Now…. Since I’m rather partial to opensource linux stuff, I trying to figure out some software that I can use for my little project here.   I downloaded and compiled the source for Heekscad yesterday night.  Darn that stuff is starting to look nice.  I was really pleased to see that you can now choose either metric or inch.  (Yepp I’m one of those backward inch folks)

What to do here… I do want to learn Blender but the 2.4 front end has a steep learning curve.   2.5* is still in alpha according to http://www.blender.org/development/ .  Poor life timing for me since Blender seems well suited and has been used quite a bit for Paper Engineering as well as developing some models for a 3d game I’ve been wanting to write for my daughter… (Probably be a teenager by the time I get to that ;(.

I really should start trying to use heekscad.  So many of my interests converge with this application.   I suppose as a first step I need to see if I can export a sketch to a DXF and see if I can get it imported into Pazzle software and convert it to a DXF.

Ok… I think I have my next steps defined

• use heekscad to generate sketch
• see if we can gets something saved in DXF
• if it looks good, watch the tutorial on solver (link somewhere on the reprap group)
• make a Pop-Up box  (2d flat)
• Export to DXF
• See if we can get it to convert to WPC
• attempt a cut-out

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I ran across an interesting free e-book called the Fundamentals of Paper Engineering Design by Angel David Guzman of PixelOz Designs

A link can be found here: http://pixeloz.deviantart.com/

Going through the book around page 21  the author talks about Blender which is something I’ve played with.
Let’s there at least a couple of ways to unfold a 3d model….

There is a huge amount stuff in this book… Somehow I found this link that I thought would be a good place to get me started.

http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?p=1627132

Uggg.  Ok… So… Here’s the situation… I have 2.49b from synaptic. Apparently Blender is undergoing a major facelift with 2.5x

I played with Blender some months… years back and found the interphase to be less then welcoming… Unlike heekscad which seemed a lot friendlier but not as far developed.
Hm…. so what to do..
Most of the stuff that I’ve seen in the book has more to do with paper modeling and not pop-up.  What I’m looking at is more like linkage-synthesis.    There are so many options with so many deadends and my free time to allocate on this is very very limited…

Perhaps I’m looking at this problem from the wrong end…  The pop-ups that I’m doing are not that complicated in design. I should just brute force this through. (You’d think there would be some simple parametric based open source pop-up paper models that could give you basic forms..)

I have access to a paper cutter.  I need to get output to the papercutter.   I wrote down the model number somewhere…. which I have misplaced it ahhhhhhh. @#%@

I did a quick search for paper cutting models..  Here is what I found quickly:

http://www.scrapbookscrapbook.com/scrapbook-die-cut-machines-info.html None of these look like the one I need.    Time to email my sibling..

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My wife is in the middle of starting up a business and I’m interested in make a promotional pop-up ad for her.

This is sort of cool for me because in my college days my area of focus with kinematic design…

I found a bunch of interesting resources…
On line this was sort of cool
http://www.popularkinetics.com/making_page.html

I also combed my public library…
The book that sort intrigued me was:
The Pop-up book by Paul Jackson ISBN 0-8050-2884
Nice combination of art and engineering…

Also if you search on this guy name peter Dahmen on you tube there are some really incredible

In addition, I’m thinking about putting a sound chip on this card.
I found some information on this here:
http://www.bigdawgspromo.com/product_info.php?cPath=490&products_id=12937&osCsid=70e4ff6bb90f39b62d31b0a0e94d6ae4

Anyway… I need to play dinosaurs with my daughter but she’s letting me post a couple a couple of picture before we get started…
Here they are….

This is still a very rough prototype… But as they all great journeys begin with a single  step… Now off to dinosaurs………

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I recently bought a broken scooba off of craigslist.  The person I bought it from tried fixing it and had a couple of part left over. I’m trying to get this thing put back together to figure out what’s going wrong..

Any help would be appreciated.

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I’t been a while since I’ve been messing around with heekscad.
I was in 8.04 still and now I’m on ubuntu 10.04

I fired up rapidsvn and download the source no problem.
I opened up the project file with code:blocks to see what happens.
Seems like I’m missing something.

||=== HeeksCAD, Debug ===|
/usr/lib/wx/include/gtk2-unicode-release-2.8/wx/setup.h|1079|warning: “HAVE_IOSTREAM” redefined|
src/stdafx.h|41|warning: this is the location of the previous definition|
/usr/include/wx-2.8/wx/gtk/glcanvas.h|19|error: GL/gl.h: No such file or directory|
/usr/include/wx-2.8/wx/gtk/glcanvas.h|20|error: GL/glx.h: No such file or directory|
/usr/include/wx-2.8/wx/gtk/glcanvas.h|21|error: GL/glu.h: No such file or directory|
/usr/include/wx-2.8/wx/gtk/glcanvas.h|47|error: ‘GLXContext’ does not name a type|
/usr/include/wx-2.8/wx/gtk/glcanvas.h|124|error: ISO C++ forbids declaration of ‘GLXFBConfig’ with no type|
/usr/include/wx-2.8/wx/gtk/glcanvas.h|124|error: expected ‘;’ before ‘*’ token|

Now that’s strange wonder whats up

I did a little googling and found this:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=235000

Hmm… seems gl.h seems to me missing mesa-common-dev

Loaded but I seems to be missing GL/glu.h which leads to needing this libglu1-mesa-dev

Currently compiling heekscad from scratch. This is going to take some time.

On to other things

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Ok… I’m trying to get the codelite debugger to work in Ubuntu Linux.  It seems to be having some issues at the moment.
So… I’m at the code lite website:http://codelite.org/LiteEditor/Debugging

I have my project open and active…. I press the F5 key..

Hmm.. does it work … Nope…
A couple of things seems to be going wrong..

Debug session started successfully!
Debuggee process ID: 6775
GNU gdb (GDB) 7.0-ubuntu
Copyright (C) 2009 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.  Type “show copying”
and “show warranty” for details.
This GDB was configured as “i486-linux-gnu”.
For bug reporting instructions, please see:
<http://www.gnu.org/software/gdb/bugs/>…
Reading symbols from /home/jonas/.codelite/CppClass/hw_lab_7/Debug/hw_lab_7…
done.
set unwindonsignal on
set breakpoint pending on
set width 0
set height 0
Found the breakpoint ID!
Storing debugger breakpoint Id=1
Successfully set breakpoint 1 at: address 0
Found the breakpoint ID!
Storing debugger breakpoint Id=2
Successfully set breakpoint 2 at: address 0
ERROR: failed to place breakpoint: “^error,msg=”No source file named /home/jonas/.codelite/CppClass/HW_project2/HW_Project.cpp.”"
No source file named /home/jonas/.codelite/CppClass/HW_project2/HW_Project.cpp.
ERROR: failed to place breakpoint: “^error,msg=”No source file named /home/jonas/.codelite/CppClass/HW_project2/HW_Project.cpp.”"
No source file named /home/jonas/.codelite/CppClass/HW_project2/HW_Project.cpp.
ERROR: failed to place breakpoint: “^error,msg=”No source file named /home/jonas/.codelite/CppClass/HW_project2/HW_Project.cpp.”"
No source file named /home/jonas/.codelite/CppClass/HW_project2/HW_Project.cpp.
=thread-group-created,id=”6775″
=thread-created,id=”1″,group-id=”6775″
Continuing…
*running,thread-id=”all”
=library-loaded,id=”/lib/ld-linux.so.2″,target-name=”/lib/ld-linux.so.2″,host-name=”/lib/ld-linux.so.2″,symbols-loaded=”0″
Warning:\nCannot insert breakpoint 1.\nError accessing memory address 0×0: Input/output error.

Also the terminal window has this message:

&”warning:  GDB: Failed to set controlling terminal: Operation not permitted\n”

So…. Time for a little googling:
http://sourceforge.net/users/dymaxionuk

Ok… for me the solution was simple.  I updated from the codelite site and all was well.

Apparently, the version that was in synaptic was having issues.

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The C++ class I’m in is running at a slow pace relative for my skill sets. The class focused on chapter 5,looping. It’s just that I’ve been doing vb6 programming for a long time and I saw very little new there for me. Although my arrogance here will probably catch up with because I’m probably going to miss something subtle in the midterm because of this.

I like to automate the setup of project folders for the sample code .  I’d like to get this project generator done before the class if over, so I can use it for my class but I need the class to get it done.
Anyway..
Setting up the folders and moving the cpp files is not too painful done manually. Automated folder creation and file copy is being pushed off till later The primary focus at the moment is writing out the project files into the manually created sub-folders.
I’m going for the minimalist approach here, just to get this done and will tune it up a little bit more as time goes on.
Here’s the pseudo code
Find the name of each directory to be inserted(Currently manually created)
read the sample template file a line at a time
If something needs to be tweaked then tweak it
redirect the data into a project file where it needs to go.
So… I’ve hacked up the code a bit and what I need is the C++ equivalent to a vb6 mid$ function.. Man is this a PIA.. I think I found some discussion on that. http://computerprogramming.suite101.com/article.cfm/a_mid_string_function_for_c_and_c_

http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread1113.html
http://www.bigresource.com/VB-Mid-C-equivalent-RESOLVED-CrKWGrf9ym.html

http://www.vbforums.com/showthread.php?t=257742 !!!! THIS IS THE ONE I USED

Uggg…..

The next issue is that I need to find the c++ equivalent to vb6 instr function. It seems that mid$ and Instr are a couple of my weapons of choice in my vb code arsenal…. I found the c++ equivalent here. http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/string/string/find/ will be the rough equivalent.

On just a side note, if found this hand xref to string functions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_programming_languages_%28string_functions%29#Find

Lets see. I found some POSIX code that would read directories.  The initial code I found didn’t differentiate between folders and directories.
Hear’s link that discusses that. http://www.cplusplus.com/forum/general/4648/.

Well, while we’re at it, the initial code I had would only show the file name and not the file type. I found that answer in a wiki link:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirent.h

Anyway.. I got a basic shell of a program to run, to automatically generate project files, but it’s really too ugly to post at the moment.
I have midterms coming up, and I don’t want screw them up by working on the fancy stuff and missing something obvious so I need to put this on the backburner for the moment.  If someone actually read’s this before I get this project done, end a comment and I’ll post it.

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I’m really enjoying this C++ class that I’m taking which is using Tony Gaddi’s book. We’re still into the real baby stuff increment and decrement operators, but that’s ok.. I’d rather take it slow (16 weeks) and really learn some nuances about the language rather than trying to absorb it all at once. Been there done that… It doesn’t work for me.. For me anyway, reading a book or watching a video or lecture is just one component of learning. The other component is practice and developing the skill. (Time to get off the soap box and I really wish the cat would not put his ass in my face when I’m typing. I guess it’s cat speak for “I love you”. Sorry… I digress…)

The book provides the source code for all the examples on a CD. I’ve found it useful to compile the projects while studying the chapters and them hacking up the code a bit, to see if it really works the way I think it works. The parts that sucks for me is setting up the workspace and the project files to compile the projects. The first time I tried this was through the IDE which was very very tedius. Second time, I open up the workspace and project files in gedit and figure out how every thing was put together. Is used terminal session repeat functionality to setup the directory more efficiently, but it still non-value action. I would rather spend my time writing a utility that would do this automatically rather than manually. I did a quick google search to see if something like this is out there. It probably is, I just didn’t know how to ask the question.

Might as well give this a try.. If I was doing this in vb6 well, it would be a no brainer except that I’m working in Linux. Programming this in C++ is not so easy for me just quite yet.

Originally I thought I would write a portable app, since I run windows at school,work and Linux at home.. I got the impression this is doable but not quite at the skill set that I’m currently at. I found and interesting link here that discusses that. (On a side note. Once I get more proficient I bet there is a wxwidgets component that could do that).
So… for the moment, I’m scaling this back to work on my home computer and my skill sets improve, have the code get a bit more gucci.
So iInitially, Ubuntu Linux, using g++, codelite IDE.

So.. In pseudo code here is what I’m looking to do:

1. Read appropriate CD subdirectory and put the directories/file names into arrays
2. select chapters you wish to generator projects for
3. generate project folders/sub-folders
4. copy source code into the appropriate sub-folder
5. create project files in appropriate sub-folders
6. create a workspace files linking the appropriate project files

well…
I found some code at http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/linux-programming-scripting/26306-reading-directory-contents-files-c.html that I could hack up and get started.. Wow time flies when your having fun..

On a side note, one of the things I been thinking about is sticking Dro’s on my lathe. I wound up by 3-6 inch Digital Verniers on sale at harbor freight for 10 bucks each.. SPC output… I wonder how hard it would be to interphase with an laptop to make really big letters. I wonder if there is some cheap infra-red (tv remote connection) to get the cables out of the way… Too many ideas… too little time. Time to go to work..

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I was just looking over some of my past posts and I seem to be having many woes…..
I suppose if everything worked out of the box I never learn anything.

So… I signed up for this C++ class and I’m I’d like to complete my homework assignment using Code::Blocks.
I’ve been really spoiled by the Vb auto code completion and I really would like it working in Code::Blocks.

I’m about 80% sure I had it working before, so something is wrong, probably something subtle and obvious….
So… A little research here lead me here which directed me:http://wiki.codeblocks.org/index.php?title=FAQ#Q%3A_How_do_I_get_Code_Completion_to_work.3F
First things first, my system just got done updates, I’m just going to reboot to be on the safe side..
Ok… Lets see.

A: Did you check how code completion is configured ? See “Settings/Editor”, click on “Code-completion and symbols browser” in the left column and check the Code completion and C/C++ parser tabs.

;
<

Ok… Everything looks fine… Was I typing 4 characters(Ok…. if something is wrong here I don’t see it..)

Next step

They ‘re mostly useful when you don’t add compiler search dirs in build options but use backticked expressions (e.g. `freetype-config –cflags`). In this case, the parser is not aware of where the source files are located. So, by manually adding the directory in the parser’s search dirs you ‘re actually helping the parser find the files..

Huh… What the heck does that mean? I’m trying to get code completion to work on a program that’s on the level of primordial ooze. (I’m thinking that’s not the issue here.. Wasting a bit too much time here…. I need to get this homework done first without autocompletion (yech!!)
I just cant give it up..
Found some more stuff here..
http://forums.codeblocks.org/index.php/topic,10564.0.html

Ok… I basically got no where sort of fast here…
I just want some features with code completion sort of like my beloved vb6.
So… I decided to try codelite instead of codeblocks from the repositories.
When I ran from the repositories every thing was fine out of the box. IDE doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of code::blocks but from what I recall of when the code completion was working, it seems superior.
It tried upgrading to from Rev2893 from the repository to Rev3681 things got weird. I kept getting “/bin/sh: mingw32-make.exe: not found” eventhough i had the IDE set for g++ . Don’t know don’t care what was going on there. Right now I have code completion working for the kindergarten level of C++ that I’m at so that’s good enough for me.

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I’ve been trying to get a wordpress site up for my wife.

I’ve been trying to use the wp-tables reloaded plug-in along with Station 1.2.1 theme by Plugins.

So far no luck on getting the plug-ins to work. The authors support page had a post with the exact issue that I’m having.

http://tobias.baethge.com/wordpress-plugins/wp-table-reloaded-english/support/

The question of things to check:

this is most likely caused by your theme, which probably shows your posts by using the template tag “the_excerpt()” or a modified version of “the_content()”.

Are other plugins with shortcodes working?

WordPress hasn’t really been my focus (what the heck is a shortcode), but I do want to keep the wife happy…
So… I found a quick link on how to make a short code…
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/02/02/mastering-wordpress-shortcodes/
I thought I try the hello world and see if it works. Yep…..
Duh…. Just figured it out… I type the shortcode with the visual tab instead of the HTML.  That makes a world of difference….

I can go to bed happy…

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