[MetLHead]

NCPlot v2.23 Beta 1 Release Notes
October 27, 2011


Bug Fixes

G66 modal macro call was not working with G02 or G03 blocks, this is fixed.

There was a bug that allowed the viewport refresh while macro stepping was active. Doing this caused an error message when trying to continue with the macro stepping. Now when macro stepping is in progress and a viewport refresh is requested you will be prompted to confirm the cancellation of macro stepping.

Fixed a bug in the zoom extents tool on the lathe front turret view.

Improved the calculation accuracy for some geometry routines.

NCPlot would crash when attempting to load a binary DXF file. This file format is not supported and a message will now be displayed when attempting to load this type of file.

Fixed a bug in the 'Modal values to display' setting on the machine configuration. If a "G" was included with no value following it, an error occurred.

Fixed a bug in the Break Arcs into lines tool. When breaking a helical arc command that did not include a Y axis endpoint the tool would incorreclty insert two "X" values.

The print black and white setting now works for the print program tool.


New Features

Updated the find/replace tool to allow doing a find/replace within a selected region of the program.

Tool list enhancements:
Remembers the visible state of the tools when refreshing the plot if the tool list does not change
Added menu item 'Show Only This Tool' which hides all but the tool that was clicked
Added menu item 'Select This Tool' which selects the region of the program for the tool that was clicked
Added menu item 'Highlight This Tool' selects all the entities on the viewprt for the tool that was clicked

The keyboard shortcuts can now be exported and imported via the 'Setup' menus 'Export Settings' and 'Import Settings'

The viewport print preview now allows the preview image to be saved as a bitmap file.


Improvements

Viewport set as reference will now use only the visible viewport entities.

The viewport rotation icon now draws on top of the backplot, keeping it visible.

The break arcs tool now give a default value when prompting for the 'Maximum Path Deviation Distance'.

The print program and print viewport tool will now remember the orientation and print black and white settings between uses. These settings are remembered seperately for program and viewport printing.

Changed the data entry for the work offsets and extended work offsets on the machine configuration so that pressing 'Enter' is not required.


To download the NCPlot v2.23 beta, go to NCPlot.com - Tools for CNC Programmers and click the NCPlot v2 button at the top of the page, look for the heading "NCPlot Beta Testing".

Enjoy!

Scott

[barbter]

Thanks Scott
:cheers:

[patcareyis]

thanks Scott will give this a look

[TURNER]

Hi Scott,
Thanks for the update, all working well here. Could i ask for a new feature or modification to one " remove redundant end points " .
Sometimes in posted code we get what i would call redundant moves in the same axis eg
from......
G1X100.Y50.
Y60.
Y70.
X100.Y80.

to....
G1X100.Y50.
Y80.

The code would have to check if the axis and direction are the same then delete the moves not required.
Thanks
Keith.

[MetLHead]

Hi Keith,

I had actually started working on a tool like this a while ago, but it ended up getting moved to the back burner. I was calling it 'Remove colinear line segments' and was intended to work in cases not just like you describe but also for reducing the size of 3D programs. If there is some interest in this then I'll look at finishing it.

Thanks,
Scott