>Now THIS has piqued my curiosity. I'm pretty convinced of
>dung's capabilities, and to hear him talk about OneCNC
>makes me wonder.
I always thought the person behind One CNC was pretty
straight forward and easy to talk with. If you do a Google
search of the newsgroup you best know a little about me
from, using Bob+Francis, you should get a better idea of who
is behind OnceCNC. Bob Francis and I had several productive
conversations and I came away with a favorable impression.
>I suppose I will be getting a demo of it just to see what
>all the hype is about. Sounds like very competent/affordable
>software.
You can bet it's nowhere near fully developed and will have
problems. Only by trying it out can you decide if *you* can
live with those problems. In addition, you should get a
better idea of what your really dealing with when you find
problems and make suggestions on how to go about fixing them
by the reaction and the results you get.
>I program 3 and 4 axis stuff. Lots of microwave housings
>and the likes.
IOW lots of aluminum. Do any weldments ???
>(Thank god we just hired an operator to help me and a
>setup guy that comes in for a few hours at nite. (Well, he
>starts tonite, so we'll see how he works out. )
Can make all the difference in the world especially if you
have someone who really wants to learn and is reliable.
>I'm very excited about X. Especially since they've been
>coming to emastercam asking what we'd like to see
>different. I have high expectations.
I think it's very hard to build a good Windows UI. I would say
that SURFCAM has an exceptionally poor Windows UI. As far as
a good Windows UI is concerned, I like what SolidWorks does
by getting rid of as many dialog boxes as possible and
entering information in the Feature Explorer. Since your a
programmer you would relate to this as a tree view. I think
it's even better when you do what think3 does with
thinkdesign and take the tree view concept even further. See
what you think of this UI. Here are two links.
http://www.deskeng.com/articles/02/dec/web/web3.jpg
http://www.deskeng.com/articles/02/dec/web/web2.jpg
Notice the mini dialog boxes near the model. They
dynamically show you what is happening in real time. You can
also enter numerical data in them. I like this way of
working. What do you think about it ???
>I'm very excited about X. Especially since they've been
>coming to emastercam asking what we'd like to see
>different. I have high expectations.
Again, I think it's very hard to really build a good UI that
makes it a pleasure to work with (IOW... FUN !!! ;>)
>As for the interface.. I will have to wait and see what
>route they've taken.
It's a big, big step. I think SURFWARE tried to mimic it's DOS
UI in Windows and I think this is a big mistake. IMO you need
to start with a clean sheet of paper. The problem is that
companies are scared to death that they will alienate and
lose their customer base.
>I think the current menu/shortcut/toolbar system is quite
>easy to move around in and get things done without 100%
>mouse dependancy. But being someone who's developed
>several GUI's, I know how hard it can be to get things
>to work smoothly. Again,high hopes here as well.
I do think it's very important to plan ahead of time how to
make the UI as mouse independent as possible.
>I think the biggest thing for me is the absense of
>modality.
Wow !!! I very strongly agree with this sentiment. I hope
you have conveyed this to CNC Software. Nothing drives me
more nuts than being forced to go from room to room to room
to.... I would much prefer to take off the roof, peer in and
choose what room I want to go to.
>I'd also like to see an excel style operations manager, as
>well as an excel style geometry editor, (like Virtual
>Gibbs' Geometry Expert), where you can load a chain into
>it, analyze and make >edits easily and quickly.
Agreed, it's very helpful and it's an excellent feature.
Besides this, I can't think of a thing positive to say about
how Gibbs creates geometry. Seems to be an extremely low
priority for them. Always has been.
>The post GUI I could live without. I much prefer the
>functionality and control of the text based posts.
Why not have both ??? The GUI is much faster for simple
stuff or for getting the framework done. Then you move to
the text language for what the UI can't do. All the high end
expensive stand along post constructors like InterCIM's G-
Post and ICAM's CAM Post use this approach.
Looking forward to reading your response.
jon