Machsupport Forum
Mach Discussion => Mach Screens => Works in progress => Topic started by: mikep_95133 on January 23, 2007, 01:42:02 AM
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Here is my first shot at a screen design. I played with both SC4 and JC. Just thought I'd try JC first.
The wood back ground was made in PSP7. Then I took RealDraw, after watching Benny's video's, and added the insets. I went with a darker wood as I want the pertinent info to be the most noticeable like the DRO's etc, not the visual details surrounding each item like frames. The blue is really just a place holder. I want to make it a complimentary color to the wood background.
The Feed rate slider is there but invisible. Hopefully when someone lets me know how to fix I can get this first page done.
My pages will be simple since I was using CNCPro before.
Mike
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Hey there, another designer has come along.
Welcome Mike. It will be fun to watch your process and evolution as you go.
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Here it is a little further along.
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Looking good.
Why dont you upload the .set file, along with the pictures, all zipped, so we cam test out what you have done.
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Mike,
Great looking screen! I like the estop how the Estop has an the LED in it, saves on screen real estate. Great idea's cant wait to see it when it's finished.
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ooopps forgot, load one of Art's slider images to get the slider to work, when creating your own image follow how Art has his slider in the bitmap folder.
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Mike,
Great looking screen! I like the estop how the Estop has an the LED in it, saves on screen real estate. Great idea's cant wait to see it when it's finished.
Thanks. Actually the Estop is just a placeholder for now. It needs a finishing touch. Much of the text is not incorporated into the buttons yet. You can see that Jog Follow does not fit for instance. The buttons under the Gcode window have the text incorporated but it's a bit funky because lining the text vertically is a bit tedious and inaccurate.
Since I'm using JetCam for this project, the slider won't work as Jetcam does not have skinning available, yet. I have a couple sliders. I can import the .set file into Screen4 and put the slider in, but then the .set file gets corrupted. Or was it from SC4 to JetCam. This caused me to have to redo this layout 3 times already. So I'm sticking with just one editor. The slider actual does function, you just cannot see the slider.
All of the buttons to the right of the Jog controls are really just there taking up space. They may end up being better placed. I did realize with playing with the various wizards today that I needed the estimate button and DRO. So the background needs to be updated now. I have a slightly light colored background that my sister likes better, so I'll post that too at some point.
So when I get it a bit more finished I'll happily post the files. The only thing that is done is this one page. So there really is not much to test.
Mike
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Here is a version of this screen that I like because it now has subtle LED's inset into the buttons. They may seem too small, but with the entire screen so subdued, they show up nicely. I've left the recesses for the larger LED's just for now as I evaluate it.
I'm still struggling with adding text to the buttons as I've discovered a flaw in the software. If the button I make is the exact size of the opening in the background, the button just disappears. The layer controls won't help either. I literally have to make the button bigger in order for it to not "fall through" the opening. Changing the button size in the screen editor also distorts the text. Thus my issue.
Opinions?
Mike
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Lookin good, lookin good.
Brett
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Thanks!
What do I need to do with my uploaded screen images to make them post cleaner?
Mike
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Mike, the images look great!
What are you using to capture them, you might higher the resolution but lower the image size.. some programs allow you to change these independently.
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Use Irfanview to capture /crop / resize etc. Its a free program. www.irfanview.com
Open irfanview press the letter c on your keyboard and follow the directions to make a screen capture. It will offer you the option to capture just the foreground window open ( Mach)
You can then draog the mouse of the capture and then press Ctrl Y to crop it to your desired size.
Then save it as a jpg %50.
Its only a 800k program but does an amazing ammount for a freebie.
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I did a window capture by holding down the Alt key and hitting the PrtScn key. That copies the window image to the clipboard. Then I pasted it into Paint Shop Pro.
Converting it to Jpeg really does save on file size. I did install IRfan View. We'll see how that does.
Now I need to get on to the other 5 or more screen pages.
Mike
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Yesterday I took my latest version of the Wooddark1Jet set and took it downstairs to the mill computer. It only has a 15" monitor. Upstairs the monitor is 19". So basically after bringing in all of my hard work it was turned into a mess. The buttons and dro's were moved from their positions. The labels disappeared altogether. The most interesting artifact was that every singe dro was now a medium/dark gray. They were all set to light blue. No matter what I did they would not go back to blue. So I opened a previous version, and it had blue dro's. So I cut and paste all of the components in the latest screen over to the previous version. Sure enough the gray dro's came over with it. Hmmm. I made sure the background was always in the back. The colors of all other components were never effected.
All of that lead me to finding that I had not been doing the screen background correctly. I had been taking an image, made it 1024 x 768 pixels, pushed it to the back with the layer control. That was my background. Duh. During the cut and paste experiment, the background image kept sliding all over and getting selected, so I deleted it. When I double clicked on the solid black of the real background, it came up with a Control Properties window specifically for that screen. So I added in the image of my wooden back ground and it is now stable and non selectable. But it was also a bit larger. So I had to move eveything into the correct positions. It's so much easier now that the background is not accidentally selectable.
I'm not asking for help as I know our screen editors are not supported. But I was wanting to point out my mistake and consequent experience. Now that I'm back upstairs I need to redo the latest version up here.
BTW I'm doing this all in JetCam.
Mike
PS After setting up the background correctly on the upstairs computer, all of the components were positioned correctly. Has something to do with monitor size. I think I read that somewhere. Even the dro's were still blue :)