NCPlot v2.22 is now available

[MetLHead]

NCPlot v2.22 is now available at NCPlot.com - Tools for CNC Programmers

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NCPlot v2.22 Release Notes
July 7, 2011


Bug Fixes

Rotary 4th axis motion was not correctly displaying incremental moves greater than 360 degrees, this is fixed.

Fixed a display problem when rotation G68 and scaling G51 were applied at the same time.

Fixed a display problem that occurs when multiple files are open and maximized then one is closed.

Fixed several problems with DXF importing for lathe.

Fixed a problem that was preventing NCPlot from being registered on machines that had Asian language packs installed.


New Features

Added feed override and rapid override controls to the run time estimation page. These controls may be adjusted to see the effect that they have on machine run times.

Added new functionality to the tool list toolbar. The tool list can now control the visibility of its corresponding tool path on the viewport, allowing individual paths to be turned off or on. The plot controls then will skip over any hidden parts of the backplot graphic.

Added two new buttons to the plot toolbar, these buttons are "Plot backward to previous tool" and "Plot forward to next tool". As their names imply these two buttons allow jumping the plot forward or backward one toolchange at a time.

Added a modal value display to the viewport marker. Additional modal information can now be displayed along with the location display next to the marker. The information to display is selectable and is defined on the Machine Configuration under the "Viewport Settings" page. There is a new setting called "Modal values to display", simply enter the letter addresses to be displayed next to the viewport marker.

Added a new option to the rotary 4th axis configuration. The new option allows selecting one of two rotary command types. The two types are "Take shortest path to endpoint" and "Sign indicates direction". When the shortest path option is selected the rotary axis chooses a direction that results in less than 180 degrees of movement. When set to 'Sign indicates direction' the rotary axis will move to the designated endpoint in the direction indicated by the sign of the endpoint value.

There is a new preferences setting labeled "Pause animation at tool changes" that when checked will cause the program animation to stop at the end of each tool's motion. Clicking the animate button again will resume the animation. This setting has been added to the "NCPGetPrefSetting" and "NCPSetPrefSetting" scripting functions as "AnimateTCPause".


Improvements

The mirror tool will now swap G41/G42 commands in the mirrored code.

Updated the script function "NCPRotate" to allow rotation in any of the three planes.


Enjoy!

Scott

[barbter]

Thanks Scott

[TURNER]

Originally Posted by barbter Thanks Scott

+1

[TURNER]

Hi Scott, nice update . Just had a quick play with the new toollist and modal display. I was playing with different addresses for the modal marker and found if you enter 'G' it hangs the software.
Great tool though, can see which H-offsets are active easily now, sometimes we use 2 different offsets on the same tool.
Keith.

[MetLHead]

Thanks guys, obviously I wasn't able to get everything on my list into this update but this seems like a good place to stop.

You can add 'G' to the modal value addresses, but it must be followed by a group number. So 'G12' would display the active G-Code from group 12 (the active work offset). The help file has a listing of the group numbers under the supported G&M codes topic. Leaving off the value following the 'G' should not hang the software though, I'll fix this.

Scott

[ArchieF]

Hi Scott,

nice update and long-awaited

What I noticed ( already in v2.21) :

If you zoom in pretty close the orientation icon disappears below the toolpath. Is this a wanted effect or can you make it stay on top of the viewport ?

Thanks

Richard