On Mass Mop Editing

[dave benson]

A couple of weeks ago, my trusty Win7 32 bit machine expired
and I’ve been  Getting everything to run properly on a new Win10pro machine
On the whole it was pleasant experience from the windows side.
On the VS side only two files, both 2013 VS Files which did not compile even
with the obligatory cussing.

The Mass mop editor was one of them and after discussing with sibianul his need to
modify the tool numbers in his files, I had a look and updated the editor.
There are more mop values which can be changed  or modified including the
Tool Number.

The first thing to say is that if you are going to use it then practice with a copy of your
CB file.

The Left panel is for selecting your mop’s by some criteria like Part Name and mop type as an
example, once you get the hang of it, it’s easy.
The right hand panel gives you some basic ways to adjust or modify one of the mops values.

For example in the pic, I have a real drilling file with four parts and 45 mops per part.
184 drilling mops.
The stock is held in a fixture and drilled at a shallow angle meaning that the Stock height,
Target Depth, and clearance plane for each hole, and therefore each mop is different.

As you can see in this file, I Made a “Spot Face Part” and populated it with mops.

So now if I want to say make spot face operation an extra 0.5 mm deeper, which
would require 45 x 3 hand edits  after first calculating the new values with a spreadsheet.
This is what happened in real life as the first run in the machine I realised that the spot facing
area wasn’t quite deep enough. At the time I fudged it on the mill by modifying the Z Height
and changed the file after doing the plugin.

Now I can set my selection criteria from the left hand panel in the mop editor and then select
the mop value to modify in this case Target Depth. (Target Depth - 0.5 mm) from the settings
from the right hand panel.

The sim button will list all the files that will be effected by your selection criteria, but wont
make any changes, I always use this first to make sure I haven’t made any mistakes, then
when I’m happy with the sim results I use the RUN button.

The pics are before and after changing the Tool Number.

On a side note, the other program that didn’t work was the Tool Re-number plugin
I’m looking at this.

Dave

[dave benson]

One more pic

[EddyCurrent]

Dave,


I can't work out if this is an issue or not but if just the tool number is changed then it will automatically change the Tool Diameter and Tool Profile in the MOP, is that what's required ?

[BR52]

Hi Dave Benson.
It's been a long time since I talked about your attitude, selfish (selfishness)!
Don't use the obfuscator in your plugins.
If you don't want to put the source code here, OK!
You are the only person using the obfuscator in the plugin.

 selfish (selfishness)!

   Armando

[EddyCurrent]

Armando,

I use other peoples plugins to get coding ideas etc. but I think we should be thankful that they write plugins in the first place so that CamBam is enhance, at no cost, for everyone else.
There is no obligation to make the source code available and I therefore do not think we are in a position to make comment if it is not forthcoming although we may politely ask if necessary.

[dh42]

There is no obligation to make the source code available and I therefore do not think we are in a position to make comment if it is not forthcoming although we may politely ask if necessary.

+1

And tanks to Dave for this new plugin

++
David

[BR52]

I'm not asking for the source code.

What I'm asking, do not use obfuscator.
Don't use obfuscator, you understand what I said!

   Armando

[dave benson]

Ahh…….. man, they have Karens there too!

For those whom English is a second language
and may not know what a Karen refers to.

Karen is a pejorative term used in the English-speaking world for someone perceived as
entitled or demanding beyond the scope of what is appropriate or necessary.

To “obfuscate or not to obfuscate“  that is the question?
For the answer to this, I’ll leave it for a  ‘cliffhanger’ upload of the next bug fix.

Back to the plugin for a moment, I’m using VS 2022 now and importing
and “getting to run” many projects besides the CB one’s.

At my first rodeo for a console program, I elected to use a proforma
to suit windows,linux and mac .net6 and it did work, the thing was I also
had to include two extra files into the plugin folder (.conf files really), and
am in the process of making a new project from just the windows template
and if this produces just a single .dll file then I will use that as a template
for console programs rather than the version that requires three files.
I have a hunch that these console exe’s will still run on a Linux machine
I do have Linux mint running in a VM on my of the computers so when I get
some time I’ll check.

I don’t know why, but my new CB ver1 64 bit  session slowed to a crawl
and there was only one mop and poly line in the drawing.
just like the 64 bit version on my laptop, I reinstalled the 32 bit version
to get it working on the laptop and it works fine.
I hope this is not a portent of things to come.

This may well have been me as I was running CB through VS2022 and
it’s still pretty new, and I’m new to it. I usually like to leave it a couple of years
before moving from one version of VS to another, but this time I was forced
by circumstances to upgrade the OS and all the apps at the same time.

Dave

[dave benson]

PS:

And tanks to Dave for this new plugin

I never intended to publish it, it’s just an old unused\unloved
bit of code that, for the drilling file I had to actually cut and make real parts
from, which was a huge file.
I quickly found out that I’m not to be trusted with (Data Entry).
Even though I was very careful I still picked up errors in the Sim, there
are 184 x 3 values per mop to change if I were to change the stock angle
(which is what I wanted to do if only on an intermittent basis).

It’s old and clunky and won’t do Vengrave mops and threading.
In this particular Drilling file it was a life saver as I could adjust the depth
of the first ‘spot spacing’  operation as a ‘whole’ treating all the mops that make 
up operation wherever they are (different mops and parts) as a single unit.
I will work some more on it as it needs it, but have been playing around with the PPT’s
as some of them are very important for me.

The thing I wanted to get across was that if you start up from a template
and use a standard naming procedure across parts and mops and files
then an editor like this can be used to great effect.
The thing is, (and why I wasn’t going to publish it) is you may only use a piece of software like
this a few times in a career and so would have little utility for most people.

Dave

[dave benson]

Sorry I missed your reply Eddy.
IF you change tool, then you would have to re-generate the code.
This was just a quick fix addon, an after thought really.
Most of the standard mops drilling, profile and pockets are
well tested but not all the 3d stuff or the new tool change edit.
I just got my turret software running on win10 with mach3 and
external motion controller, it should have been OK but I had
not tested it. I feel like I can relax now and over the next few weeks
look at the CB stuff.

Dave

[EddyCurrent]

I'm not asking for the source code.

What I'm asking, do not use obfuscator.
Don't use obfuscator, you understand what I said!

   Armando

Yes, I fully understand, you are talking about using a .NET decompiler such as Reflector or ILSpy to inspect the source code.
That is also what I meant by saying, "There is no obligation to make the source code available", i.e. if someone wants to hide the code then it's their privilege but we can politely ask to see it if necessary.

[dave benson]

While waiting for some components and tools to arrive for
the cnc conversion I've again started to update some of my CB files to suit
the new machines (different work envelops and spindle speeds) and
so had to update the mop editor to allow it to work with not only the standard mops
but the Troch,VEngrave,and thread mops, and have added some extra mop variables
that are particular to those mops.


In the first pic I've loaded up a drilling file for a gauge block, where the holes are
drilled 3 deg off the Z axis, there's four part operations consisting of 45 spot face,
45 Spot Drill,45 Deep Drill and 45 for threading.

To change the Pin angle from 3 deg to 6 deg requires changing the retract height,clearance plane,stock surface and target depth values in each mop, so that would make for 720 manual
edits, besides a lot of work there would be plenty of room to make mistakes.

The task can be done now in four edits with the editor.

Some things to keep in mind when using the editor.
It's good idea to work on a backup of your file, as there are some things that cannot be undone.

If you have the editor open, and load another file or modify the file (perhaps adding mops,editing values or enabling\disabling mops), let the plugin know by pressing the refresh text boxes button to keep it up to date.

You must at least select the mop type to work with and a Mop field to change or query.
If either of these are not set then no output will be seen.

You can exclude mops from the search by manually entering a string or by copy and pasting
from the text box below, this is an exact search so white spaces matter, so if you have two
mops both named  mymop but one of the mops has a white space in front or at the end
then it will be rejected from the eligible mop pool.

This is a handy function as a Break Edges mop is a normal profile mop and shows up in
searches for profile mops, which for the most part, I don't want to see or edit along with the standard profile mops.

If you have parts with duplicate mop names, and you want to exclude one or more of them ( the mops) from the working pool of mops then disable it.

To make the changes stick in your file save it before closing it.

There's a common set of parameters for each mop type, Cut feed rate,stock surface ect
and then there's parameters exclusive to each mop type for example thread handedness or
tool tip diameter, so there's no point trying to set the tool tip dia in a mop that doesn't have
that parameter.

When setting a style, you have to select it from the drop down, check the checkbox and select it from the mop field to change.

I've put the common parameters in the 'mop field to change drop down' as well as some
I thought might be useful from some of the other mops that are unique to those mops.

When you open the plugin and click on the information tab, there are a few drop down list boxes
one showing all of the parts in the file (including disabled ones), another showing all of the mops in the file, this is handy as you can see all of the mops without using the tree.

On the left hand side of the replace Tab there's list boxes where you can select your search criteria
for example a particular part or mop, or a series of mops and parts and you can exclude mops
by name.
In the file in the pic, I left the part and mop names to 'Any' and set the mop type to 'Drill' and then
and selected a mop parameter (Target Depth) to change and clicked on Query mop to see a list of 
mops that will be operated on according to the selection criteria this case it was all of them.

The output from the Query gives a short form reply with the part name, mop name,style
and if it has any unique parameters they'll be put out too.

If you want a more detailed reply then use the run sim button.
Once your satisfied that your only working on the mops you want hit the run button.

The plugin has been compiled for CB ver 1.0 for any processor on a win 10 system.

There are pic's of the plugin in operation in the image folder. I was going to upload them
but there were too many and it was easier to just zip them.

Edit: I see a least half the post got through.
I've added the ability to work with tool libraries and a few more parameters.
This means that the pictures in the zip folder are outdated not showing the tool libraries
or extra parameters so as time permits I'll redo them.

Dave 

[dave benson]

Replaced with newer version that has formatting, a few extra parameters that can be edited
and some extra info on the info tab.
This should be ok for most people, but if you have a suggestion for an extra parameter or
two then sing out now while the code fresh in my mind.

Dave