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TEMPLOT 3D PLUG TRACK - To get up to speed with this experimental project click here.   To watch an introductory video click here.   See the User Guide at Bexhill West.

  • The Plug Track functions are experimental and still being developed. Some of the earlier pages of this topic are now out-of-date.

    For an updated overview of this project see this topic.   For some practical modelling aspects of using Plug Track see Building 3D Track.

    The assumption is that you have your own machines on which to experiment, or helpful friends with machines. Please do not send Templot files to commercial laser cutting or 3D printing firms while this project is still experimental, because the results are unpredictable and possibly wasteful.

    Some pages of this and other topics include contributions from members who are creating and posting their own CAD designs for 3D printing and laser-cutting. Do not confuse them with Templot's own exported CAD files. All files derived from Templot are © Martin Wynne.
  • The Plug Track functions are experimental and still being developed.

    For an updated overview of this project see this topic.   For some practical modelling aspects of using Plug Track see Building 3D Track.

    The assumption is that you have your own machines on which to experiment, or helpful friends with machines. Please do not send Templot files to commercial laser cutting or 3D printing firms while this project is still experimental, because the results are unpredictable and possibly wasteful.

    Some pages of this and other topics include contributions from members who are creating and posting their own CAD designs for 3D printing and laser-cutting. Do not confuse them with Templot's own exported CAD files. All files derived from Templot are © Martin Wynne.

File formats for T3/MEC

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I've reviewed this topic in the old Templot Club, and would like to add some additional comments.

Firstly, is there any reason not to use the XML based file format as the standard format (not just import/export)?

The reason I suggest this is that unless we are very careful, using a binary format could lead to files that are incompatible across different machine architectures - big endian vs little endian. This is not an insurmountable issue, but it does have to be considered.

Regarding reading existing BOX files (binary from T2, containing Delphi 10-byte real values), it should be a reasonably straightforward (but tedious!) exercise to convert these in a platform independent way, and is something I would be happy to tackle.

Regards,
Alistair Ward.
 
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