Developer(s) Fritz St-Martin Written in C++ | Stable release 1.1.28 | |
Operating system Available in English, French, Spanish License Permanent, Time Usage, Trial | ||
RoutCad is the registered trade name for a Windows application software used in the general field of Computer Aided Design (CAD) for making engineering drawing of mechanical parts, electrical circuit, floor plan, sketches, etc. The software also has a module for the definition of tool path and for generating the cnc machine level code to produce part with the machining process of CNC milling. A similar module for the generation of cnc machine level code for the production of surface of revolution with the machining process of cnc lathe is also available.
Contents
History
RoutCad was developed by Fritz St-Martin an aerospace engineer, graduated from McGill University (Montreal, Canada) in 1995. The software originated from a graphical drawing tool written in GWBasic and running on the early x86 DOS and Win 3.1 computer. This early graphical tool had approximately 60000 lines of code and was completed by Fritz St-Martin at the age of 16. The program was freely distributed to friends. In the year 2000 while working as an aerospace engineer at Pratt&Whitney and developing software for gas turbine engine electronic control unit, Fritz St-Martin started to be interested in motion control for cnc machining. An embedded software for controlling 3 axis cnc router with closed loop PID controller for servo motors was first developed, then in 2002 work on a CAD-CAM software begun. Today RoutCad is widely used design parts and produce toolpath for cnc mill and cnc lathe.
CAD
The Computer Aided Design (CAD) portion of RoutCad allows to draw very sophisticated drawing using basic drawing elements. The basic drawing elements are : line, point, arc, parabola, and rotated parabolas. These basic drawing elements are combined to produce the most complex shape. The CAD portion of RoutCad is used to create : mechanical part, mechanical assembly, electronic part, floor plan, sketches, etc. RoutCad can also import .dxf drawing compatible with AutoCAD R12. RoutCad also has the ability to save to .dxf, so that drawing produce in RoutCad, can be used in other application.