CAM Toolchains

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A RepRap CAM toolchain consists of all the software elements needed to create printed 3d models from CAD models to firmware.

Here we lists the various toolchain components available and provides a comparison of their features, compatible toolchain components and how to get them.

It should be noted that a comparison of CAD modeling programs is outside of the scope of this article however it should be noted that in general CAM toolchains are CAD program agnostic because they can accept standard STL models as input which almost all CAD programs can export directly or through plugins.


Firmware

Firmware Author(s) Compatible electronics Compatible software drivers dc motor extruder? stepper extruder? extruder speed control? movement speed control? thermocouples? heated build platforms? Documentation Download
RepRap FiveD GCode Interpreter RepRap.org Gen 3 (more?) RepRap Software  ? true true true  ?  ?
MakerBot Firmware Fork MakerBot.com Gen 3 (more?) ReplicatorG true  ?  ?  ? true true

RepRap Drivers

Driver Author(s) Compatible firmware(s) Manual movement? Manual extruder control? Manual stepper disable? Manual heated build platform control? Live GCode terminal? SD card upload? GCode input? Step-NC input? Integrated GCode compiler? Documentation Download
RepRap Host Software RepRap.org RepRap FiveD GCode Interpreter true true false false false ? true false true
RepSnapper Kulitorum RepRap FiveD GCode Interpreter ? ? ? ? false ? true false true


Note: some drivers such as the RepRap Host Software are listed here and under GCode compilers as they serve both purposes.

GCode, Etc. Compilers

Compiler Author(s) Compatible firmware features STL input? Multiple STL input? Step-NC input? RFO input? GCode output? Step-NC output? RFO output? Compilation Speed Documentation Download
RepRap Host Software RepRap.org ? true ? false false true false ?  ?
RepSnapper Kulitorum ? true true false true true false true fast
SkeinForge Bits from Bytes Community? ? true false false ? true false false slow