CAD/CAM Wish List

Features which I would like to see in Drawing/CAD/CAM software:


 * Generalized support for geometric shapes
 * Inspector palettes for everything (basically it should be FreeHand w/ CAD/CAM support)
 * Use integer mathematics for all calculations, and define as the smallest possible unit some dimension which perfectly divides into both a 1/384th of an inch and 1/1000th of a mm. Cf. Dr. Donald Knuth’s TeX and the scaled point) --- this would allow one to switch a project from Imperial to metric and back w/ no rounding or loss of precision
 * option to write out high-precision G-code (suitable for later scaling / processing) or truncated G-code which won't trip up Grbl
 * the ability to import .pdfs and .svg files
 * the ability to specify the orientation of travel (so that one can chose to have grooves or stairsteps along a given curve or angle along the Z-axis)

http://www.shapeoko.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2809&p=23633&hilit=easel#p21515


 * 3D profile/zig-zag milling operations.
 * Batching of operations. i.e. Assigning an operation to multiple features for easier management.
 * Allow the option for, or make it the default to, execute the operation to full depth on each feature before moving on to the next one in the batch. (HeeksCNC lets you select a bunch of sketches for a pocket operation, but performs the current depth of cut on all of them before stepping down. For a large number of features this adds a lot of extra time in the form of spindle repositioning.)
 * Support import of common parametric (e.g STEP), mesh (e.g. STL, SKP), and drawing (SVG, DXF) formats. (And whatever format, or formats, are being distributed in PDF form.)
 * Parametric modeling.
 * Mapping of textures/images to faces.