VB Code On A Button Help Required

[M250cnc]

Mach version 3.42 on a lathe

I think these newer Mach versions are all Boolean and Double Bubble Trouble 

I think anyone who knows what they are doing "Unlike Me" should be able to sort this mess out.

When i press the BUTTON nothing happens

X_Distance = GetUserDRO ( 2011 )
Code "G04 P.25"
Code "G01 X_Distance F.10"

Pretty Please

[ger21]

There may be two issues.
1) there's no Axis letter (X?)
2) I think the X_Dist needs to be converted into a string and combined into another string which would be the complete line.
Something like this, but I don't know the exact syntax, as I've never done this in Mach.

Movement = "G01 X" + cstr(X_Distance) + " F.10"
Code Movement

[M250cnc]

Thanks Gerry

Yes i can see how not having the axis letter could be a problem 

I just tried fixing that and i got nothing

I tried all of your suggestion, but still nothing 

[ger21]

I'm not 100% sure you can do it like I describe in Mach3.

Here's some info from the VB Manual. Looks like it should work. Maybe the CStr is case sensitive??

CStr(expression)
Converts any valid expression to a String.
Example:
Sub Main
Dim Y As Integer
Y = 25
Print Y
If VarType(Y) = 2 Then
X = CStr(Y) 'converts Y To a Str
X = X + "hello" 'It is now possible to combine Y with strings
Print X
End If
End Sub

[ger21]

Try:

 Code (Movement)

[DaveCVI]

HI,
the string concatenation operator in basic is the "&"

instead of
Code "G01 X_Distance F.10"

you want
Code "G01 X" &  X_Distance & " F.10"

But that is not yet quite good enough as X_Distance can turn into a string that has exponents etc. within it...

To solve that, I have a little helper routine that I use for this:

Code:

Function GCN(ByVal VBNum) As String
' GCodeNumber: a small util to take a double, format it and return it as a string
' this is needed so that all numbers put into strings that will be sent to Code will not
' have things of the form: X0.123456e-9   - which is not legal gcode format
GCN = Format(VBNum, "#########0.000000") ' 6 sig digits to right of decimal point should be enough
End Function ' GCN

so I would have written the initial line as
Code "G01 X" &  GCN(X_Distance) & " F.10"

Dave

[ger21]

HI,
the string concatenation operator in basic is the "&"

The Cypress manual shows that it's "+" ??

+ also works in VBA.

[DaveCVI]

Hi,
Yes, there's more than one way to skin the cat -

I use '&' for concatenation in basic and never use '+'. 
It's enough of a habit that I had forgotten that '+' also works (usually) as given in the Cypress manual page 39:
'+' or '&' can be used for string concatenation

I scratched my head and eventualy remembered why I got into that habit; '+' as it is also an arithmetic operator.
By using '&' instead of '+',  I don't have to worry about cypress attempting to add two numbers together...  The '+', '-' and '&' operators all are shown with the same operator precedence (page 40).
Rather than test and determine cypress's  actions for odd corner cases, I found it simpler to avoid the issue -

From page 8:
"If a string and a number are concatenated the result is a string. To be sure your concatenation works regardless of the data type involved use the & operator. The & will not perform arithmetic on your numeric values it will simply concatenate them as if they were strings."

Dave

[M250cnc]

Dave & Gerry

Thank you for you help, i will try it out tomorrow and I'm sure it will work and i will report back

[M250cnc]

   GCN = Format(VBNum, "#########0.000000")      ' 6 sig digits to right of decimal point should be enough
Dave

Dave i tried with your helper but i got an error on the line in the quote

As i will be manually adding the number i will only have a max of two digits after the decimal

Here is the code

X_Distance = GetUserDRO ( 2011 )

Code "G04 P.25"

Code "G01 X" & (X_Distance)

I took away the feed rate in code so it runs at the the current feedrate in either G94 or G95 mode