Why I went with PathPilot over Axis and others...

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10 years 10 months ago #67446 by racedirector
Thought I would start this thread as a way of explaining why I like PathPilot over the standard Axis interface, Gmoccapy and others.

In one word, usability. Coming from the Mach world where screens are alot prettier (and sometimes way uglier) PathPilot presented a really user friendly interface. One thing I really like is the ability to jog my machine while any of the screens are active. The only thing I can't jog within is the MDI line. Why do I like this? My machine is 2400x1200 and when you need to sight X0Y0 somewhere within the table, working from the computer is not feasible. I don't have to worry if the interface is on the main screen, the conversational screen, the offset screen or anything else (apart from the MDI line), I just take my wireless keyboard, plunk it down on the machine and jog to where I want.

Another thing is some idiot proofing. For example, touching off to set Z zero. If you forget to set the search speed to slow PathPilot will set it to a slow default speed automatically before the cutter takes off at 5400mm/pm or whatever speed was last used.

However there are things I don't like, like being limited to having my config files be in imperial settings. I did try to set things like scale in metric but that threw out all sorts of things within PathPilot as, for metric, they convert everything on the fly depending if G21 is set by the incoming gcode.

Now if I could have PathPilot's pretty face on a standard LinuxCNC install where I could easily replace parts, like cutter touchoff and toolchange, I would be a really happy man.

Now I must say that at this moment I have returned to Axis due to problems with my PathPilot install but would return to it in the blink of an eye if could get it working again, too damn nice to let go!

So, why do others want PathPilot over the usual LinuxCNC interfaces?
The following user(s) said Thank You: mikeT

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10 years 10 months ago #67450 by cncbasher
I have no problem interfacing pathpilot gui to linuxcnc , However their is one small BUT problem to overcome for the masses
Tormach in their wisdom have copyrighted the images and buttons etc ( which is why the source code disk has a different set of images than the real thing .

that amongst a couple of smaller niggles is stopping me releasing to the masses
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10 years 10 months ago #67453 by racedirector
Ah, I wondered why the source was missing the real images, damn copyright stuff. Having said that I would love to be a beta tester seeing as I have the real images in my restore disk :).... just kidding :D

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10 years 10 months ago #67492 by cmorley
If someone made open source images, a pilot path type screen could be made with the gscreen infrastructure.
I am not a good artist :)

I tend to agree about mode switching (your comment about jogging anytime) - I am not sure we need to reinforce all three modes which is a throe back from old controls.
In fact in the background linuxcnc often needs mode changes to do things such as touch off which should not be needed...

Chris M

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10 years 10 months ago #67495 by racedirector
When I first started with LinuxCNC I wanted to do a custom screen to mimic Mach stuff. Had a fleeting go at it then found PathPilot. Like you Chris I am hopeless at graphics so my screen would not have been pretty anyway :)

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10 years 10 months ago #67496 by geoffs
I can just see PP not being released as part of Linuxcnc purely because no one can agree what colour the buttons should be :)

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