Messages

111

Mach4 General Discussion / help text

« on: April 29, 2017, 12:13:41 PM »

Hello,

there are plenty help-buttons in mach4 screen.

Are those texts available? I searched the po-files to translate the texts, but I did not find them.
On the buttons I see a single function call, so no texts either.

112

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach 4 Feature Request

« on: April 29, 2017, 10:38:35 AM »

Hello,

I have a few wishes for gui:
- monospace font for DRO (will avoid flickering). Will it be possible, to use system ttf?
- transparent buttons/togglebuttons
- format for cycle time, or at least force the seconds with %02d
- possibility to move elements in tree-view of the screen-designer. Copy&delete is error-prone and tedious. DND would be nice, like bookmarks in firefox
- format (i.e. spindle-speed) with thousand-separator
- support images for notebook-tabs (the tab itself, not the panel background)
- save position of split-pane-separators
- disable scaling of screen on toggling between screen-designer and application mode
- lock elements (no position change possible in locked state)

113

Mach4 General Discussion / slider display issue

« on: April 29, 2017, 10:28:43 AM »

Hello,

during screen-creation I realized, that horizontal sliders don't use the defined width until the screen gets scaled/resized.

114

Mach4 General Discussion / ready with evaluation

« on: April 28, 2017, 02:42:34 AM »

Hello,

I'm ready evaluating mach3/mach4 and yes, mach4 offers more to fullfill my wishes.
What I most missed in mach3 where the toggle-buttons and I did not succeed in fake something similar with a combination of led and transparent button.
In mach4 very easy and I like the event system of mach4. Attach a togglebutton to an output signal and you're done. Pretty easy. And I very like the enabling system for buttons. Yeah!

So most of my 4-axis screen for Monitor with 1920x1080 resolution is already done
I could hide the milliseconds of the cycle time behind the limits of the notebook-page. Very smart.
Well, only the first page is done yet. For the other pages I first have to buy a motion controller.

With the new developer version the group-box-title-issue is resolved. Each notebook-page has a fontsize property, which defaults to the size of the tabpage-button fontsize. Reducing the fontsize of the notebook-page brings group-box-title displayed as desired.

What I miss most with mach4 are transparent image-buttons and transparent toggle-buttons. Could that be triggered by the transparent portion of the attached image? This way custom shaped buttons could be realized. A feature, that is possible in mach3

During work with the new screen-designer I noticed several issues:

- No undo (I very miss this function!)
- when resizing the application window in designer mode, all elements get moved to the right. That's very annoying, as there is no "select all" function, no undo and no way to lock the position of screen elements
- error in property-fieldentry: its not possible to enter a lowercase "Oh"
- selected elements loose surrounding selection frame, so after changing a property its not possible to move the element by drag&drop. First the element has to be deselected and selected again do move it
- jog actions are wrong localized (at least the german version): positive and negative jogs are both labelde with "+"


One very nice feature of screen designer for mach3 "MachScreen": selected elements (single- and multiselection) can be moved by cursor keys. That's pretty nice especially together with a magnifier to fine adjust screen elements. May be, this could be implemented in mach4 too

So for me, the conclusion is this:
mach4 is not perfect yet, but offers greater benefit already. So I'll go for mach4

115

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: how can I access a button-action from script?

« on: April 27, 2017, 11:24:39 PM »

Ah ok, that must be new in the developer release. Thanks for your reply.
When I tried it with the 3233 nothing happened on reload - I had to close the file before.
So its ok for the moment. May be I come back to the real question later.

By the way: loading files with non-ascii-character in filename fails with "file not found".

116

Mach4 General Discussion / how can I access a button-action from script?

« on: April 27, 2017, 11:30:21 AM »

Hello,

when I look at the events-page of a pushbutton (i.e. GCode open file), then I see an action name, which is localized.
How can I find out the function, that is behind the action name?

Currently I want to combine the actions of 2 pushbuttons, which both have an attached action for "left up" trigger.
One is "gcode file open" and the other is "gcode file close" - as I realized, that I can not load a gcode file, when there is already a gcode file loaded.
I don't like that behaviour, therefore I want to trigger a close gcode file, each time I load a gcode file.

I read the scripting manual for mach4, but did not find any help

117

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Problem in front or behind the screen?

« on: April 27, 2017, 04:40:05 AM »

Hello,

I miss the dro-value "feedrate overwritten", which existed in mach3. Is there something similar in mach4?
I'm not interested in the percentage of feed-overwriting, but in the resulting real value.

Is there a possibility to format the cycle-time? I'm not interested in milliseconds of processing time and I don't like the hectic flicker/field-update.

Ah - and is there a way to inhibit the automatic scaling like mach3?

118

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Problem in front or behind the screen?

« on: April 27, 2017, 03:58:45 AM »

Hi Tweakie,

thank you very much for your attention and your hint.

I tried it, but no change. I found out, that the break is in deed related to the demo timeout. The problem is, that there's no message indicating the reason of the stop.
The message appears, when you hit start again - but I think, its not obvious to hit start again, when the machine stops during motion command without any visible reason.
So it would be nice, to raise the message, when motion stops working.
The demo-timeout is completely ok, but it would be very nice to tell the user what happened

The groupbox-title are completely weired (see attachment) and its stil not possible to enter a little "Oh" in button-text or element-names ...

... so I'm happy, that the problem does not sit in front of the screen

119

Mach4 General Discussion / Problem in front or behind the screen?

« on: April 27, 2017, 02:27:12 AM »

Hello,

is there something wrong with my writings? Three posts and no reply? If so, than I apologize my english. I'm not an native english.

I wonna find out, which mach-version will be the right for me. With mach3 I reached a point, where mach3 does not support my wishes/requirements.
So I tried mach4. Working with its screen designer showed some promising features, but working with mach4 is like working with an application in alpha stadium. So many quirks and wired things.
I found out recently, that running my simple sample with a machine using inch-setup works fine. As soon as I change machine setup to metric units it fails.
Coordinates of failure are different, but not the timecode. Elapsed time is always 5:41.36 - is that the limit for demo mode, or do I have to look for another reason of failure?
Trying roadrunner.tap fails at first motion command (G0 of line2).

I like the new event system and the new screen-elements of mach4, so I'd like to go for mach4 - but if mach4 does not work reliably, than all the goodies are worthless and I have to arrange with mach3.

So what is the state of mach4 - and what are your recommendations for me?

120

Mach4 General Discussion / mach4 fails on simple sample, that works in mach3

« on: April 25, 2017, 11:00:51 AM »

Hi,

I use a little nc-script to test setup and I noticed, that mach4 fails with this sample. First I thought, it fails because of my mistakes during screen editing, but it fails with original screen too.
It breaks always on the same line (G1), but it does not terminate the movement and it fails each run at different coordinates.
When it fails, it looks like someone has pressed the stop button, cause time passed stops counting.

Is there a way to find out, why mach4 fails? Can I enable debugging/logging or whatever?