Hi Charles,
I just installed V1.15a on my Shop working computer and it runs well. It is an HP Desktop with Windows 10 pro 64bit OS and 64 bit AMD A 45300B, Radeon HD Graphics running at 3.04 Ghz and * GBs RAM. The other machine is my house computer. Ill be looking for some tutorials to see if this software meeting my needs. I will definitely purchase if I can get the just of with the limited trial version. Thanks for your reply,
Don
I tried the program on my machine computer and got the foll
owing message-
Hi Clyde, do you have a capable graphics chip in your machine? The version of OpenGL it’s trying to run is 10 years old so just about any hardware made since then should be able to run it just fine as long as drivers are up-to-date. If you go into your computer’s device manager you can see what display adapter you have:
I took a screen shot of my device manager and am posting it now. 
. Any help with updating the drivers would be greatly appreciated. I would definetly purchase your software if only I can get my system to work with it. I’m sorry to say that I"m not the most computer savvy person
Hi Clyde, well it looks like I might be able to get it to run on your hardware, which is limited to OpenGL v2.0 (even with the latest drivers) if I do some fancy footwork. It might not be pretty performance-wise on your hardware though. I don’t have anything old enough to fully test an OpenGL v2.0 context but I can change the code to what it has to be for an older system that’s limited to 2.0 and that just might work for you.
I might also have to do some extra work just to get the performance up by cutting down polygons and toolpath lines with some user-adjustable value. We can go ahead and try it out but like I said I can’t guarantee it will work or work well, but I say it’s worth a shot. You can’t be the only person running on an older rig who’s into CNC, and anything I can do to expand target audience means more people who can benefit from PixelCNC. I’m going to work on a tutorial tonight and then I’ll upload a v1.17a full and trial version tomorrow that should work on hardware limited to 2.0. Cross your fingers!
I have some work planned to upgrade the algorithms that PixelCNC has at the heart of its CAM toolpath generation to use modern graphics hardware capabilities. If we can get PixelCNC usable for you - and thus everybody else who is limited by their PC’s capabilities - then maybe I’ll set things up to fall back on the existing CPU-based algorithms if the graphics hardware isn’t up to snuff for the new ones.
Good to hear! Thanks for the update. I uploaded a new v1.16a for customers that might fix some issues some people are having with sudden performance degradation and image loading problems, no trial version though, but tomorrow I’m going to upload v1.17a which may solve things on your other house computer, no guarantees though.
Thanks Charles,
BTW, FYI the machine that wouldn’t load images was a Win 10 Home 64 bit, AMD Sempron 145 running at 2.8 GHZ, 4.00 GBs RAM and a NVIDIA Geforce 8400GS. Hope that helps you.
I’ve been having good success bending the learning cure on Blender, importing SVGs, processing then exporting as an STL for CAD/CAMing in V Carve Pro, but Ill be watching your page for updates.
Take Care,
Don
Ah, the problem is that the Sempron 145 is a single-core CPU. I added an error message for future users who try to run it on hardware that lacks at least a second CPU core.
I added a tutorial this morning that you might find helps acquaint you with how things are setup: Horizontal Roughing and Parallel Finishing
I’ll be adding a tutorial for stippling/halftoning as well as one for V-carving and outlining a bit later.
Eventually the plan is to create video versions of the tutorials as well. I’ve setup for recording and also recording video of actual CNC cuts. I primarily want to work on getting a short promotional/demo video up on YouTube specifically as something to get PixelCNC out there, and as something people can share around easily instead of just a link to a store page with screenshots and wall-o-text.
Hi Clyde, I uploaded a v1.17a trial version that will attempt to create an older OpenGL context which your graphics processor is capable of. There’s no guarantee it will actually work but I’m curious to find out. All of the hardware I have to test on forces a newer version of OpenGL to be used for rendering that is technically backwards compatible with the version that your hardware is limited to, so it might be pulling a fast one on me by pretending to work only because it’s still running on new hardware that isn’t actually limited to 2.0 functionality. Let me know how it goes 
Thanks!
I just tried the latest version.Unfortunetly The ploy didn’t work. Her’s the error messages:
. 
.
Ah, you know what, there’s still hope! I think that the function’s original name was glGenBuffersARB, along with a few other vertex buffer functions having the ARB (Architecture Review Board) suffix added to their names, because those functions date back to GL 1.4, but the names were different. So maybe if I detect which GL version managed to load up I can determine which function name to use. It’s crazy enough that it just might work! I’ll update it again and let you know when I have v1.18a up. If I can get it working I think it might be worth it. Performance might be pretty lame but I can work on that too, I haven’t really done much to optimize the actual geometry being rendered - besides just offloading most of the work to the GPU, but I can probably cut a bit of fat for older systems as far as the actual geometry being rendered goes.
I am trying to use the trial version and it keeps telling me that the SDL2 files cannot be found.
Hi RaulFuster, did you extract all of the files as they are in the zip file? The SDL files are included with the EXE and there shouldn’t be a problem with them if you properly unzip the PixelCNC folder that’s in the zip onto your harddrive or desktop, and then run the EXE file.
This is interesting. I had to run it as administrator.
Interesting. It doesn’t do anything anywhere that it needs admin privileges for - unless the user tries to save a project file in a non-user area. It writes a config file and a log file to the current Windows user’s AppData folder, which doesn’t require admin as it would if it were trying to write them into the PixelCNC folder itself (and it’s installed somewhere besides the directory tree of the user’s folder).
Can I ask: if you installed PixelCNC inside or outside the current windows user’s folder tree, what Windows you’re running, and lastly any AV you may be using? I’d like to get things to where there’s minimum friction for users to get things going, so if I could find out why it was giving you the SDL DLLs error that would be a huge help. Thanks!
I am using Windows 10. I tried it on my Surface and on the computer that I use in the shop, trial versions. In both cases it gave me the msg that it could not find the 2 files after I extracted it. I opted to right click and run as administrator and it works like a champ. I had to do the same thing after I purchased it. No problem for me, but for others it may be. I am also running McAfee, I don’t know if it is a “protection” issue.
Thanks for supporting PixelCNC, and thank you for reporting this issue. I’m not sure what to make of it as you’re the first person who has reported it, I’ll have to do some research. It seems almost like a system-specific issue. If the DLL files are in the same folder as the EXE then running it should not have any problems finding them - unless in your registry something has modified the way executables are handled, which is not unheard of, but modifications shouldn’t draw attention to themselves by causing issues like this. Does your machine also require you to run installations as administrator as well?
Can I ask where you placed the PixelCNC folder on your computer? I’m wondering if it’s an issue caused by whether or not it’s running from a folder within the windows user’s directory tree or from a protected area of the harddrive outside the current user’s folder. User accounts should be able to run PixelCNC regardless of whether or not they have administrator rights, as all disk-write operations are performed only in the current user’s folder, where they have free reign. I’m going to be looking into this, but a cursory look on Google makes it appear to be possibly a problem specific to your system configuration, which makes it sound like McAfee might have something to do with it, especially considering that there haven’t been any other reports of the issue.
Thanks again Raul
Hi Raul, I downloaded the demo version 1.17 and it works fine. If I can produce a good gcode file to run on Mach3 I will be purchasing a copy. Nice program! Thanks. My question is, then you change the units to metric in the configuration, does it change all the units in the entire program to metric (tool size, speed, feed…)? or just the work space? Thanks
Hi Dean, when you change PixelCNC over to metric it changes how the workspace and grid are scaled in the render. Tool sizes are relative to the project, so if you’re in metric then a 10mm tool diameter will be 1/10th the size of a 100mm project. Feed rates only determine what number is output in the G-code and doesn’t affect anything visually - but in the feeds it will still say ‘IPM’, that will be fixed in the next version that should be out this weekend.
Setting PixelCNC to inches/metric doesn’t take affect until a new project is created via File->New. The only situation with creating a metric project is that you’ll have to re-enter all the parameters from scratch because they’ll still have the stored imperial defaults/previously used values. There are a few values that are stored independently per imperial/metric, such as the project dimensions. Once you set it up with metric feeds and stepsizes and such it will remember those for next time you create an operation.
Converting between metric/imperial could have an automated element to it, but it will only be able to do so much. For instance, the previously used tool dimensions aren’t something that can be mapped one-to-one because a 0.25" tool doesn’t have an exact counterpart in metric (i.e. 6.35mm tool? that would just be called a 1/4" end mill 
). Perhaps what I should do is allow intermixing of metric/imperial project dimensions, operation parameters, and tools, instead of requiring that everything be either one or the other. That way you could use an imperial tool in a metric project and vice-versa. I’ll have to mull over that a bit before I decide what to do exactly.
Let me know if you have any further questions/comments/concerns and I’ll do what I can to work things out and get PixelCNC to where you need it to be.
Thanks!
Bit question. Like you said, bit are specific to the project. Is there a way to create a bit library rather than doing it every time? Are there also plans to expand the types of bit one can use?