David_Lelen01 wrote: ↑Mon Nov 23, 2020 2:53 pm
Oh you asked for it this time Les lol.
No worries. I would have been disappointed if you hadn't said anything.
I'm mostly looking for stuff that's quick to implent so that rules out most of these suggestions. However I'll see what I can do.
1) Default start point placement should be such that machine does not have to travel over a contour that has already been cut to move to the next contour. Currently it is on the wrong side. I have brought this up before here:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=8288
Yeah, that's most definitely not in the quick fix department. I don't think this will be ready for the new stable in January.
2) Leadins/ start points are being placed such that the start point interferes with other parts. The "start point placement clearance" does not appear to have any affect on placement of start points.
Do you mean leadins on one part interfere with another part? Again that has a lot of nasty issues. What happens when you have duplicates? Duplicates are a carbon copy of the original part so if you move the start point on one you move it on all.
3) Individual start point properties negative overcut value does nothing. Operation overcut must be negative for negative overcuts to work. I think i have brought this up before too, but do not see the post at the moment.
Yup, there is definitely something wrong there. The preview when in start point mode shows the correct spacing but the tool paths are wrong.
4) "Break up manually nested parts" generates redundant names. (ex. Part of Part of [part name])
Huh, I never noticed that. I'll fix it.
1)Add length specification box to internal corner overcut option in operations dialog.
Why do you want to do that? Currently it calculates the minimum cut for a square corner to fit into. Is this not enough when laser cutting?
2)Add manual input box for "Loop corners" Size. Current is slider bar that appears to be dependent on kerf width. Sometimes this is too small for the operation i use.
Hmm, I didn't think about lasers with a really thin kerf. The slider keeps it simple. What sort of loop size would you normally aim for?
3)Add scale box to status bar near rotation box.
Way back in the mists of time the original SheetCam had this. It caused so many headaches I quietly removed it when I wrote TNG. I could maybe add a scale option in the parts tree. Scaling would be one-way. For instance if you scale your part to 50% the only way to return it to full size would be to scale 200%. You couldn't just reset it to 100%.
4)Select preferred start point placement somewhere in options. (ex. midpoint of line, midpoint of arc, corner)
The current start point placement is based on internal rules that score different positions depending on their suitability. For instance a tight inside corner would get a very low score. The position with the highest score wins. I'll look into making that scoring tuneable and adding issue #1 into the mix. I doubt if it will be soon though.
5)Select multiple parts in parts tree using shift key. This is something i am very used to being able to do in every application on windows and is honestly just annoying that i cant shift-select parts.
That should work. If you try you can see the group get selected then it gets deselected again. I'll look into what is going on there.
6)Shape tab does not remember last setting of tab width. I have to drag it out so i can see everything every time.
I vaguely remember a problem with making it remember the size. I'll investigate further.
7) Shape dialog box does not remember last setting for window size. I have to drag it larger each time.
I should be able to fix that.
8)Add ability to skip to a specific line/time in simulation tab.
Hmm, I can see that being useful. I'll have to look into it. Space is limited on these little side widows so I need to think on a compact and intuitive way of doing this.
9) Display the current line of code being executed in simulation tab.
Simulation does not use the post processed code. For that to work you'd have to have a reverse post processor to match every post processor. Instead sim uses it's own internal code format which is not related to G-code. It could display this code but it wouldn't be very useful.
10) Is there any possible way you could hide a config file somewhere or make something somewhere that i could add custom fields to the job report dialog box. The "Notes" box was wonderful, but I still really want a "Customer" box and a "File Name" box but i understand this is probably useless to 99.9% of everyone else here so i am just going to ask very nicely pretty please.
Job reports are an ugly kludge. The hacked up HTML is confusing to work with. I need to totally rethink reports, which is one reason why I don't really want to mess with it too much at the moment. Maybe I should look into using XSLT instead. Mind you XSLT can be pretty impenetrable as well.
And finally this last one we have discussed before and i know you said it would be very difficult to implement, but the "break up manually nested drawing" makes a line that is coincident with the edges of a part as a separate part. Sometimes it makes it a separate part and sometimes it leaves it inside the part, kinda hit or miss. This is just super annoying because every time i nest something with etch lines i have to modify each and every line so that it is not coincident with the edge of the part. This is just excessively time consuming.
Yeah, this is remarkably difficult to implement reliably.
Sorry this is such a list, hope you dont hate me now... Thanks for all of your amazing and hard work for such a wonderful program!!
Thanks for compiling the list. I much prefer this to silence. These days I don't spend much time actually running machines. It's so easy to lose touch with what is actually useful.