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Welcome to ArtCAM Pro. The program is documented in the 
ArtCAM Pro User guide and the on-line HTML 
help system.

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ArtCAM Pro 5.509 Release Notes

25th April 2001

This release of ArtCAM adds a large number of improvments in all areas
of the program. These changes are documented in the "Whats New In ArtCAM 5.5"
document accesible from the start up page when you run ArtCAM.


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ArtCAM Pro 5.104 Release Notes

4th October 2001

This release fixes a number of problems with ArtCAM 5.027
and adds support for new features and languages

list of fixes ...

Fix problem with recessed feaature outline on bottom and multiple z levels
Fix relief merge lowest for vectors
Use feature relief for z level slicing
Dont display spurious dialogs for z slicing - allow generating slices to be translated
Fix polyline if centre origin and allow 2 point polylines
Fix raster machining which was leaving small gaps
Check all selected objects for 2 rail sweep are non-grouped vectors
Fix bug with constant height plane
Fix typed input for polylines 
Fixed hole positioning if origin not bottom left corner
Fixed F2,F3 and F4 not working if HTML had focus
Fixed not being able to limit ball nose centreline carving depth to less than tool rad
Fix close 3d mesh dialog if hit enter
Fix getting locked up if exit sculpting while redrawing
Fix lockup if enter invalid value in colour attribute dialog
Use different code for 2 rail sweeps to improve surface quality
Fix problem with weave wizard if coincident points at crossings
Fix bounding box for arcs and beziers

new features

Relief - Add Draft command adds a constant draft angle to a model


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ArtCAM Pro 5.027 Release Notes

13th February 2001

This is a bug fix release of ArtCAM which adds support for
French and German.

The major bug fixed is associated with the graphics, which
leaked resources in Version 5.024 under some versions of
Windows. This would lead to Windows reporting insufficient
resources and occasional crashes. The Graphics performance
in 5.026 is MUCH better.

A number of other minor bugs have been fixed some of which are ...
Speed up Position / Size vector command for large numbers of vectors
Swept Profile - Spin was overshooting when angle was less than 360 degrees
Improve responsiveness of 'twiddling' shaded reliefs
Profile Last option was doing profile during in Z Level roughing
Final move to home was missing from some Z Level roughing toolpaths
Centre Line carving with a clearance path was incorrect if start
height was less than zero.
Some toolpaths were not drawing after reloading from a file
Triangle Model Unwrapping page had spurious nbsp; text in buttons
Fixed Delete and Tab keys not working in Assistant window
Fix Constant Height staying selected when Scale To Height selected
in Shape Editor.
Fix Merge Lowest not working for vectors in Shape Editor.
Display tolerance used for Centreline Carving in toolpath properties.
Fix difference in sculpting shade when sculpting
Fix occasional quality problem with 2 rail sweep
Fix occasional problem with feature engraving with positive allowance


New Features:

Relief - Add Draft
This command allows a constant draft angle to be added
to a complete relief.

When importing a DXF file user can chontrol wether ArtCAM
automatically rejoins open vector segments in the file

New Shortcuts:

C - Pressing C with the cursor over a vector will 'cut' 
    the vector.

M - Pressing M will go straight to the measure tool. Clicking
    the right mouse button will exit measure mode.

Clicking the right mouse button exits more of the vector 
drawing / editing commands


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ArtCAM Pro 5.024 Release Note

10th January 2001

This is a major release of ArtCAM with a huge amount of 
new functionality. For an overview of the new functionality 
click on the "Whats New In ArtCAM 5" link on the "Getting Started"
screen displayed when ArtCAM 5 starts.


3D Graphic Card Support

ArtCAM Pro 5 supports advanced 3d rendering on fully
OpenGL compliant cards. See the "Whats New In ArtCAM 5"
document for a link to another document explaining 
the settings and how to optimise your 3D graphics output.




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ArtCAM Pro 4.503 Release Notes

19th June 2000


This is a minor bug fix release which fixes the 
following problems...

1) When sculpting using the Wacom pressure sensitive tablet
   the relief may be modified while adjusting the brush sliders.

2) Offseting small vectors when in inches used an unsuitable 
   tolerance which could give faceted results.

3) Some graphics cards under win98 had problems drawing the
   shaded spheres on the material and light pages.

4) When ArtCAM was run for the first time after it was installed
   the material and light pages sometimes appeared blank - they
   would be OK on all subsequent runs.

5) Creating reliefs with the relief z range set low could give
   strange results when the scale to height option was used on
   the colour attribute dialog.

6) Creating reliefs from grey-scale images created a relief with
   a very shallow z range which made problem above more likely
   to appear.

7) Two rail sweep on small inch models gave faceted results.

8) Drawing wrapped rings with the zero plane switched off for 
   small high resolution rings in inches could fail.

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ArtCAM Pro 4.5 Release Notes

21th January 2000

NOTE: The new features are documented in the on-line help.
      Please refer to the help system for more details on using
      the new features.

New Features in Version 4.5
-------------------------

OpenGL Graphics Support

  ArtCAM 4 relies on the OpenGL graphics libraries for its drawing.
  Since the release of ArtCAM 4.0 it has become apparent that the 
  quality of OpenGL support for many graphics cards is very poor.
  Therefore with this release there are two batch files in the directory
  where ArtCAM is installed which will switch between a 'software'
  OpenGL implementation and the default hardware support. If you have
  problems with the colour shading within ArtCAM please run the 
  SoftwareShading batch file in the exec directory under the directory
  in which you installed ArtCAM.

Interface

  Support for snapping to the rulers. Right clicking on a ruler allows
  its exact position to be set as well as allowing new guides to be
  added at exact positions.

  A user definable snap grid is now available.

  The Transform Vectors dialog is no longer modal. Therefore it
  can be left visible while multiple vectors are selected and 
  scaled, rotated etc. 

  Block copy / rotate has been added for vectors. This allows selected 
  vectors to be copied multiple times in a circle or as a regular grid.

  When loading .art files there is a preview displayed of the relief within
  the file if one is present.

  Reliefs can be loaded directly from Version 4.0 and upwards .art files
  wherever a relief is being used loaded - even for pasting or texturing.

  There is an option when joining vectors to move the 
  end points to a common position rather than adding 
  a new span.

  A comprehensive selection of vector alignment 
  tools have been added.

  When dragging groups of vectors the vector outlines are drawn
  rather than just their bounding boxes.

  Smooth nodes are drawn in blue to make editing vectors easier.

  When creating a grayscale image from the relief, the default palette
  is automatically added to the grayscales.

  The material block can now be deleted - Toolpaths - Delete Material

  The colour shading dialogs have been simplified and an option added to 
  save the shaded image as a bitmap.

  Smaller icons for lower screen resolutions. The program now contains two 
  sets of icons. If it is run on a screen resolution less than 1000 pixels 
  high it will default to using the small icon set to maximize user working 
  area. This behavior can be overridden by starting the program with a /s
  command line parameter for small icons or /l for large icons regardless
  of the screen resolution.

  The start points of vectors are now indicated by a small green box. For 
  closed vectors any point can be set as the start point by right clicking
  on the point and selecting "Start Point" from the pop-up menu. This 
  feature is particularly useful when using closed vectors for the new 
  two rail sweep command.

  Files from the Rolands PICZA digitizer in .PIX format can be loaded directly 
  as reliefs wherever an ArtCAM relief can be loaded.

Modeling

  3D models as clipart - 3d models from other modeling packages can now
  be loaded into ArtCAM and used in a similar way to ArtCAM's native relief
  pasting. 3D DXF, 3D Studio (.3ds) and STL files can be loaded into
  ArtCAM using File - Import - 3d Model. Within ArtCAM they can be scaled,
  positioned and rotated before being 'pasted' into the relief. 
  NOTE: The interactive smoothing tools can be used to easily and 
        selectively remove any 'facets' from low quality models.

  Two Rail Sweep - this is a new tool available from the relief menu
  and toolbar which allows freeform shapes to be created by sweeping
  a vector cross section between two drive rails. Different start and end
  cross sections can be selected and the height of the resulting shape
  can be easily controlled.

  Weave Wizard - this is a new tool for creating designs which consist
  of overlapping swept profiles quickly and easily. Simply select the
  overlapping vectors which represent the centreline(s) for the design
  and select a cross section. The Weave Wizard will then automatically 
  extrude the cross section along the drive curves scaling its height
  up and down at each crossing to give a perfect interlinked effect.  

  The smoothing tool used for interactive sculpting has been made much 
  more effective. Large changes to the relief shape are now much easier.

  Support for Wacom pressure sensitive tablets has been added to the
  interactive sculpting. The 'eraser' part of the pen will always
  be the smoothing tool even if deposit is selected. Pressing harder
  on the pen will apply more smoothing or deposit / remove more material
  depending on the selected mode.

  Ring design and visualization - when  visualizing a ring there is now
  an option to wrap either the X axis or the Y axis of the relief.

  Swept Profiles - it is now possible to specify that the drive curve is
  the centre line for the extrusion. There is also an option to create 
  square 'mitered' corners at discontinuities rather than having a smooth
  radius.

  Remove Small Holes - when importing triangulated models or joining together
  different swept sections you can get small 'holes' in the relief. This
  command on the relief menu will automatically remove small holes without
  performing unwanted 'smoothing' around them. The filter can be run more 
  than once for some larger holes.

  Reliefs from grayscale images  "File - New (From Photo)" this command
  integrates the relief creation abilities of ArtEmboss into ArtCAM. If
  a greyscale image is loaded ArtCAM will create a relief by mapping the
  lightest pixels in the image to the maximum height specified in the dialog
  and the darkest pixels to zero. Intermediate levels of grey will be
  given intermediate heights. If a colour image is loaded it will 
  automatically be converted to a greyscale. There is also an option to
  save a relief as a 256 level grayscale image. When "Relief - Save" is 
  selected choose "Windows Bitmap" from the Save As Type drop list on the dialog.
  NOTE: This command can be very useful for creating textures from images.
 
Machining

  The handling of climb / conventional milling for toolpaths based on
  offsetting has been overhauled. When machining features the climb milling
  check box will ensure that climb milling is observed and also for recessed
  features the tool will start in the centre and work outwards rather than
  plunging onto the final faces as in previous versions.

  Machine specified area now has two extra options if raster is not being used.
  "From Centre" will start machining at the centre of the areas and work 
  outwards. This can help prevent leaving small upstands which are snapped off
  by the tool when it comes back to machine them. The "Climb Mill" option will
  reverse the direction of cut so that climb milling is performed.

  Two visualization options have been added to the bottom of the tollbooth.
  "Draw Cutting Direction" controls drawing of clockwise tollbooth segments in green
  and anticlockwise segments in purple. "Draw Rapid and Plunge Rate Moves"
  switches on and off the rapid moves and plunge moves allowing complex toolpaths
  to be examined more easily.

  The limit of 20 passes in Z for profiling has been increased to 99.

  The toolpath information summary now includes full details about the 
  material definition.




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ArtCAM Pro 4.0 Release Notes

12th May 1999

New Features in Version 4
-------------------------

Interface

Totally new User Interface

  All data associated with a particular job is now stored 
  within the one project file. The .art file now includes 
  the 2d image, the 3d relief and any toolpaths which have 
  been created.

  All information about the current job can be accessed from
  the tree control on the left side of the working area. This
  information is constantly updated with regard to the current
  maximum and minimum heights in the relief, the model position
  and the model size.

  All common commands can be accessed quickly and easily from
  the tabbed toolbar at the top of the screen. 

  Rulers and Guidelines have been added along with the ability
  to 'nudge' vectors using the keyboard arrow keys. These
  additions make placing and aligning vectors far easier.

  New User friendly dialogs for setting model size, smoothing,
  texturing etc. have been added.

  Keyboard shortcuts have been added to speed up vector editing.
  Single key presses can be used to insert, delete and smooth 
  points and also convert spans to beziers, lines or arcs.

  The use of features has been streamlined using the Feature
  tabbed toolbar. Features are now created by simply selecting 
  the vectors and pressing the appropriate button on the feature 
  toolbar.

Modeling

  Interactive sculpting with blend, deposit and remove options. 
  This unique feature allows the relief to be modified in real 
  time within a fully colour shaded view and is available
  from the Relief Editing toolbar. 

  ISO - FORM Lettering. Constant Height variable angle / curvature 
  relief modeling has been added which allows the height of a 
  region within a vector to be maintained regardless of the width
  of the region.

  Ring design and visualization. The Jewelry edition of ArtCAM
  supports full 3d visualization for ring designs. The ring can
  be manufactured using a rotary axis on a standard machine or
  by using the optional ArtSTL module a STL file can be created
  for use with rapid prototyping machines.

  CopyCAD wrapping interface. An interface has been added to 
allow import of wrapped surfaces via Delcam's CopyCAD product. 
  This allows relief data to be wrapped onto bottles, shoes etc. 
  and be exported back to CopyCAD for output as STL models or in
  a format suitable for machining.

Machining

  Raster machining inside arbitrary vectors, at any angle has 
  been added. Simply select the boundary and choose "machine
  area" as the strategy and tick the raster option box.

  A tool database has been added to allow commonly used tool
  definitions to be stored and easily recalled for later use.

  Automatic positioning of the model within the material
  has been added.

  A batch calculation mode is available so that parameters for 
  multiple toolpaths can be defined and then all calculated
in one go.

  A new machining strategy has been added to easily perform
  cut out passes at an absolute depth allowing for the tool 
  radius.

  Access to the toolpath simulation is now much simpler.

Colour shading

  Full colour rendering with multiple light sources and
  material colour defined from the 2d artwork is now
  available from within ArtCAM allowing easy visualization of
  designs without running a separate program.


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ArtCAM Pro 3.102 Release Notes

22nd May 1998

This version of ArtCAM includes a number of minor improvements,
among which are ...

Support for transferring toolpaths to PowerMILL as .cut files
Support for Gerber routers (via Gerber postprocessor and Gerber Spooler)
Better bitmap drawing 
Draw outline of brush when painting
Ability to change the visibility of more than one 3d object at a time
Ability to draw toolpaths over a colour shaded relief or simulation
Support for sending tool description, comment, filename etc to post processor
Job size now included in toolpath summary
Higher quality pasting of low resolution reliefs into high resolution reliefs

Bug fixes include ...
Problem with drawing rubber banded lines on some machines
"Serialise Point Count Error" when reading in .art files
Extra redraw when simulating toolpaths
Problem creating feature reliefs on large jobs

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ArtCAM Pro 3.1 Release Notes

22nd January 1998


Some of the new or enhanced features in ArtCAM Pro 3.1 ...


Toolpath Summary Information

  A summary of toolpath settings along with an estimation
  of machining time is provided. The summary can be edited
  and then either saved to disk or printed.

Relief Clipart Paste Copy

  When pasting a clipart relief there is now the option
  to paste multiple copies of the relief in either a circular
  or linear pattern.

Relief Offsetting

  Relief's can now be offset using a full 3d surface 
  offset. The offset can be either positive or negative. 
  This command is ideal for easily creating a relief for a 
  punch from  a relief for a die.

Relief Surface Area

  This command allows the surface area for a relief or any 
  particular area to be quickly calculated.

Toolpath Calculation Speed Increase

Toolpath calculation is now up to twice as fast.

Relief Resolution Editing

  The accuracy with which the z values are represented can 
  now easily be edited from within ArtCAM.

ArtShade Pro Materials Library

  A library of materials and textures for use with ArtShade
  Pro is now included.

