Messages

1

LazyCam (Beta) / Re: LCAM Rev2 Evaluation

« on: May 09, 2007, 08:32:04 PM »

9: Its not a big deal but.... I am routing. So I load my parts in on dxf. I need the original lines to run a round-over bit on (tool 1). So depth and cut speed are different. I send that to all the other layers because its a start (safe distance, spindle speed, etc.). Now I have a couple more layers I generated by offsets to cut the parts out (tool 2). I have to go into each of those layers and set the tool, depth and speed. (I can no longer use 'send to all layers' because I am using 2 tools.

So my point was simply - send to all layers is a great thing. But if it were 'send to lower layers' (in the tree) then I could set up layer 1 for my round over - send to lower layers. Set up layer 2 and send to lower layers. Not a big deal - maybe not right for non-router applications. Just a thought.

Thanks again for all the hard work! I love it.
 

2

LazyCam (Beta) / LCAM Rev2 Evaluation

« on: May 08, 2007, 09:02:11 PM »

Wow - what a great improvement. I can do one of my typical jobs in 10 minutes instead of 30 minutes. Thank you very much. As I use your software I log the issues that I have. Sorry to bore anyone reading this but I hope that it is valuable feedback.  The biggest problem that I have.. maybe the only real problem... is saving an Lcam project. (I haven't tried a pocket job yet). There is not information enough saved to be useful - I have to start over. Again, a great job - thank you, thank you!

Lazy Cam Rev 2 Evaluation

1.)   I did a project and left everything up on my computer. I came back and the computer had powered down for the screen saver / power saver mode. It would not awaken. Had to do a 6-second power reset that acted strange (power went off almost immediately). Windows started up and told me I had a ‘Serious Error’. A ‘Stop Error’. Here was the report after the computer reported it back to Microsoft. This happened twice.
 I am not going to say that something else did not happen to my computer (at the same time) to do this but it is strange. Let’s see if anyone else had this experience.

2.)   Cut depth got me. In one of the videos it left me to think, along with the diagram to the right, that it was unsigned. It is not. Putting in .25 brought the tool up, not to the depth. Not complaining – just telling you how an ‘unskilled’ operator’s intuition made me fail the first project.

3.)    Lazycam takes up more vertical than my screen has. So I grab the separator bar between the blue work area and the lower  Tab view menu and drag it. Wow – that is great! In the Tab View window the menu tabs are cut off so I drag that window edge to make them all fit. Both of these get reset when closing out and coming back. Could you consider moving that setting to the registry to remember this setting on power cycles? (Or other method of remembering the settings).

4.)   I love the extents tab – thank you – I use this information a lot to check the fit of the design to the raw material and machine. Very handy.

5.)   My first project. I got a line of G code: N30 M3 S. Mach 3 couldn’t work with this. I looked it up and found it was 0 spindle speed. Ouch. My spindle is on/off. So the default settings you have for 0 spindle speed are probably not the best. Can I convince you to default to something safe – maybe 100 RPM?

6.)   I have a number of items on one sheet to cut so I create a lot of offsets. But I am confused. Creating an offset created a menu tab with a sub menu. I can move all the ‘sub-offsets’ to one offset layer. That is very good! Now I can set the cut info for all at once. While I moved all the cuts into one offset, can I delete the now-empty layers that they were taken from? There is a long list of these and I figure it is safer to disable them.
So since there is now a long list  I use the ‘-‘ sign to collapse all the sub-data. As soon as I uncheck an ‘Enable Layer’ all of the layers expanded again. Didn’t work out too well.

7.)   When multiple passes are required to cut to the set depth LC produces g code with a Z lift and then the z axis plunges into the work. This adds up to a lot of wasted time. It would be nice if it didn’t raise. I am actually editing that out of some G Codes myself. Not a big deal – just something nice.

8.)   I saved an LCAM project, found a mistake, reloaded it to work on it. All my offsets were gone. Mind you, I moved all the offsets to one layer. Well, actually – one was left – out of about 8. I have actually not been able to save an Lcam project and pull it up to anything that was usable. Lots to investigate but I think that there are some issues there.

9.)   Instead of ‘Send to all layers’ it would be nice to ‘Send to lower layers’ (in the tree). Why? Because I start with a chamfering tool and then cut. So a tool change is required. Not a big deal – just a thought to share.

10.)   When you ‘save’ an Lcam project  the list of existing files does not show up in the box. So the directory looks like there are no LCAM projects in it – but there are. When you then proceed to save (over an existing file) Then you get a ‘write over box?’. Again, not a big deal. Just expect to see a list of Lcam projects in the combo box.

Love it!

3

LazyCam (Beta) / DXF Chain Selection Issue

« on: May 01, 2007, 06:34:46 PM »

I have a DXF file that I import. If I do nothing  - just simply select any one of the chains everything acts as you expect. Press Auto Clean and now the 3 smaller chains all get selected when you try to select just one. I put an offset on it and it offsets just the one chain - you can not offset the others. I tried all the DXF output types R14 had - same thing.
Bill

4

LazyCam (Beta) / Re: Lazy Cam Evaluation

« on: April 30, 2007, 07:31:19 PM »

I can't find new software to download. I see notes about an FTP server so I am guessing that I need to be told how to access it. Can I ask for one of the administrators tell me how to get the new version? Thanks!

5

LazyCam (Beta) / Re: Lazy Cam Evaluation

« on: April 30, 2007, 07:12:39 PM »

Sorry guys - didn't mean to over load you all. The 25 layers was from a 1 layer dxf: 25 layers came after I offset cut on 24 parts. So Lazy cam had 25 layers. It was just step-and-repeat but I didn't know how to do that the right way so...
I really like this program so don't let the comments on the tough points fool you.
Trying to figure out where to download the latest rev from. The main mach3/plug ins/lazycam just has the one I have now from March. Maybe I'll find it in a couple minutes but feel free to tell me. Thanks guys!

6

LazyCam (Beta) / Lazy Cam Evaluation

« on: April 29, 2007, 08:39:38 PM »

Brian,
Great start on a nice software package. I am a product development engineer and design reviews can be tough because people tell you what is wrong and tend to forget all that is good. I'm new at this - no preconceived ideas. I purchased the license last week and have tried a couple of projects. I have a lot of feedback for you and your team. Again, its design review comments on what can be a great product.

Lazy Cam Evaluation

1.   I do not understand inside and outside offsets. When is it an inside and when is it outside? Not intuitive. I have to guess and see if I am right.

2.   It would be nice if adding an offset should ask you if you want to disable cutting the reference chain. I am not sure what would happen if I did not disable it – would it cut both? Guess so – I have a depth of cut on the original layer. Seems that one of my first projects outlines something at 0 depth so I guess that was why.

3.   ‘Offset’ is using the tool diameter as a tool radius. Math error caused me a few board-feet of material to find out.

4.   Pocketing doesn’t work well on the only test I did – a rather complex pocket but one that Sheet Cam fully understood. I had letters in a rectangle and wanted to reverse-cut them. The pocketing program ignored the letters and just cut them away. Just had a big rectangle.

5.   Making offset lines the same color as the original lines means that you can not figure out if the program put the offset on the correct side. Wouldn’t it be nice if it put the offset in a different color and brought up an ‘Accept?’ dialog box? This would also fix some complaints that will follow, below.

6.   Each time I enter a new offset it creates a new layer. I constantly am updating depth, feed, pass information. It would be nice if the system had a global tool data it used and all I had to do was to set the depth – which it defaulted to from the previous cut. Maybe a button that said “Copy from previous layer” – that would be great! See #26, below.

7.   Entering feed, depth numbers, etc. into the boxes isn’t as easy as it could be. If you click-out instead of hitting enter you have to start over.  Sometimes it looks like it kept the minus sign just to find out it did not. It is not easy to click and select all the numbers. Just some ergonomics needed here.
 
8.   I created an x-y ½ inch tick mark program. The path generation for the horizontal ticks was ridiculously laid out. It wanted to make the ticks a ‘stack’ instead of a dashed line. Manual manipulation required me to select each tick in a row (one-by-one)  to send to a new layer. From there it was any one’s guess how the new cut path would turn out – unless I put each tick on its own layer. There is no ‘window selection’ and the aperture is pretty small. I blew lots of selections and became fairly frustrated – get 15 dashes selected and miss the 15th and you have to start over.

9.   Most of the buttons on the right side I have no use for. Not sure what they are good for.

10.   I delete a layer: It stays in the stack – just says deleted. I have 3 of these. I go to enter all the cut data on the layers and forget those are disabled AFTER I already entered the data. A laborious waste of energy. If they are deleted, please, just remove them from the stack and erase all memory of it ever having been there.

11.   Why no ‘undo’ button? I have to start over a lot.

12.   Will not import an oval drawn from my Autocad 14 translated to dxf.

13.   There is no way to measure modifications. Seeing what I have seen I am not trusting LC. Without a ruler I am in the dark.

14.   The window is too tall. My screen is sized OK for Mach 3 but cuts off the bottom of the screen of LC. Can’t see what is down there. If I make the dialog box (purpose yet to be determined) smaller then I can see ‘Start Depth’. On another computer I resized the screen and see Tool Number too. Screens are already too small. No reason LC should make me do this…. Plenty of room.

15.   When writing a G-Code file I wish that it would give me an option to overwrite an existing one instead of generating one with a new number. I have 10 files of the same thing on my drive. A great addition would be an automatic ability to edit the program before saving to enter revision data in a header line.

16.   I have a router that plunges. Lead ins would be nice, some times, but I’ll be dang if I can figure that one out. Guess I could draw them in but the LC wouldn’t let me pick them first anyway. I’m sure that there is a way to get them – its just not obvious.

17.   When I pick up and move the 0,0 reference mark I can’t get it nudged just where I want it. Wouldn’t it be great if I could just double click on it and enter the point where I want it?

18.   Have not figured out why ‘stock size’ is part of this. Doesn’t seem to feed back into anything else. Not like you could pocket the outside of a drawing… not that I can see.

19.   I can change numbers in the Extents box. Even put garbage in there. Get File Creation error. Can’t figure out why I can overwrite them and get an error. The error doesn’t tell you why the error was generated. These should be protected.

20.   Instead of the idea of Cut # - wouldn’t it be nice if it just cut the layers in the order of the stack – from top to bottom – I could drag-and-drop to shuffle the stack to get the cut order I want.

21.   Too much green coloring in the stack. I can not tell which layers I have selected where… confusing.

22.   In my layer stack I have layer 5 selected (for example) and I go to enter the numerical cutting information. The layer 5 selection goes weird – looks like layer 0 and layer 5 are partially selected. It should not do that to confuse me. Then change the federate and hit enter – you have no record of which layer you were on. Have to hunt down the next one.

23.   What the heck is Overhang? (On the pocketing screen). I can not figure that out. Hitting the help button doesn’t help. Has this something to do with the question on offsets and pockets, below?

24.   I went to make a production part. Laid out 24 items in Autocad. Brought it up in Lazycam. Without thinking I said ‘Oh my God – I’m going to be here all night’. Having to enter the cut data for 24 offsets looking at 25 layers. Yuck.  Ok – I am appending this after about 20 minutes and writing number 26 – I gave up. I didn’t complete the job.

25.   Select a layer in the stack. Use the down arrow key to scroll down through the stack. Watch the cutting information – it does not update to the information for the stack that you have scrolled to. It keeps the prior one.

26.   Somehow it seems that I was able to change a lot of layers all at once. I was on layer 8 of 25 playing around. All had federates of 60. I put in 40 on 8 and played scrolling through and the subsequent layers changed to 40. Hmmm… wish I knew how to do that trick again. *** No, false alarm. They are 60. They just were not changing for some reason. Now I know that when I was looking that I double clicked on some of the layers…. Hmmm.. Ok – I figured it out. I set the federate and do not click out of the federate box…. I just entered 40 and hit return. As I scroll through the layers the federate appears to stay at 40. If I click out of federate (to pass depth, for example) then the federate changed from the apparent 40 to the actual 60. The chore is so laborious that I copied 40 into the buffer and wanted to go down the 24 layers and paste it and then come back and do depth, etc.

27.    OK. Let’s work through this one. I want to pocket. Do I have to create an offset before I pocket? Or will pocket automatically do the offset? I am confused here. Will LC outline the chain first and then pocket?

28.    I select my chain. One click and the entire chain lights up. It is a closed-chain drawn with a continuous P-line in Autocad. I hit Outline. Nothing happens. Try again. Nothing. No clue, nothing. Just a couple of extra empty layers in the layer stack that I can not delete. I go back to Autocad and find that Autocad now thinks these are a bunch of discrete lines instead of one P-line. Ok – so I manipulated the item and destroyed something. But LC knows it’s a single chain – it will not Offset it for me. What do I do now?

Cudos and
Best Regards,
Bill