Hello. perhaps this is in the wrong forum and if so, please admins, move it where it belongs.
Anyway. I recently got into arduino because of pensa labs cnc wire bender(http://www.instructables.com/id/DIWire-Bender/). While their code was a very good base I found several things I could improve upon. One of these things was figuring out a complete tool chain to produce working bends from scratch. My tool of choice when it comes to computer modelling have always been google sketchup, however this does not really lend itself to 2D modelling. I tried various free 2D CAD software but did not find any that were even close to sketchup in terms of ease of use and intuitivity. Because of this i decided to see what would be required to get sketchup files bendable in the DIWire.
Below is the tool chain I developed, feel free to comment on any part of it if you have anything to add or questions to ask.
Step 1 Design the open ended shape i want then connect the two endpoints with a line.
Step 2 Use SVG export plugin (Google Code Archive - Long-term storage for Google Code Project Hosting.) to get it into SVG format. Make sure you export it as lines, not paths.
Step 3 Open the generated SVG file in a text editor and remove the unwanted line connecting the end points.
Step 4 Use a small program i have written myself (code available if anyone is interested) to generate a new svg based on the lines generated by the SVG export but ordered into a continuous path.
Step 5 Load the new svg into a modified version of the 2d processing application that pensa has available on the DIWire google code page. (modified source available as well)
This enables me to quickly design, process and bend any shape I want. Have anyone else tried this project? Any ideas for a better tool chain? Just feel like commenting? Hope to hear what you guys have to say about this.