A Widescreen Blender-Style Interface

There are a lot of good ideas in the user interfaces I have seen for LinuxCNC. Still, I was inspired to fire up Inkscape and try moving some some shapes around. Outright, shamelessly, I am drawing on a lot of other people's ideas. I hope to inspire the others, just as they have inspired me.

Functionally, I would like one or two changes from the user interfaces, I want a DRO-like utility page for ordinary things, like you would find on a DRO for bolt circles, but also pocketing bolt layout and other things.

So, This these are the ideas I am messing around with:

* To do a Blender-styled interface, which has 3D shading in it, where it helps, so it's not too flat.
* To do a touch interface layout.
* To make it 16x9 for modern monitors.
* To incorporate as many ideas as I can from other interfaces.
* To make it consistent, uniform, and easy to read.
* To use all open source fonts.
* When it's time, put the artwork out in both 1920x1080 and for the future 4k. I would help others, if they want to help on it. I will share the source files for non-commerical use.

So, this is what I have so far. This will be updated.

By using more buttons that show state, fewer indicators are needed.
It's laid out for 5 axis, but 2 can be grayed out for 3 axis machines.
The Pause button was made largest of script/play controls as there is already an Estop, and pause can preserve the job.
I might make the buttons a little brighter and contrasty, but that will be it for colors.
MDI was changed to "Manual Input" to speed new users acclamation.
It needs spindle and jogging, and Home-All.

The file buttons will have GTK-style icons.

This looks pretty good - not sure from your description if this is a live display or concept artwork.

If you are interested in GUI building - there is a qtscreen branch that I have done a ton of work on.
I am interested in collaborators.
pyQT can have style sheets incorporated in add a nice look.


The macro dialog uses inkscape images.
I have taken a pause on that branch but would get back into it if someone showed interest.

Chris M

Cmorely, where I am the video isn't loading, but the still image looks easily understood.

~

I am just focusing on concepts and art, AFAIK.

I want to layout a 2nd page, that did everything you could do manually with a DRO, so, there likely a lot of icons to make, such as bolt-circle, dividing, calculator functions, etc.

Currently, I am working on the spindle and jogging on the main page.

youtube.com/watch?v=Dq4JMI1My98

Thank you for the link, but the problem was: was at a coffee shop at the time.

I like the probe menu.

I wish the 3D preview for all interfaces could be higher resolution or perhaps it could be anti-aliased--even if it is only was done when the user isn't moving the display position, as a post-processing step.

It would have to be an option for slower machines, I suppose.

Perhaps a version of Pycam or something similar could be integrated, for generating gcode.

I felt that making the buttons for movement pointy makes them easier to understand, other than just having glyphs.
Many people have only 3 axis, but I want to keep 5 axis. I am not sure if enough pros have a 6th axis to warrant putting a C axis on.


This is a challenging project because, for some of the modes of operation, certain UI sets should remain, and others should go.
In certain modes, the smaller gcode window and the often-used-gcode buttons would be replaced, but they aren't in the same block, yet.

The spindle control and the other speed controls need to be added.