A Widescreen Blender-Style Interface

So, it seems that this is what has developed....

The persistent areas are generally similar from machine to machine, and can be drawn over.
I like the idea of having a nice big Estop area, though nothing should overlay the machine areas.

Thanks for the spell-check Andy : )

Maybe I haven't made it clear that I support the idea of a well thought out, attractive user interface. A common complaint from Mach3 users is that LinuxCNC looks bad, or has no "skins" or whatever. It would be nice to be able to refute that.

That's why we are here : )
Well, I wanted to give something back, too.

Though, as I have stated, all the present interfaces have good ideas...that I am trying to rip off equally. The big Estop idea came from the Craftsman interface, but it was changed to be on the right because most people are right-handed. Left-hander's are quicker than we are, so they can make up the difference : )

There's even a little bit of a newspaper strip layout in there, too.

Everyone needs a lathe, but most don't realise it

Love your work Andy

If I had more room, I'd have 2!

Starting on some Probe icons based from the existing layout, which is pretty good, but as always, it will be a challenge to make everything fit for a touch screen.

As a minor gotcha, there needs to be an extended separator on the right when replacing the 3D view.

It occurred to me after looking at your more recent screenshots that the DRO elements don't need to have near as many significant digits. Most commercial mills and lathes I've seen don't go beyond 0.0001", and I'd bet that even the best grinders and EDM machines don't need any more than 6 significant digits.

I suspect the space that's saved could be used more efficiently.

When I started, I just went for a 10-digit mantissa.

Because the area immediately to the right of the displays are populated with some of the most-used buttons, they are large. And because they are large, it would take the loss of perhaps 4-5 digits to return add another row of buttons.

Ideally, you are likely right, though.

As a sanity check:

The coefficient of thermal expansion of aluminium is 23^-6 / K

A 10mm (very small) part will expand 0.0002mm for a 1 degree change in part temperature.

4 decimal places for a metric layout and 6(maybe 5) on imperial covers pretty much any part that it is possible to manufacture. On a real machine the extra digits are just visual noise.

Or to look at it another way: How many digits are on the digital micrometer that you will inspect the parts with?

I have managed to find one micrometer with 6 digits in imperial:
ecatalog.mitutoyo.com/MDH-Micrometer-Hig...icrometer-C1816.aspx
Most have only 5.

andypugh wrote: Most have only 5.

And often that last digit is a "0" or a "5".

Thanks for adding context to my comment. As a programmer, give me as many bits as you can spare. As a machinist, you were spot on when you call the extra numbers "noise".

Getting into the "tenths" range of measurements (0.0001" or approx. 0.003mm) and achieving repeatable results requires an incredibly clean environment, high quality (expensive) tools, and temperature/process controls.