Buildbotics Forum

Absolutely love the controller. One thing I’d love to see added is a “check size” button or code. My previous controller had this feature and I found it to be invaluable. It basically initiates a toolpath (x/y only) in a rectangle boxing in the highest coordinates in your program. More than a few times it helped me avoid collisions or incorrect code in advance of actually destroying material or my machine.

Thank you for your feedback and suggestion.

I think the BB Controller already provides this capability, but it is implemented differently.

When you load a gcode program into the BB Controller, it will automatically simulate the program. This simulation displays the cut paths, estimates the total time to execute the program, and if the machine is homed, determines whether the program would run outside the bounds that are defined for the machine. If it does run outside the bounds, the axis display will display the words 'UNDER', 'OVER', or 'BOTH' in the 'State' Field. If it fits, it will display 'HOMED'. It will display 'UNHOMED', if you have not homed them machine.

You need to set up the soft limits in the motor configuration to make this work.

Hope this helps.

Thanks Doug! I agree fully on the simulation part (which is super cool). What I'm suggesting is the x/y moves in real life to the outer boundaries so you can see if there are any clamping issues that will not be cleared appropriately. For example will my dust shoe clear the threaded rod of this particular clamp placement. Running this with the Z slightly raised above any potential collisions offers a great deal comfort that you'll have a successful cut. These are things that I don't know how to simulate in the software. To be fair this could just be my lack of skillset on the subject as I'm new to CAMotics.

This description might be better worded, sorry if I'm not articulating the ask very well.

Draws the bounding box of where the job is in XY space.

Now, I have a better understanding of what you are looking for. We don't currently have that capability. I added this to our list of change requests on github at https://github.com/buildbotics/bbctrl-f ... issues/235 .

It is a good idea, but we have a fairly long list of improvements that we are needed. So, I cannot say when we will get to it.

Thanks for the suggestion.