Messages

471

Machscreen Screen Designer / Re: File Corrupt error

« on: February 08, 2010, 11:39:23 AM »

hum, I believe that my preference is to not see the message.
In the case of the screen set I've bee working on, I don't know any way to tell "if all the data is displayed" - there are 17 screen pages and multiple 100s of objects on the screens. and then there is all the VB code..... how would I know what to think after seeing the message?

Dave

472

Machscreen Screen Designer / Re: File Corrupt error

« on: February 07, 2010, 07:01:00 PM »

hum uh, but ....

That implies that MS at first thinks it is corrupted (Or it would not have displayed the message), but then knows how to fix the problem -  and you message indicates it does so when the file is saved.

I rather dislike a program telling me it has corrupted data and then ignoring that warning and going on anyhow.... on the assuption that all will be fine later.......  the end result is that the program teachs the user to ignore warning messages...

It would be much, much better if MS would realize the problem is not one to worry the user about, correct it, and never scare the user (me with a file corrupted message).

Dave

473

Machscreen Screen Designer / Re: File Corrupt error

« on: February 07, 2010, 05:12:57 PM »

Klaus
1.37D does not seem to fix the problem yet - here us the test case

start mach
edit button code
Used menu to do view/save current layout - mach says layout modified and stored
close mach

Open set in MS - file corrupt error
did NOT continue in MS

Open set file in Screen 4
save file
close screen 4

open set file in MS - file is fine - NO file corrupt error

Dave

474

Machscreen Screen Designer / Re: File Corrupt error

« on: February 06, 2010, 12:29:24 PM »

Klaus -
Thanks! I hadn't reported this yet as I didn't save the files at the time it happened - so I didn't have a test case to send.
Glad you found it - one more bug gone <grin>
Dave

475

Machscreen Screen Designer / Re: File Corrupt error

« on: February 06, 2010, 01:44:07 AM »

Ron,
I've had the same issue between Mach and Machscreen. Klaus and I have exchanged several emails about this in the past.

I used to think it happened because I had both MS and Mach open and dealing with the same set file at the same time. It is possible to do this as MS (and Mach) does not require file locking of the set file.
I like the convenience of being able to do this - but I know it's not good programming practice - so when I get bit, I figured it's my fault.

But... in the last week I've had this happen twice when the sequence was:
Open Set in MS
edit in MS
save
close MS

start mach
load set file
edit button
<If you see mach say something like "file saved & closed" - I forget the exact messsage, Ms will think is corrupt when ms next opens the file>
close mach

open set in MS - file corrupt error.

There is no multiple program access to common data in this situation-
So I've begun to suspect that something else is also at play... but I'm not sure what.

One tip: here is a work around that I've used 100+ times in the last 4 months to recover from the situation:
DO NOT continue when MS say file corrupt - bail out instead.
Open set file in screen 4
save from screen 4
exit screen 4
Open in MS... The set file is no longer thought to be corrupt by MS.

This a very nice "feature" of screen 4! <grin>

Dave

476

VB and the development of wizards / Re: Unactivate button during programmerun

« on: February 05, 2010, 03:37:34 PM »

I have good news and bad news....

The good news:
It is possible to create a button that you can activate and deactivate. While this type of button is not a built in facility of Mach, you can do it with a bit of VB programming. The basic technique is to make a button with VB code of the form:

If <activate button LED> is ON then
     <Do whatever the original action of the button was>
else
     <do nothing, the button is not activated>
end if

The bad news:
The condition that you likely want to test for (program running) can not be reliably checked from VB in Mach3 V3.

This bug is an unfortunate side effect of the shift during the last year in the mach internal implementation from single threading code multiple threading code.

You might think you can check the state of the "run button LED" - but it won't work.
(The act of running button code, forks off another internal process, The fork process seems to have the side effect of temp stopping the running code - so the run led may actually be off when you check it...    There is an internal Mach timing hole you can fall into - the net result is that checking the Run led is unreliable).

What you have run into appears to be another example of MultiThreading locking issues - something I consider to be a pretty serious problem - and from dialog with Brian about it, I believe he has the same opinion.

here is another example of the problem:
It turns out that the MDI input is also live during gcode execution and will cause the same async gcode insert to happen.
Test case:
1) load the roadrunner, set things up to cut in air(!)
2) while roadrunner is cutting, use mdi to do G90 G0 X0
you will see a G0 to X0 happen in the middle of the roadrunner code.... yikes.

Brian tells me he is working on the problem.
Alas, I am not led to expect this to be fixed in V3 - it's a pretty major task to implement resource locking and I think this will only appear in V4.

So.... my conclusion is that for Mach3 V3...
You've heard the old joke about "Doctor it hurts when I do this.... don't do that...." ?

Dave
 

477

Finished Plugins for Download / Re: Mach MAD Plug in (Maintenance and Diagnostics)

« on: January 30, 2010, 02:54:12 PM »

Scott -
that fixed it.
The Local MB entries were all set to 1024 for some reason - I changed them to 128=NoUSe and the dialog went away.

Thanks
Dave

478

Finished Plugins for Download / Re: Mach MAD Plug in (Maintenance and Diagnostics)

« on: January 29, 2010, 01:55:30 PM »

hum,
I opened both the Serial and TCP modbus pages - they all show the value as zero (expected as I don't have modbus and have never used the pages) - I then clicked the update button on each item to  make sure they were set to zero...  I also looked thru all the other pages for an out of range value - didn't fin any.

I still get the dialog when exiting mach...   

Dave

479

VB and the development of wizards / Re: Launch app from a button

« on: January 29, 2010, 12:13:15 PM »

HI,
Here's a code fragment I use for launching acrobat reader to open a doc file:

Option Explicit
' code to open the pdf User manual

Dim CmdString As String

Const Filename = "C:\Mach3\Documentation\machStdMill\MachStdMill User Manual.pdf"
Const AppFQFN = "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Reader 8.0\Reader\AcroRD32.exe"

CmdString = """" & APPFQFN & """" & " " & """" & FileName & """"
Shell(CmdString) 

Dave

480

Finished Plugins for Download / Re: Mach MAD Plug in (Maintenance and Diagnostics)

« on: January 28, 2010, 05:58:32 PM »

Hi Scott,

I installed MM 3.8.

It seems to have brought back a bug I think I remember from early versions?
With 3.8 installed, I get a MM dialog box that I have to "OK" whenever I close mach.

FYI, this didn't happen with the prior version (which I think was 3.7 but I'm not positive as I didn't check the version # before I uninstalled it to install 3.8 )

Dave