[ffaubert]

Ok, I posting probably the dumbest question on this forum but I'm honestly stuck.

I have my design in Mach 4 (demo version) and I want to do a simulation just to see how (and if) it works. There is a simulation button under 'Diagnostics' but that just opens up another screen that looks a little sparse with no instructions as to what the heck you're supposed to do.

Am I the only one who checks a design before committing it to wood or am I missing something in the software?

The manuals seem to talk about every facet of how to use and set up the CNC machine and the software except for this little point unless I'm missing it.

[CNCMAN172]

If the motion device is set to simulator the default on installing the software all you do is press the enable button and load a gcode file and press cycle start and it will simulate the cut

Russ

[ffaubert]

Thanks Russ.

It's just me then. I did that and things started moving along but the simulation was real time minute for minute. I was hoping to get an idea how long the project would take. I know the demo is limited to a random number of steps and I'm good with that. I just figured that a simulation might clock through all the steps to show a finish time.

The Mach 3 demo I have does that and I'm trying to decide if I want to buy 3 or 4.

Frank

[CNCMAN172]

Frank,

There is an easy way to see the simulation go farther. Just changed the gcode file and change the feedrate in the file to something really high for example if the F100 is in the file change that to F600 or something and you will see it do much more. Mach3 has limits of about 500 lines of gcode, but Mach4 demo is limited to about 5 minutes. I have licenses copies of both. Mach3 is no longer supported so no changes, Mach4 is the new platform and has started to become very stable and I actually like the screen much better. Just built a new machine with Mach4, it has a learning curve because you use LUA to make scripts. For basic machines most of the stuff is already in place.

Russ

[ffaubert]

Thanks again Russ. I'll give that a try.

So, at this point, you prefer 4 to 3?

I'm completely new to this and building a machine while learning software. So far, my image workflow has been Inkscape to remove colours, scale, sharpen and create the SVG, Makercam to generate the G-code and then one of the Machs.

I've tried Fusion but the program is so feature intense that it's easy to get lost and extremely hard find how to do something that should be easy like smoothing an image once you've made a 3-D rendering. ArtCam is a little out of my price range at this point.

Frank