Best practice feedrate?

It also wont let me type the letter 'd', it just adds 0.0000 and lets me fill it out like insert, which is a cool feature but I had no idea it existsted and its not in the list of keybindings. what is it and can I turn it off?

One of the neat things about ngcgui is that it can return some system parameters.

Take a look at section 7.5 of...
www.linuxcnc.org/docs/devel/html/gcode/overview.html

What is neat about this is you can jog your machine to the location you want your sub to work from say it is x2.13456 y1.654321 z-.254789.
In the field for the X location instead of entering 2.13456 just enter x and it will fill it in for you, same for the rest. This can save a lot of time and is demonstrated in poisition.ngc

d means 2*x=current_diameter (eg for a lathe))

From dgarrett

An example of how to do something similar with axis, ngcgui, and a simple subroutine:

0) specify a subroutine in the ini file or load it from a "Custom"
tab (example attached for position.ngc)

1) Navigate to the position subroutine tab page and
enter "howmany" positions, and other routine entry values

2) Jog to the first position (having a pendant is useful)

3) On the "position" tab page:
put keyboard cursor in the x1 entry box
type "x" (enters current x position)
tab to y1 entry box
type ":y" (enters current y position)

(note: typing x,y,z,a,b,c,d enters the current coordinate value,
d means 2*x=current_diameter (eg for a lathe))

repeat 2) and 3) for remaining positions x2,y2, etc.

4) "Create Feature"

5) repeat 2-4 for additional features if needed

6a) "Finalize"
run the generated program

OR

6b) type Ctrl-a (toggle autosend)
"MakeFile"
save file with a unique name in a location of your choice to run later

The generated program will move to each position and pause (m0) I use this with a quill to manually drill holes at the positions.

With simple modifications, you could modify the subroutine to do anything else instead of pausing, like calling another subroutine.

Rick G

I will need to read that later, spent too long staring at the heater and wondering why everything is so cold today. it is now 45 in the house and dropping. Already miss running water...

anyways it sounds like you can NOT enter variable names into ngcgui. While it would probably be fairly straightforard to ignore magick letters that come after a #<, I am still not too sold on it anyways. Working on a generic preamble in my head, I think Ifinally have a system and made up standard for hte shop, so yay me.

Yep, cold here too, yesterday 3 deg F with 35 mph wind and then down to 2, but today should be better.
Glad you are making progress.

Rick G