GUI for PlasmaC - QtPlasmac

It is interesting that this talk about button placement came up now. When PlasmaC was first released it had its own GUI that was designed along those lines, there was a row of buttons across the top that followed the work flow. No one was interested so I abandoned it.

QtPlasmaC is not specifically designed for a touch screen. I don't have one and have never considered using one on a machine. The intent is for it to be touch screen friendly.

I must say I don't remember it. but I think the the real issue was that the Axis and Gmocappy (which I've always used) support touch screens poorly. Even when Gmocappy was touted as being touch screen friendly there are a few areas where elements are too small to select with your finger so I always had a keyboard handy. Gmocappy is actually the worst offender I think. Too much selecting tabs so it becomes more like estop, power on, swap tab, select home, then home all. Then jog to your position, select the tab for my laser macro, then swap tabs again to load a file, then you are finally right to go.

The estop and power and the home buttons are in diagonally opposite corners which made me curse the touch screen. A mouse was much faster.

So I think QTPlasmac is pretty good as it is, but because Pedro raised it, I also added my feedback becasue from my Gmocappy experience, this was pretty important and I had spent some time reviewing the ergonomics which are much better on a small (15.7" screen) than Gmocappy. I decided that I could live with it so did not raise it earlier.

I can see Pedro's logic about using the Z axis jog buttons. But to me its not a show stopper.

Until I build my HMI, I am not yet in a position to experiment. I think auto power on would be a good feature if you have an external estop beside the GUI.

The area I would like to look at moving forward is controlling the 3 sliders with an MPG. If I can figure it out, I have 3 spare MPG selections on my 6 axis pendant but ultimately, they could move to the HMI enclosure as individual controls. I was hoping that by using a MPG, the touch screen reset to defaults buttons could still be used.

phillc54 wrote: When PlasmaC was first released it had its own GUI that was designed along those lines, there was a row of buttons across the top that followed the work flow. No one was interested so I abandoned it.

Just spent 15 minutes looking for it. It had roughly 8 to 10 buttons and pretty much empty otherwise.
I am sure that at the very least i clicked on thank you, due to usually being unable to reply so the least i can do is click.
If i did not, shame on me !

tommylight wrote:

phillc54 wrote: When PlasmaC was first released it had its own GUI that was designed along those lines, there was a row of buttons across the top that followed the work flow. No one was interested so I abandoned it.

Just spent 15 minutes looking for it. It had roughly 8 to 10 buttons and pretty much empty otherwise.
I am sure that at the very least i clicked on thank you, due to usually being unable to reply so the least i can do is click.
If i did not, shame on me !

You most probably did click "Thank You" Tom, my poor wording... what I meant was that AFAIK no one used it.

I wish i did, but as it happens a lot i am busy and have to have a priorities list, and some of the stuff from that list has to go down a bit, then something changes like you posting a new look ( GUI, not you ) or KCJ posting a mildly working GUI or me using Axis PlasmaC daily, then some stuff that was lower on that list falls off despite me trying to push 18 to 22 hour work days.
One thing that is consistent in my posts whenever feature requests are made, is the time Phill has to invest to bring those features to life and the subsequent time invested to support those features, or in some cases go back and change an ill advised feature.
-
Let's agree on this:
-anyone requesting any new feature or a change to existing features should successfully change the size of the jog arrows in at least one of the 3 included QTPlasmaC GUI's !
It took me half an hour, i made a mess, but i did figure out and changed the size of everything i needed, just not as elegantly as Phill did, but now i know i can do it properly in an hour or two.
NEXT.....

tommylight wrote: It took me half an hour, i made a mess, but i did figure out and changed the size of everything i needed, just not as elegantly as Phill did, but now i know i can do it properly in an hour or two.
NEXT.....

Haha, it probably took me that long the first time as well, it has been a steep learning curve. Are you running your modified GUI directly from your config folder.

phillc54 wrote: Are you running your modified GUI directly from your config folder.

Yes, from the existing sim folder !
Strange thing, i did manage to run my big machine with it after about 5 minutes of messing with hal and ini files, i could not get this (by this i mean the other HP PC to the left of me) to work for over an hour ! I have to fix that .....

Oh you mean the UI file !
I edit it somewhere else, save, copy to where it resides, double click on the desktop, all with one swoop of the hand as i used 2 monitors to edit.

tommylight wrote:

phillc54 wrote: Are you running your modified GUI directly from your config folder.

Yes, from the existing sim folder !
Strange thing, i did manage to run my big machine with it after about 5 minutes of messing with hal and ini files, i could not get this (by this i mean the other HP PC to the left of me) to work for over an hour ! I have to fix that .....

I haven't tried that yet but I do believe that if you do it that way then it won't get overwritten by updates and QtVCP will load the one from the config folder rather than the system one. If that is the case then it does make for easier customisation.

Still very early days yet but I have a HMI enclosure for Plasmac as of 5:30 pm today!



The circuit board for my 7i73/Odroid/Estop/Wireless pendant shield arrived today but I'm still waiting for some components to arrive.

Anyway, I thought I'd post here becasue a brand new GUI deserves a brand new enclosure to live in!