Messages

361

General Mach Discussion / Re: 3 -> 4?

« on: January 11, 2023, 11:30:21 PM »

Hi,
I've been using Mach4 for eight years and in my opinion its light years ahead of Mach3.

As you have pointed out though, if Mach3 is doing what you want then there is no real need beyond the the want to experiment and possibly expand.

There is a learning curve associated with Mach4, and seems particularly fraught for people whom are already familiar with mach3. They seem to believe
that Mach3 is perfect and ALL machines should work that way....but that is not in fact the case. Mach4 adheres very much to the Fanuc21i controller standard
and you find a few things that Mach3 did are in fact pure BS compared to the industry standard.


I suspect that if you did swap over you'll swear and curse for a while, a month or more or less depending on your temperament but thereafter you'll never touch mach3 ever again.
That's what I did, I thought I'd use both....but as soon as I got familiar with Mach4 then I ditched Mach3.....and I don't even have Mach3 software on my machine and
I lost the license years ago.

Here are some of the details that you might like to consider:

https://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php?topic=42891.msg278176#msg278176

Craig

362

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: How to trigger "action" with an input?

« on: January 11, 2023, 08:19:20 PM »

Hi,

for example, how can a toggle be mapped to both an input and an output in the properties tab?  Is it an "and" or is it "or" between them?

The state of toggle switch is toggled  by an external input. Click the external button and the on screen toggle switch will toggle. The output is driven by the logical state
of the internal toggle switch. For instance you might have a external button to turn a coolant pump on or off and use one of Machs outputs to illuminate the external button
when the pump is energized.

Simple expedient here is to try it.....half an hour experimenting with assigning inputs and or outputs, along with various actions and/or scripts and it will be clear.

Craig

363

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: How to trigger "action" with an input?

« on: January 11, 2023, 03:10:34 PM »

Hi,
my suggestion is use Mach4Hobby as is....don't worry about programming any frilly bits, just use the program and start making parts.
I suspect you'll find as I have that standard Mach4 is pretty much complete as is....you don't really need anything else. There are plenty of things
that you might like to change, for example your idea of using a joystick for jogging. Yes it can be done, but lack of its not stopping you from using
the program as is.

There is nothing like making parts to inform you of those things that you need as opposed to want.

I, in the early days, had quite a bit of custom code in my profile but over the years its shrunk, to the extent I have only a few macros related to specific work that
I do, isolation routed PCBs in particular. All the rest of them have faded away because I just don't use them.

Craig

364

Third party software and hardware support forums. / Re: G76 Problem with XHC Motion Controller

« on: January 11, 2023, 02:35:39 PM »

Hi,
there are a number of posts on the Mach4 General Discussion board about XHC motion controllers and every single one of the hapless owners of these
boards has ditched them....eventually. You are the only person I've heard of who is still using one with Mach4.

Craig

365

Third party software and hardware support forums. / Re: G76 Problem with XHC Motion Controller

« on: January 10, 2023, 06:05:01 PM »

Hi,

I have XHC USB Motion Controller and Mach4 Hobby.

The XHC Mach4 ready motion controller plugin is extremely buggy, to the extent it is all but unusable. It does not even support the GUI, you must
use the wxMach screen set, which was only ever intended for diagnostic use, its not the real Mach4GUI.

Craig

366

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: How to trigger "action" with an input?

« on: January 10, 2023, 01:58:33 PM »

Hi,

(as in if I activate the soft limits via this mechanism will the soft limits indicator on the GUI light up green?)

I don't know, its not something that I have tried but yes I believe you can code that.

Do you usually edit the xml file directly (within the .set file)?  I'm looking for something I can use in a different editor while looking at the current wx screen for reference.   I've got 'visual studio code' which I like because it is close enough to visual studio for me.

No, I edit the screen with the screen editor provided, after all that's what it's for. The visual representation of the screen while the editor is active
is perfectly adequate for the purpose. Mach4 is not a software development environment, it is a CNC software solution, ie a Gcode interpreter and
trajectory planner. It does have an editable GUI and a fair API and scripting language which allows users to adapt Mach4 to their machine.
Those extra tools (GUI editor and Lua scripting) are useful but they do not in themselves 'make chips', Mach4's primary purpose.

If you need an ultimately flexible solution then I'd suggest LinuxCNC, its a solution that rewards software developers whereas Mach4 rewards
machine builders/integrators to produce working machines but does not require software developer skills.

Craig

367

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: How to trigger "action" with an input?

« on: January 09, 2023, 07:46:05 PM »

Hi,
as an added bonus you don't actually need an entry in the SigLib table to have an input trigger a toggle button.

Craig

368

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: How to trigger "action" with an input?

« on: January 09, 2023, 07:39:07 PM »

Hi,
place a toggle button on screen and look at its properties. You'll see that it can be logically connected with an input signal and/or an output signal.
But note also that on the events tab you have the regular collection of scripts and/or actions. Thus the toggle button can be triggered by an external
input and that can in turn trigger an event or action.

Craig

369

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: How to trigger "action" with an input?

« on: January 09, 2023, 06:13:55 PM »

Hi,

https://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php?topic=35007.0

Craig

370

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: How to trigger "action" with an input?

« on: January 09, 2023, 06:05:48 PM »

Hi,

I found a workaround to use these actions by way of the scr commands.  They appear to work well but it feels kinda 'hackey' and not the right way.

Correct, I try to avoid scr commands. The correct way is to place an object, like a button, it does not have to be visible, but then you get the options of UpAction,
DownAction, UpScrpit, DownScript, ClikedScript etc.

Is there a convenient way to have an "include" file or something in the screen script that will pull from a separate lua file of my creation?

Yes you can write Lua modules or Lua Panels....I'm not really familiar with them Look up some of Daz-the-Gaz's videos.

I'm thinking to modify the actual screen script as little as possible and put my code in one script if at all possible.

Why?. I modify the screen load script, PLC script and others all the time. That's what they are for, and they work a treat. Take a copy of your preferred screen script,
wx4.set say, give it a unique name like Mywx4.set, and modify the hell out of it. When you update to the latest build the uniquely named .set file will survive the update
unaltered so you can carry on using it.

You are at the very least going to have to edit the SigLib table......so there is no avoiding editing the screen script. It does make sense to have all your edits gathered in one
place, so I'll often put all my own coded functions at the end of the script, but inevitably you will have to make a few edits throughout the screen script which can be a pain
to recall and trace. There is a function, if I recall correctly, which allows you to compare the differences between files and thereby locate any edits in one file compared to the
standard issue .set file.

Craig