FlatCAM

FlatCAM BETA (c) 2019 - by Marius Stanciu

Based on FlatCAM: 2D Computer-Aided PCB Manufacturing by (c) 2014-2016 Juan Pablo Caram

FlatCAM is a program for preparing CNC jobs for making PCBs on a CNC router. Among other things, it can take a Gerber file generated by your favorite PCB CAD program, and create G-Code for Isolation routing.

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------------ Installation instructions ------------

Works with Python version 3.5 or greater and PyQt5.

• Download sources from: https://bitbucket.org/jpcgt/flatcam/downloads/
• Unzip them on a HDD location that your user has permissions for.

1. MacOS

2. none (yet)

3. Linux

4. make sure that Python 3.8 is installed on your OS and that the command: python3 -V confirm it

5. verify that the file setup_ubuntu.sh has Linux line-endings (LF) and that it is executable (chmod +x setup_ubuntu.sh)

6. run the file setup_ubuntu.sh and install all the dependencies with the command: ./setup_ubuntu.sh

7. if the previous command is successful and has no errors, run FlatCAM with the command: python3 FlatCAM.py

8. Windows

9. download the provided installer (for your OS flavor 64bit or 32bit) from https://bitbucket.org/jpcgt/flatcam/downloads/

10. execute the installer and install the program. It is recommended to install as a Local User.

or

• download the sources from the same location
• unzip them on a safe location on your HDD that your user has permissions for

• install WinPython e.g WinPython 3.8 downloaded from here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/winpython/files/WinPython_3.8/ Use one of the versions (64bit or 32it) that are compatible with your OS. To save space use one of the versions that have the smaller size (they offer 2 versions: one with size of few hundred MB and one smaller with size of few tens of MB)

• add Python folder and Python\Scripts folder to your Path (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/office/developer/sharepoint-2010/ee537574(v%3Doffice.14))

• verify that the pip package can be run by opening Command Prompt(Admin) and running the command: pip -V

• look in the requirements.txt file (found in the sources folder) and install all the dependencies using the pip package. The required wheels can be downloaded either from: https://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/ or https://pypi.org/

You can download all the required wheels files into a folder (e.g D:\my_folder) and install them from Command Prompt like this: cd D:\my_folder and for each wheel file (*.whl) run: D:\my_folder> pip install --upgrade package_from_requirements.whl

Run FlatCAM beta from the installation folder (e.g D:\FlatCAM_beta) in the Command Prompt with the following command: cd D:\FlatCAM_beta python FlatCAM.py