NCPlot v2.20 Release Notes
September 6, 2010
New Interface Features in NCPlot v2.20
NCPlot is now an MDI application. This means that you can now open and edit
multiple documents at the same time. This is a major interface update that
will lead to some useful new features.
Added a "Window" menu that contains a list of the open files as well as
tiling options for automatically arranging the files in the document
workspace.
There is a new toolbar that displays that currently open files. Clicking the
name of a file on the toolbar will make the associated file the active
document. If there are more documents open than the 'Open Files' toolbar can
display you can now click the small band at its right end to see a list of
the non-visible document names.
The graphics viewport now behaves like a toolbar, allowing you to detach it
from the application window or close it altogether. Added a heading just
above the viewport that displays the name of the file that the viewport is
currently associated with. Clicking the viewport or using any of the plot
controls will activate the edit file that created the backplot.
Added an option to the Preferences dialog called 'Auto Arrange Files'. When
this option is checked the open files will re-tile themselves whenever a
file is opened or closed, the application window is resized or any of the
toolbars are moved. The last selected tiling option from the 'Window' menu
is used.
Added preferences setting to select whether a new file is opened on startup.
Added a file comparison tool. You can access this tool via the menu "File /
Compare files" and also the new toolbar button on the "Edit" toolbar.
Added a "Toolbars" submenu to the "Setup" menu. This menu displays all the
current toolbars and allows you to turn them on or off from the menu.
New Backplotter features
Added support for G18/G19 during polar coordinate mode G16.
Added new M98 subprogram call format:
M98 P1 Q1 L1 P = Program number
Q = Block number
L = Repeat count
Added support for M198 subprogram call:
M198 P1 L1 P = Program number
L = Repeat count
The extended work offset commands G54 P and G54.1 P will now allow the "P"
address to be anywhere in the block.
New Tools
Added two new tools to the 'Tools' menu: Convert Coordinates to ABS and
Convert Coordinates to INC. These tools allow translating program endpoints
between absolute and incremental coordinates.
Added a new arc tool called "Break arcs at quadrants" which will break any
arc command that passes through one of the four quadrants. The arcs are
broken into up to 3 additional commands of up to 90 degrees each.
Added a new tool called "Break lines into segments" which will break any
linear motion into shorter movement segments.
Added a new address translation tool called "Address calculator". This tool
lets you create custom translations by allowing calculations to be performed
on address values. For each block in the file the address values are loaded
into local variables and one or more calculations can be performed using
these values. The values in the block can be updated or even removed. For
more info, please see the help file.
The rotate tool now allows rotating in the G18(ZX) and G19(YZ) planes.
Added two new menu items to the "View" menu. These are "Set as Reference"
and "Clear Reference" which allow you to set the current backplot as the
background drawing. This allows you to easily compare two backplots by using
one as a background image.
Improvements
Cleaned up the toolbar customize command list. Also added the available
icons.
Extended the maximum system variable range from #50000 to #99999.
Added another range of variables for extended work offsets. The variables
now are:
#7001 - #7944 G54.1 P1 - P48
#14001 - #19984 G54.1 P1 - P300
#70001 - #75984 G54.1 P1 - P300
Any variables written in these ranges are duplicated in the other two. For
example, writing a value to #14001 also writes the same value to #70001 and
#7001. This makes the extended work offset values available at all three
variable ranges.
Improved the viewport measure tool. This tool now displays the signed
distance in each axis instead of the absolute distance. This gives an
indication of direction from the first selected point to the second. The
viewport is made active again after dismissing the measurement results, this
will allow you to activate the measure tool again without needing to click
the viewport in between.
The renumbering tool will now allow you to renumber a selected section of
the program only.
The entity info window will now close automatically when closing the file
that is currently the active viewport file.
Added font info as comments for the text to g-code tool.
You can now de-register NCPlot from the splash window (Help/About). You must
enter the same registration key that was used to register the software. Note
that licenses aquired from the license manager cannot be de-registered.
Preferences
If the Preferences dialog is open and changes have been made to the settings
then NCPlot will prompt you to save these changes before shutting down.
Added a preferences setting that allows the translation tools to update
values in macro expressions.
Added a new preferences option called 'Zoom After Translate'. This option
will automatically zoom to extents after a translation tool is applied as
long as the 'Auto Refresh Viewport' is also on.
Machine Configuration
Added a new configuration page for extended work offsets.
Added a machine configuration setting for default script folder. This allows
you to specify a script folder for each machine configuration. If this
setting is blank then the default scripts folder will be the "\scripts"
folder under the installed application folder.
Variable Display Window
The variable display window is now dockable. Also re-arranged it slightly
and added the animation speed slider control.
The variable display will now show common variables that are assigned by the
program regardless of their contents.
Improved the way the variable list was being drawn. When there was enough
variables being displayed to show the vertical scroll bar, the old method
caused the list display to jump back to the top of the list after each block
in the program. This has been fixed so that the variable list will stay
where it is even while animating a program.
Printing
Improved printing support:
Printing selected text will now allow printing the colorized text.
Added a print preview window for the viewport printing.
Removed the printing setup menu option, printing operations now use a common
setup dialog.
DXF Exporting
The DXF exporter will now export helical arc moves. These moves are actually
saved as a series of line segments when saved.
DXF Importing
The DXF importer would not accept polyline bulge values of 1.0, resulting in
some arcs being incorrectly imported as lines. This is fixed.
Deleting entities from the viewport after loading a DXF file for conversion
would cause an error. The error has been fixed and there is new behavior for
deleting DXF entities. You can now only delete entites after chaining has
been applied. When the delete key is pressed the chains belonging to any
selected entities are removed from the drawing.
When a DXF file is loaded there are now indicators on the drawing that show
where each chain start point is as well as the chain directions.
The DXF Conversion Options dialog now has a few new menu selections:
The "Chain" menu has a new option called "Select Chain Start Point". This
option allows you to pick the starting point of a chain. After clicking this
menu just click a point on the drawing that you want to be the entry point
for the chain. Note that this tool only allows you to select closed chains.
There is a new menu called "Rotate". This menu allows you to rotate the
loaded DXF drawing.
There is a new menu called "Mirror". This menu allows you to mirror the
drawing in either the X or Y axis.
There is a new menu called "Scale". The menu allows you to apply a scale
factor to the loaded DXF drawing.
Text to G-Code Tool
Added a new setting to the 'Text on Arc' group called 'Arc counter
clockwise'. This setting changes the output from clockwise readable text to
counter clockwise readable text.
Scripting
Added several new scripting functions to give much greater control over
NCPlot from your scripts.
Added preferences setting for script execution timeout. This setting
determines how long to allow a script to run before prompting you to either
allow it to continue or to kill it. Making this setting longer is useful if
you have scripts that take a long time to run.
License Manager
Added a license manager settings window that can be used to specify the
network IP address of the license server. This is helpful when automatic
server detection fails or cannot be used on your network.
Bug Fixes
Fixed crash on startup when using a 3Dconnexion device with Windows XP.
Fixed the shortcut keys on the 'Find' dialog for the 'Find What' and
'Replace With' settings.
Shortcut keys assigned to the items on the 'File' menu were appearing next
to the wrong menu item. This is fixed.
Fixed the error message when trying to import settings 'Setup / Import
Settings'.
Fixed a bug in the 'step backward' tool. When the step backward tool
shortcut key was held down the cursor moved backward through the program
correctly but the graphics would not update.
The 'Break Arcs Into Lines' tool was not properly breaking helical arc
moves, this has been fixed.
Fixed an error when exporting settings via the "Setup / Export Settings"
tool.
When a loaded file was locked by another application is was possible to lose
your edits when NCPlot closed. NCPlot now lets you know when a file has been
locked.
Fixed a couple of bugs in the remove redundant endpoints tool.
System variables #4314 and #4315 were not being set, these are the modal
values for the "N" and "O" addresses, respectively.
Fixed the blend arc calc tool for lathe configurations
The macro translator tool was allowing macro statements through into the
resulting code if used before the first g-code or motion block.
Fixed a problem with the program extents being miscalculated in some cases
when an arc motion is at the extents.
Fixed a bug in the DXF sorting that could cause some objects to disappear
from the drawing.
Fixed a problem with the local variables when using M98 subprogram calls.
The local variables were being properly passed to the subprogram, but were
not being passed back to the calling program. The M98 sub calls should
maintain the local variables.
Fixed a bug in the renumbering tool. If there was a "GOTO" statement in the
program without a block number after it the renumbering tool would crash.
Fixed a problem when using the Machinist Toolbox to send code back to NCPlot.
Fixed a problem with the viewport scroll bar. Dragging the scroll bar back
and forth several times would eventually lead to an error message.
*************************************************************
NCPlot v2.07 Release Notes
July 28, 2009
Bug Fixes
Backslash characters "\" were being removed from the file when loaded, this
is fixed.
Fixed the issue with toolbars not restoring to their saved locations.
The auto radius and auto chamfer commands ",R ,C" were not working under
lathe configurations, this has been fixed.
The saved variable state was overriding the machine configuration's work
offset settings, this is fixed.
The entities created by the auto radius and auto chamfer commands were not
being given the correct tool number, this is fixed.
When the M98 subprogram format is set to use the K address as the repetition
count the canned cycles will also recognize the K address as the repetition
count.
Editor
Added the ability to drag text within the edit window. You can now select a
region of text and then click and drag it within the edit window.
Find & Replace
The text input boxes on the Find & Replace dialog will now force text entry
to be all caps if the "Always Caps" setting is enabled in the Preferences.
It is now possible to include carriage return/line feed characters in the
find and replace text. NCPlot replaces any occurrences of the text "^M" with
the CR/LF characters before any find or replace operation.
DXF Converter
The DXF importer now supports block instances.
The DXF Conversion Options dialog has a new menu called "Shift". This menu
contains tools that allow you to set the zero point of the drawing.
MultiStep Translate
There is a new translation tool call "MultiStep Translate". This tool allows
you to combine multiple translation operations into one easy step. Unlike
the other translation tools, MultiStep translate always keeps the original
program code while inserting new translated code. This allows making
multiple translated copies of sections of your program, for example: quickly
make rotated patterns by selecting a section of your program, entering a
rotation angle and number of copies. The translated program section is
inserted into your program immediately following the selected section. You
can mirror, rotate, shift and scale all in one operation.
Space Navigator
Improved the response of the SpaceNavigator with large files.
Added a setup dialog for the SpaceNavigator. This dialog allows you to
customize the orientation and sensitivity of the rotate, pan and zoom
controls. Also added the option to export these settings on the "Setup /
Export Settings" dialog. Likewise the "Setup / Import settings" tool will
import these new settings.
*************************************************************
NCPlot v2.06 Release Notes
February 18, 2009
Bug Fixes
The animate slider, fade slider and tool list would disappear when the close
"X" button was clicked on the NCPlot titlebar. If the shutdown was
cancelled, these items did not reappear. This has been fixed.
On the address color setup dialog, if the selected color was black then the
color box actually showed white.
Some fixes to the toolbars were made. Mostly issues with menu items not
being shown in the correct check state on startup.
The "Step Forward" and "Step Backward" buttons on the plot toolbar were set
to auto-repeat when held down, this has been changed back to 1-click equals
1-step.
Fixed a problem with running NCPlot on accounts without Admin privaleges. On
shutting down NCPlot an error was being generated: "Run-time error 2000:
Application defined or object defined error". This error is being caused by
the system not allowing NCPlot to save it's toolbar layout file. The fix was
to save this file under the user application data folder. An added benefit
to this is that each user can now have their own toolbar layout.
The milling canned cycles now properly support G18/G19 plane selection.
Fixed a bug in the DXF conversion setup window. NCPlot was reporting an
error when using saved layers.
General
External subprogram files no longer need to have filenames that begin with
the letter "O". NCPlot will now find subprogram files in either format, ie.
"O1234.nc" or "1234.nc" is acceptable. The file extension is ignored and can
be anything you like.
Added the ability to select and backplot any program in the loaded edit
file. There is a new status bar panel that can be used whenever you have
multiple programs in your file. When the panel is clicked a popup menu
appears that contains a list of all the programs in your file. Clicking a
program on the menu jumps to the selected program and selects it for
backplotting. This allows you to backplot any program in your file without
the need to rearrange the programs.
Added a tool list toolbar which contains a list of the tool numbers used in
the program. This list is populated any time the backplot is refreshed.
Clicking on a tool number in the list causes the editor to highlight the
line in the program where the tool change was commanded. This creates a
convenient way to navigate to the beginning of each tool in the program.
Added a system variable for requesting user input. The variable number is
#3009 and it's format is:
#3009=100(Enter Pocket Diameter)
When this block is encountered a user input box appears with the message
"Enter Pocket Diameter" and the current value for variable #100. A new value
entered into this box is then copied to variable #100.
When saving DXF files the geometry is now saved on separate layers by tool
number.
Added support for 3Dconnexion's SpaceNavigator. When present, NCPlot will
use this device for dynamic Pan, Rotate and Zoom. All current mouse and
keyboard controls still work the same.
NCPlot will now ignore "$" symbols if present at the end of the block.
Network License Manager
There is now support for a network license manager. There are three new menu
selections on the "Help" menu:
- Enable Network License Server
Checking this menu item will enable communications to the license manager.
- Check Out License
This will request a license transfer from the license manager. If
successful, the license is stored on the client computer so that NCPlot may
be run while disconnected from the network. While checked out the license
will not be available for other users.
- Check In License
This will return a stored license back to the license manager.
The network license manager is a free download from the NCPlot web site at
www.ncplot.com.
The addition of the license manager required changing the location of the
license file. This just means that you will have to re-enter your product
key after updating to this version of NCPlot.
A third button has been added to the "Help / About" window. This button
enables checking for a license server so that this function can be enabled
even after the trial period has expired.
Macro Translator
Changed the layout of the macro translator window. Also, this window can now
be resized and will remember it's size as well as the last selected macro
folder between uses.
Improved the data entry on the macro translator window. After pressing the
"Enter" key to accept a new value, the data entry box moves to the next item
in the list. After reaching the last item it will move back to the top of
the list. Pressing the up or down arrow keys moves the data entry box up or
down the list of variables.
Updated the macro translator to allow non-motion and comment blocks to be
output.
Added a method to allow the translator to output a string literal. To do
this, add a comment line to the macro being translated in this format:
("O1234(TEST)")
The text between the quotes will be output by the translator as-is. This
allows adding special characters or any program code that would not normally
be output by the translator.
The macro translator will now remember each macro's parameter settings
between uses.
Machine Configuration
The machine configuration option to reverse lathe arc direction has been
moved to the control options page so that it will also be available for
mills.
Address Colors
Added another setting to the Address Color configuration dialog. This
setting is labeled "Other" and is a color setting for any characters not
covered by the other settings.
DNC
Added some new settings to the Communications Setup page. There are two new
settings on the "Transmit" tab:
"Wait for XXX seconds before transmitting" - This setting enables a timed
delay before transmitting begins. This is a check box that will then enable
the second setting where the actual delay time may be entered.
There are also two new tabs labeled "TX Header" and "TX Footer". These tabs
contain text settings where header and footer text may be entered. The
header text will automatically be sent before the file to send and the
footer text will be sent after.
*************************************************************
NCPlot v2.05 Release Notes
July 19, 2008
Bug Fixes
Fixed a bug in the Mill G92 command. The shift values were not being set
properly.
Fixed the "Error 52 - Bad File Name or Number" on startup. There were
several reports of this and it was being caused by files in the recent file
list that referred to drives that no longer existed.
Fixed the mouse pointer flickering while on the edit window. This was more
noticeable on some machines than others.
The DXF reference geometry loader was skipping the last entity in the file,
this is fixed.
General
The translation tools will no longer automatically refresh the viewport
unless auto refresh is enabled. This works better when multiple translations
are applied to large files.
The translation tools will now apply to each subprogram separately. When a
new program is encountered in the file the modal state is reset.
NCPlot will now ignore values immediately after the block delete character
"/". This makes it possible to plot programs that make use of multiple block
deletes /1 /2 /3 etc...
Added support for G66 and G67 modal macro call. The command format is:
G66 P_ Where P_ is the subprogram number
While active, this command causes the specified subprogram to be executed
after any motion blocks. Any other addresses on the G66 block are passed to
the subprogram as local variables. This command is modal and is cancelled by
G67.
Double clicking the middle mouse button will now cause the view to zoom to
extents.
NCPlot will now handle nested comments, ie. "(TOOL NUMBER 12 (.5IN_EM))"
Added support for system variable #3006. This variable works similar to
variable #3000. It displays a macro message, but unlike #3000 it does not
terminate the program.
Added support for system variables #4001-#4020 active modals.
Toolbars
There is a new menu toolbar. The new menu bar follows the look of the rest
of the toolbars. The new menu bar also provides icons and a description in
the status bar as you navigate the menus.
Enabled toolbar customizing. This feature Allows adding and removing buttons
from the toolbars and also allows creating your own toolbars. Here's a brief
description of how this works:
The customizable toolbars will have a small band at their end, clicking this
band will display a menu that says "Add or Remove Buttons". Hover the mouse
over this menu and after a moment you will get a new menu that lists all of
the buttons on the menu. Using this menu you can turn on or off each of the
buttons on the toolbar. This menu also has an option that says "Customize".
Click on the customize option and you will get the toolbar customize window.
You can also access this window by right-clicking any of the toolbars and
selecting "Customize" from the menu that appears.
The customize window allows you to turn individual toolbars on or off or
even create new ones. When a new toolbar is created you get a new, empty
toolbar. To move buttons to the new toolbar, drag them from any of the
visible toolbars and drop them onto the new toolbar. To copy the buttons
instead of moving them, press and hold the CTRL key while dragging the
buttons.
Viewport
The Zoom In / Zoom Out behavior has been changed. The old zoom behavior was
to always zoom around the view center point, forcing you to pan the view if
what you wanted to see wasn't at the center of the view. The new zoom
behavior is to zoom around the current mouse pointer. This allows you to
simply point at a feature and roll the mouse wheel to zoom in or out.
There is a new toolbar labeled "View Fade". This toolbar has a slider
control that allows you to dim the colors of the backplot. All colors are
affected except the currently selected tool. The current tool is updated
when you pick an entity on the viewport or use any of the plot controls.
There is a new toolbar labeled "Animate Speed". This toolbar has slider
control that allows adjusting the speed of the plot animation.
Improved the way the plot controls handle subprograms. The "Plot to Cursor"
tool will now include subprograms up to the cursor position.
Added two new shortcut keys. The "T" key will advance the plot to the next
tool, and the "R" key will rewind the plot to the previous tool.
File Menu
Added new print option "Print Selected Text".
Added menu item "Reset Toolbars". This will load the default toolbar layout.
Draw Menu
Added two new menu items, "Step to Next Tool" and "Step to Previous Tool".
These work similar to Step Forward / Step Backward, but will advance the
plot to end of the current tool.
Tools
On the "Tools" menu the "Show part info" menu item has been renamed to "Run
Time Estimation"
The run time estimation window now has a button that will generate a
printable run time estimation report. This report includes the part extents,
a breakdown of machining time per tool and the total machining time.
Machine Configuration
On the "Control Options" page an option was added to allow changing the way
addresses with no value are handled. When this option is enabled then
addresses with no value are interpreted as having a zero value. When not
enabled this will generate an error instead.
On the "Viewport Colors" page an option was added under the "Color by Tool"
settings. The new setting is called "Use Global Rapid Color" and allows
drawing rapid motions the same color regardless of tool. This is accompanied
by a "Global Rapid Color" setting.
A new configuration page has been added called "Run Time Estimating". This
page contains machine specific settings used for run time calculations. The
new settings are:
Machine Rapid Traverse Rate
Maximum Spindle RPM
Tool Change Time
Tool change on M06/T-Code. This setting is shared by the "Color by Tool"
options on the "Viewport Settings" page.
*************************************************************
NCPlot v2.04 Release Notes
March 2, 2008
Bug Fixes
The Start menu link to the help file was not working, this is fixed.
Fixed a bug in the expression evaluator:
IF[[exp]GT-[exp]]
Would generate a "Grouping Mismatch" error
Fixed some erroneous results with the ASIN and ACOS functions
The Address Adjustment tool was deleting some address expressions, this is
fixed.
Corrected the functionality of system variables #5001-#5004
Lathe canned cycles were not passing all local variables, this is fixed.
General
The NCPlot toolbars have been updated. The new toolbar system allows
toolbars to be undocked from the application window. When docking a toolbar,
it can be docked at the top, bottom, left or right side of the application
window. When undocked and inactive, the toolbars will fade allowing you to
see through them (on Windows XP or later).
The backplotter will now ignore addresses when their expression evaluates to
<empty>.
G00 X0 Y0 Z#100
If #100 is <empty>, the Z address will be ignored.
The backplotter will now accept addresses with no corresponding value.
G00 XYZ
This will be interpreted as:
G00 X0 Y0 Z0
Auto chamfer now works with +-I, +-K and +-C commands
You can now set a font color to the entire program when Colorize is turned
off. The color is selected on the same dialog as the other font settings
under the menu Edit / Font.
The canned cycles have been updated to correctly handle cases when no "R"
value is given in the canned cycle block.
Changed the way certain settings were being saved in order to accommodate
non-English versions of Windows. Because of this, version 2.04 will save its
settings in a new location separate from previous versions.
There are two new menu selections under the "Setup" menu which allow
exporting or importing of all non Machine Configuration related settings.
You can select which groups of settings to save and save them to an .INI
file for easy transporting to another computer or as a backup.
General settings
Font settings
Preferences
Address colors
Text to G-Code settings
Subprogram settings
Added a new scripting method which returns the active file name:
NCPGetActiveFile
Machine Configuration
Added an option for controls that handle G00, G02, G03 as non-modal. When
this option is selected, G00, G02 and G03 are active only in the blocks in
which they are commanded.
Added an option to allow reversing the rotary axis direction.
Added an option to allow the Rotary axis to rotate around Z axis (C axis)
Added an option to the "Viewport" page to allow loading reference geometry
from a DXF file. When a file has been selected, it is loaded and is
displayed on the viewport along with the active edit file. This is useful
for displaying things such as fixtures or parts of the machine. Another new
option on the same page allows setting the display color for this reference
geometry.
*************************************************************
NCPlot v2.03 Release Notes
August 26, 2007
Bug Fixes
Canned cycle values were still being affected by the computer's decimal
point setting under the control panel's Regional and Language settings. When
the decimal point character was set to a comma "," instead of a period "."
some program values were not interpreted correctly. This is fixed.
The Macro Translator tool would not work while lathe mode was active. This
is fixed.
Fixed a bug in the G92 command. The coordinate system was not updating
correctly when G92 was commanded while already active.
Helical arcs were incorrectly being drawn as arcs whenever the X or Y mirror
image commands were active. This is fixed.
The colorize tool would crash NCPlot if either of the curly bracket symbols
"{" or "}" were in the edit window. These symbols will now be automatically
replaced with the square bracket symbols "[" and "]" whenever colorize is
active or the "Remove Garbage" tool is used.
Lathe canned cycles G70-G73 would not plot properly if the profile ending
block was an "N" block number on a line by itself. This is fixed.
General
Added the ability to swap the edit window and the viewport. This is
controlled by a new setting on the Preferences window called "Viewport on
the Left".
New tool added: Break Arcs into Lines. This tool will replace G02/G03
commands in the G-Code program with a sequence of G01 commands that
approximate the commanded arc. When this tool is invoked you are asked to
enter a maximum deviation distance value. This value determines how far the
resulting path can deviate from the true arc and will determine how many
line segments are required to approximate the arc.
The Text to G-Code tool can now convert multiple lines of text at a time.
When entering text into the font preview, press CTRL-ENTER to start a new
line of text.
Replaced the Inch/Metric Format settings with a Display Precision setting.
This new setting will allow you to set the NCPlot display resolution between
3 and 6 decimal places. This setting affects all coordinate translation
tools as well as the Text to G-Code and DXF import tools. Any tool that
modifies or creates G-Code will output values with the specified number of
decimal places.
Changed the behavior of the clipboard paste function. When using the toolbar
button or edit menu item for paste, NCPlot will now only paste the text
contents of the clipboard. This avoids situations where you would get an
embedded OLE object instead of text when copying and pasting from other
applications. Please note that pressing CTRL-V on the edit window still
gives the old pasting behavior.
Improved offsetting: The offset tool does a better job of trimming when
self-intersecting geometry is created.
Machine Configuration
The machine configuration window has been revamped. The new window should
load faster on slower machines. The interface is a little different, instead
of a tabbed window there is a list of configuration pages. To change pages,
just click an item in the list. Also, there are a number of new buttons on
the main configuration window:
Load - Opens a dialog that allows you to browse for a configuration file.
This replaces the old drop-down list.
Save - Applies the current changes and saves them to the active
configuration file. You no longer need to browse for the file to save as.
Save As - Allows you to save the configuration to a new file.
Apply - Applies the current changes and refreshes the viewport to reflect
these changes.
Cancel - Discards any current changes and closes the configuration window.
OK - Applies the current changes and closes the configuration window.
Expression Calculator
The results are now always added to the end of the results window instead of
at the cursor location.
Show Variables
The variable list can now be copied to the clipboard or sent directly to the
printer. Two new items have been added to the popup menu that appears when
you right-click the variable list.
DNC
The Comm Setup dialog has been reorganized into three tabbed pages for Port
Setup, Receive settings and Transmit settings. The Transmit settings tab
includes two new options, these are:
"Remove spaces while transmitting" - When this option is checked spaces will
be removed from the data being transmitted.
"Wait for XON before transmitting" - When this option is checked the
transmission will be delayed until an XON control code is received from the
CNC.
*************************************************************
NCPlot v2.02 Release Notes
June 2, 2007
General
NCPlot would only recognize a particular version of Machinist ToolBox. This
has been changed so that NCPlot will work with any version of the MTB
ActiveX.
The default file types setting now allows wildcard characters "*" and "?".
NCPlot will now give run time estimates for lathe programs that use constant
surface speed (CSS). This calculates run time for both G20 Inch mode
(surface feet per minute) and G21 Metric mode (surface meters per minute).
This also takes into account the G50/G92 clamp RPM settings "S" Maximum RPM
and "Q" Minimum RPM. This requires that feed per rev also be active.
Improved the backplotting speed for programs that make heavy use of
subprograms.
DXF Import
The layer header and footer text were not being added when converting a DXF
file to a lathe program. This is fixed.
Preferences
Added an option to the Preferences dialog that allows you to set whether you
want the plot to pause at M00 commands.
Variable Display
You can now edit variables that are displayed on the variable display
window. Double-clicking a variable number in the list will open a window
where you can enter a new value for the variable. You can enter any valid
expression as the new value. To set the variable to <empty>, enter the null
variable "#0" as the expression.
Expression Calculator
The contents of the expression calculator results window is now saved on
exit.
Clicking a line in the results window will now copy that line back to the
expression text box. This makes it easier to go back and re-evaluate an
earlier expression.
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NCPlot v2.01 Release Notes
May 1, 2007
General
The backplotter now allows comma characters for the auto radius and auto
chamfer commands ",R" and ",C".
Made a change to the expression evaluator to allow square bracket comments
to follow numeric values. For example: "M06[TOOL CHANGE]". This was causing
an error.
Fixed a problem with programs whose program number is designated with the
colon character ":". This problem was causing some searched block numbers to
not be found. This affected any G-Code or macro statement that required a
search for a block number.
Made a change to the Lathe G76 threading cycle to support plotting tapered
threads.
The viewport now allows deleting selected entities. Pressing the 'Delete'
key will remove any selected entities from the display. This does *not*
delete the corresponding blocks from the program. To restore the deleted
entities, simply refresh the viewport.
Machine Setup
Added a setting to the 'Machine Type' tab that allows defining the default
file types. This defines the types of files that are displayed when browsing
for files to open or save.
Added a setting to the 'Control Options 2' tab that allows defining the
address used by the G04 dwell command. This setting defaults to the "X"
address.
Preferences
Added an option that allows turning on or off the plotting of files when
they are loaded into NCPlot.
Added an option that will cause the viewport to zoom to extents when the
view orientation is changed.
DXF Import
When using the "Z Increment" setting, under certain conditions the last
entity in the drawing would not be converted to G-Code. This is fixed.
Added support for ELLIPSE entities. Imported ellipses are broken into line
segments when read.
Now correctly reads closed Polylines.
Fixed a problem in the chain sorting tool. If the last chain was a single
entity, it would disappear after sorting.
Fixed a problem in the chain reversal tool. In some cases an unselected
chain would reverse along with the selected chain.
The sorting tool now allows defining the start point for sorting. To do this
simply select one entity that is part of the chain you would like it start
from.
Macro Stepping
Helical arcs were not being drawn when plotted from the 'Show Variables'
window. This is fixed.
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