[wms]

Ken,
I am self taught and when I first started to do this kind of work I didn't know that the "rest" of the world uses the bottom/left corner as "their" zero or start point. I guess you could say I didn't pick up someone else's habits, good or bad.

I figured that 90 % of the part in the world (at least in a job shop) would be held in a vise to be machined, so with that in mind I looked at a vice and noticed that the back jaw in normally stationary. So I figured that I would make that side (the back side) of my parts Y zero, that way if I was using material blanks that varied a small amount my zero would not be "moving" around all the time.

So it was natural to use the top/right corner as my "zero", that way x, y and z cordinates would all be negative numbers.

The way the "rest" do it x and y are pos and z is neg, as far as the machine code goes.

I do use the center of a part as zero if the part is round. It helps when drawing toolpaths, ect.

It really is a matter of what you get used to and are comfortable with.

As far as the cpu I have run OneCNC on a PII 350 but it is not very efficient. I now use a PIII 1.0 gig and a P4 1.8 gig both with good luck. Also you really need 512 mb ram or more ( more is better)

If I recall HU is using an ATI 9000 series card, but Nvidia and Maxtor all make dual mon cards.

You may want to call Mike or Lew at OneCNC as I know they just last week set up a system with a dual monitor.