General functionality available through the model?

[tbeaulieu]

I've been poking around in the vectric lua model today. At first I was pretty excited about being able to tackle some advanced functionality that I have in mind, but I'm not sure it's actually possible.

For anyone with experience with the model...

It seems to me that some of the key functionality that I want isn't available.

Creating a new sheet with a specific name or even setting the name explicitly (minor, but, still)
Copying cad objects across state lines (sheets/layers)
Copying a toolpath between sheets

I was hoping to take a complex sheet, hide unwanted vectors and rebuild everything in a new sheet: only the visible vectors and the toolpaths that could then be recalculated to strip the non-existent vectors. I could then manually move things around to run the subset job on completely different material (think replacement parts).

The model seems to be bottom-up, versus what I'm used to as a former coder, which would be containers with children, making the relationships self-documenting. Here, you seem to need to know how to assemble the model from the bottom-up.

This functionality is fantastic, but it seems like they haven't really committed to covering all the bases.

[adze_cnc]

It seems to me that some of the key functionality that I want isn't available.

Quite probably. Just about the last things added to the API were under version 10 of VCarve/Aspire. And those were rudimentary sheet creation and support for a new tool database selection.

Even still, the API does not cover all of what's available in the "actual" programs. e.g., you can't create or manipulate text objects.

For that matter some documentation is lacking and has been since 2013. e.g., search for :ShowDialog (i.e. show the HTML dialog) and you'll find only one reference and that's in sample code. From that sample we can gather that it returns a Boolean value.

• Creating a new sheet with a specific name or even setting the name explicitly (minor, but, still)
• Copying cad objects across state lines (sheets/layers)
• Copying a toolpath between sheets

From jimandi500's "Easy Cabinet Maker" gadget:

At this time, the gadget cannot create new Sheets with differing material (Z) thickness. All created Sheets have been replicated using the initial sheet thickness (Z) value. You will need to manually adjust each Sheet (Z) thickness in the Sheet Side Menu, to match the cabinet part thickness before milling these parts.

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