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Using Blendercam from github

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Alain Pelletier edited this page Jul 19, 2021 · 28 revisions

Using Blendercam from github is a great way to try out the newest features and fixes. The latest build (dailybuild) of Blender can be used with the latest Master branch of Blendercam and then you can live on the bleeding edge.

The easiest way to "install" is not to install but instead just tell Blender where to find the add-on. This way you don't have to worry about copying/moving files around. You can keep Blendercam source files separate from Blender if using source control (ie git for development) and still easily test your changes in Blender.

If you are using Arch Linux, you can just install blendercam-git from the AUR and skip to Enable Blendercam add-on. OpenCAMLib is also available as opencamlib-git.

Dependencies

Blendercam requires Shapely (version >= 1.5) and Numpy (for python3!).
On Debian/Ubuntu, these can be installed with apt install python3-shapely python3-numpy

Note: if you are using a Blender with a bundled Python then shapely and numpy must be installed in the site-packages directory of the bundled python. For Blender 2.8 only Shapely is needed. To install it, open terminal, get to Blender directory and use PIP:

cd 2.80/python/bin/

./python3.7m -m ensurepip

./python3.7m -m pip install shapely

./python3.7m -m pip install Equation

Get Blendercam source code

The first step is to get the source code from the github repository.

  1. Assuming that Git is installed on your machine, at the command prompt change into the directory where blendercam will be and then type:
  2. git clone https://github.com/vilemnovak/blendercam.git (Master branch is now upgraded to Blender 2.8 and works with blender 2.93)

git clone

  1. git will make a subdirectory called blendercam in the current directory then download the most recent version of blendercam from github.

Setup Blender scripts alternate file path

The second step is to tell blender to also search an alternate path for add-ons. When blender starts up it will search its own paths for add-ons and will also search the alternate path that you add. This way an external source add-on can be used in Blender. user file preferences

  1. select User Preferences panel
  2. select File tab
  3. select the file button on the Scripts input field and select the path to your blendercam/scripts directory
  4. select Save User Settings
  5. restart Blender

Enable Blendercam add-on

The third step is to enable the Blendercam add-on. enable addon

  1. select User Preference panel
  2. select Add-ons tab
  3. select Scene category
  4. enable the CAM addon by left clicking on the check box. (Note: the checkbox is on the left side in daily builds of Blender after 11 Jan 2016)
    4a. the file path should match your Blendercam git path
  5. Optional: enable the experimental features
  6. select Save User Settings

Now when ever blender is started, the external blendercam add-on will be enabled.

Enter CAM mode

To put blender into CAM mode do the following:

CAM mode

  1. select Blender CAM as the render engine

engine select

  1. select the Properties editor
  2. select the Render data in order to see the CAM panels

(Highly recomended but Optional) Install Opencamlib

Follow the instructions here: Using BlenderCAM with OpenCAMLib

Updating Blendercam

Every once in a while, maybe even daily, you will want to update your copy of Blendercam to match what is on Github.

  1. at the command line, change to the directory of blendercam
  2. tell git to pull all the latest changes from Github and update your copy git pull

After git finishes updating blendercam you can run blender. If blender was already running, restart it (close blender and then start it).

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