A Widescreen Blender-Style Interface

Brenda have you read the manual? or used linuxcnc for a lathe? if you have then please tell me where im going wrong because im interpereting this diagram to mean that tools located in a certain position will have that position designation so that their front and back angle numbers can be used properly and the machine knows the location of the tool in relation to the machine axis lines. it is not a tool changer position. it is the Q value.

I do find it strange that there is no cutting length variable standard.

thats because this is a controller, it is not a CAM package, Cam is where your tooling is setup to detect collision avoidance and gouge detection. Brenda, I am not here trying to hurt your feelings, I am trying to help you understand why things are the way things are, they are a certain way because of many underlying reasons not just whimsicality. everything depends on something. the only needed measurements for a mill tool for the controller to run properly is the physical tool length in relation to the spindle gauge line in relation to the machine coordinate system and work coordinate offset and its diameter in order for it to process kinematics correctly. the rest is dictated by the cam. for a router using only one tool that never changes this may not be important as z zero is always the tool end, but when you change multiple tools, the machine controller MUST know that the z height changes in relation to the work coordinate offsets or the tool will cut air or plunge into the part after changing out the tool for the next.

There is already a variable for Orientation on the menu, as they was in Axis's tool table. The manual page you posted speaks about orientation of the bit, it further describes possible positions within the context of orientation.

In other words, in your discussion, it appears that you have put the carriage before the horse, the object before the class.
It appears that you wrote of position, when even the manual refers to it as orientation.

Yes, of course there should be some representation of tool Orientation.

I will reiterate that there will not likely be enough programmer to create a new menu for every tool. So, I still think the best option is to have a single picture for each tool type that depicts everything they need to know how to enter it in the tool table--all in one drawing.

(I have discussed my opinions of the manual, its organization, navigation, but not it's presentation, elsewhere on this forum. At this point, I really wouldn't care about the presentation if other ducks were in a row, but in my opinion, they are not.)

the number value is the value regardless of what you call it, and I asked the question of whether it was position 6 or 2 according to the manual. and it of course was a first and incomplete posting of the tool image representation. there are more offset parameters that can be added still for X and Z offset dimensions that i did not add because i wanted clarification on position first. perhaps I should have included the manual image that was my fault but it certainly did not warrant your response and unless you plan on revising your goals I am still done helping you make a router only gui which is the most ridiculous thing Ive heard of in my life.

Please quote where I stated the interface was "router only."
Please also point out where you objected to anyone here on the forum that Axis is router only.

From the get-go, I wanted to support mills, lathes, and plasma/torches. There is a long preceding thread that where I state so.

I do not agree with your assertion that making it router-inclusive is router-only.

I want to be respectful of just how much programming it will or would take get this thing working. And so, the first iteration isn't going to have all the bells and whistles. It's been my experience that the, well products, that succeed well do most things well, and the ones that do one thing exceptionally well may not make it.

The world is changing. The CNC router is becoming a common garage tool. Everyone's doing it. While the needs of the professional should be addressed, yes, but the needs of even the home hobbyist should be addressed too, because one of them is working on this interface, and there will be more where I came from.

I interpret that to read you will leave out the important parts of the control you deem unworthy for parts important to your agenda, if i'm mistaken explain it another way. but as of right now everything i've suggested gets batted away so I don't have a lot of faith you mean anything but what i interpreted.

If i'm going to enlist in helping build something for everyone, it should be for everyone and encompass everything not just one thing, it should be something open for discussion to be made better rather then fall into the ruts of the same bad habits of past guis, otherwise you're simply redressing an existing gui without addressing issues that should be given attention. I don't want to speak for Kurt, but maybe instead of assuming thats where his heads at, ask. lets form a discussion on it. I know you initialized the project but when more people come on to help, sometimes the best option is to reevaluate the scope of the project to see what could be made better along the way to avoid rushing *something* out. by showing flexibility, especially in the front of making something better for the end user more functional and powerful as a tool, it will draw in more help and interest is my guess, which will lighten the load. by being closed off you will have your vision discovered but then its that, your vision, restricted to your experience which i gotta say, seems limited. again not an attack just an observation you should consider. relax your grip on the reigns a little bit and you may be surprised at what a collaboration yields. tighten it and you'll never know.

Part of my agenda is that it would-be / would-have-been possible to program the interface in a timely manner, without getting caught in a time-trap on an elaborate feature, if a simpler method would still accomplish the same goals.

A few people have asked me to call this already done, and export the graphics before it was done. While I haven't rushed things out, I likely won't be able to work on the interface at all, in a month or two, so is far as my involvement, my final proposal must be done in a month or two. That's it, and and there's nothing I can do about that--even if I wanted to.

Though, it's been almost two months. I have put hundreds of hours into this project. The filename is bumped up to 199. It needs to be done at some point. I think it's still at 7:11 menus, which means there's about 4 to go.

Keeping things into perspective, the entire graphical layout and a user interface itself would be only a small part of LinuxCNC. We stand on the shoulders of giants.

I can't tell you how to feel. We are all different. Though perhaps you should have some solace that if you offer a counter-proposal after this, it will probably work out for you.

tommylight wrote:

All this talk is doing nothing towards getting those beautiful pictures Brenda made to an actual usable GUI for our dearly beloved Linuxcnc.
Maybe it is just me, but i see no reason for dragging this to the extent that users get bored and move on to using whatever they were using before this. I am one of those users, reading this thread every day, several times a day for nearly 2 months now, just to find some .......well useless ....whatever. Sorry but i do not know how to name most of what is going on here lately.
This would have gone much better if those pictures ( sorry for calling them pictures, but that is all they are right now ) that Brenda spent huge amounts of time designing were already uploaded here and we ( i am looking at you KCJ ) had the chance to start making something with them, do some testing, make it usable and actually see what is working and what needs to be done to make it almost perfect.
Thank you for all the hard work.
P.S.
Admins, if you think any of this is inappropriate, please do delete this post. Thank you.

my bad, apologies to all!

hmmmmm the plot thickens


Careful what you say guys, that report button may get used.