[GenInt]

Well... I think the important thing is that you obviously have a good understanding of "parametric" or "macro" programming and that will be hugely beneficial to you. As far as this specific instance goes, I would say this; If when talking about "tweaks" you mean that each position of the fixture might be a little off from the one before it, then, if it were me, I would re-do the fixture. On the other hand, if you mean that all positions are off the same amount, (say +0.01 inch in the X direction), then you could take care of that in your G10 L2 statement, i.e. X[#1+#5221+0.125], or you could just modify your original G54 offsets to be at a correct zero point.

As far as "easier" goes, I guess I'd have to say this. With your code, you have to go in and code each individual X,Y position of the fixture - in your example, 10 different positions. In the code I provided, I have to change a number for 4 parameters
#<NUMBER_OF_OPERATIONS_X>=5
#<NUMBER_OF_OPERATIONS_Y>=2
#<DISTANCE_BETWEEN_OPERATIONS_X>=2.0
#<DISTANCE_BETWEEN_OPERATIONS_Y>=2.0

Now let's do the same for a fixture jig that has 100 positions, (say 10 rows X and 10 rows Y), that are 0.5 inches apart in both directions . I just change the same 4 parameters:
#<NUMBER_OF_OPERATIONS_X>=10
#<NUMBER_OF_OPERATIONS_Y>=10
#<DISTANCE_BETWEEN_OPERATIONS_X>=0.5
#<DISTANCE_BETWEEN_OPERATIONS_Y>=0.5

While you would have to....well, I'll leave it to you to decide which might be "easier". For me, it's just nice to see people like yourself thinking "outside the box".

[soymilk]

I've done it that way before too, but that is all assuming the fixture spacing is equal distance from each other. There is a million and one ways to code it, in the end it all depends on the scope of what needs to be accomplished and the programmer/operators preference.

I agree that adding 4 variables and having the machine calculate the position would scale better. But given the original request was for just 10 positions, I personally gravitate to the KISS methodology. I might be cynical but I've been around long enough not to assume everything is perfect or that it will stay perfect. I much rather be able to the operator be able to control 10 position individually instead of getting calls at 2am asking why part 4 is out of center .010". YMMV though. This mentality might be different if you're writing code for yourself or writing it for other people.

[soymilk]

soymilk - Seems like skipping an instance could be useful. I've thought about adding that to my array macro, but a way to do it cleanly/efficiently hasn't become apparent to me. Ideally you'd be able to simply write out a comma separated list of numbers and the macro would parse them out and skip each one. The best my macro will do at the moment is skip entire columns at the beginning or end (by having it start at a column other than #1 or end at a column other than the last one). It would be real easy to manually skip some instances if you were writing out each set of offsets, but doing many pieces would get tedious, especially if the offsets weren't whole numbers. I'd be afraid of making some boneheaded mistake, like accidentally incrementing one of the offsets two times but only incrementing the other once. I wonder if the missing parenthesis in the 7th position would throw an error. :/

Im not really protecting this thought of 10 positions that are hardcoded into the program, its just one way I thought could help OP. If its just 10 positions its not very hard to manage. If its 100 positions then a more elegant solution is needed. But even on tombstones on our horizontal mill, we rarely need that many unique positions. I would imagine, once you have the numbers established, you really wouldn't need to mess with them anymore besides shifting them all.

holy crap... didnt realize this was a zombie thread. OP is long gone.

[extdrive]

I clearly have a lot to learn. I had no idea I could pass parameters to subroutines. I like that a lot. I've learned a lot of useful things in this thread. Thanks for share guys!

[David Bord]

Hey Mike, David Borden here! You got a Tormach?

Man, try out Fusion 360. Its very good CAD and CAM and fairly easy to learn. There are a TON of training videos on youtube as well. I have been a solidworks user for many years, but find Fusion functionality to be more than adequate for both CAD and CAM on the mill and the lathe.

[mountaindew]

Hey Mike, David Borden here! You got a Tormach?

Man, try out Fusion 360. Its very good CAD and CAM and fairly easy to learn. There are a TON of training videos on youtube as well. I have been a solidworks user for many years, but find Fusion functionality to be more than adequate for both CAD and CAM on the mill and the lathe.

This is what I was thinking!
Get some sort of cam software and start making parts and avoid all the coding. I have limited coding skills and focus more on cam skills and let the software generate the code.

That said you guys have some mad g-code skills

[MichaelHenry]

Hey Mike, David Borden here! You got a Tormach?

Man, try out Fusion 360. Its very good CAD and CAM and fairly easy to learn. There are a TON of training videos on youtube as well. I have been a solidworks user for many years, but find Fusion functionality to be more than adequate for both CAD and CAM on the mill and the lathe.

I've heard that Fusion can have some issues with the Tormach lathe (or maybe it is vise versa). If you have a Tormach lathe, have you noticed any problems with Fusion for it?

[extdrive]

This is what I was thinking!
Get some sort of cam software and start making parts and avoid all the coding. I have limited coding skills and focus more on cam skills and let the software generate the code.

That said you guys have some mad g-code skills

I actually do use fusion360 for CAM. But when I have a fixture with 20 identical parts it's a real pain to setup the CAM. I have to select the part features on each of the 20 parts for each operation. Its very possible there is an easy way to do that in fusion360 and I just don't know about it. So maybe that's the question I should actually be asking; Is there a way to mirror CAM selections in fusion 360 across multiple identical components?

[SCzEngrgGroup]

I actually do use fusion360 for CAM. But when I have a fixture with 20 identical parts it's a real pain to setup the CAM. I have to select the part features on each of the 20 parts for each operation. Its very possible there is an easy way to do that in fusion360 and I just don't know about it. So maybe that's the question I should actually be asking; Is there a way to mirror CAM selections in fusion 360 across multiple identical components?

Yes. Learn to use Operation patterns. You setup an operation for one instance, then create an (potenitally multi-dimensional) array of operations based that one example.

Regards,
Ray L.

[extdrive]

Yes. Learn to use Operation patterns. You setup an operation for one instance, then create an (potenitally multi-dimensional) array of operations based that one example.


Regards,
Ray L.

Thanks Ray, I'll have to give that a look.

[mountaindew]

I actually do use fusion360 for CAM. But when I have a fixture with 20 identical parts it's a real pain to setup the CAM. I have to select the part features on each of the 20 parts for each operation. Its very possible there is an easy way to do that in fusion360 and I just don't know about it. So maybe that's the question I should actually be asking; Is there a way to mirror CAM selections in fusion 360 across multiple identical components?

I don't know
I use sprut and there is a few way to do this. Although mirror or flip them is something I have not come across or figured out yet.

[Hirudin]

HSMWorks (and HSMExpress and the CAM in Fusion 360, I'm sure) does have excellent arraying options. It even lets you order the operations by tool, which is the main feature I wanted when I wrote my array script. One thing the scripts do offer that is advantageous over using the tools in HSM is the filesize doesn't increase proportionately with the number of instances you have. For somewhat simple parts it probably doesn't matter too much, but if you have 5MB of code per part and you have 20 parts you're looking at a 100MB NC file with... oh... 5 million lines of code. The time saved using HSM to generate the array may be lost in the logistics of creating and dealing with the larger file.

[David Bord]

I've heard that Fusion can have some issues with the Tormach lathe (or maybe it is vise versa). If you have a Tormach lathe, have you noticed any problems with Fusion for it?

Mike, not that I am aware of... its been working very well for me. Its a pretty easy ramp as well coming from Solidworks. There are a couple good posts for it as well. I know a few others that have had a good experience as well.

David

[MichaelHenry]

Mike, not that I am aware of... its been working very well for me. Its a pretty easy ramp as well coming from Solidworks. There are a couple good posts for it as well. I know a few others that have had a good experience as well.

David

Thanks, I suppose it's best to just give a shot and see how it goes.

[David Bord]

Its incredible for being free for hobbyists. There are a metric ton number of tutorials on youtube. John Saunders from NYCNC has done several. You can import your solid models from other software. The CAD is quite easy to use/learn so may be worth going start to finish just for the education.

I think there were some issues with Posts for the Tormach Lathe a while ago. Adamvs on the Fusion360 forum did a ton of work building an exceptional post for Fusion and the Tormach lathe so a good post is available now.

[MichaelHenry]

I've been using Alibre (now GeoMagic Design) for 10+ years and am currently using Onshape. I'm fairly happy with either of those so am looking at Fusion 360 mostly for the CAM end, especially when SprutCAM is being uncooperative. I've been watching John's videos for a while at F360 does look pretty easy to use; I just need time to give it a fair trial.