GRAFX II UPDATE RELEASE (GRAFX2.EXE) GRAFX2.EXE (8/10/89) 1) Approach/retract elements handled in undercut avoidance and pocketing. 2) RESET added to FILES pull down menu 3) Arc leader toggle solutions 4) UNDO for transforms with "Old keep" active 5) "N" word control implemented 6) CUT PART menu eliminated. Initial parameter screen now comes up for the input of Tape ID, home position and sequence number control. 7) Toolpath STEP mode - ramped Z moves 8) Toolpath STEP mode - Data insertion (TOLR type data) 9) Popup menus initial selection default 10) Multiple picks report number of items 11) Layers ON/OFF better explained in HELP screen 12) Turn all layers On/Off menu selection 13) UNDO info line changed 14) F6 key moves to Menus from graphics window 15) If deleting geometry under boundary or set, now asks if sure 16) Non abort recovery from boundary cut errors 17) Expanded info to .DA file from tool changes 18) Transform repetitions is reset to 1 on a new operation 19) Toolpath STEP mode - Changes menu on motion blocks only. 20) Fixed Horizontal and Vertical line trimming referenced geometry bug 21) Changed "tool" and "cutter" references to "wire" in wire parameters 22) Cutter offset cutting now gives back memory to DOS after completion -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE (8/14/89) 1) Toolpath file cancel returns to NC menu instead of ROOT menu 2) Geometry import was changing Job name on Save op -> corrected 3) Approach/Retract elements no longer drawn on Draw Part operation 4) Initial Parameters screen now displays Turning, Non-Turning or Wire 5) Point values no longer asks for Z value 6) Changed "wil" to "will" in RESET message -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE (8/24/89) 1) Automatic approach/retract detection in pocketing eliminated. It occasionally caused failures. Use Boundary definition approach/ retract. 2) Version 1.03 GEO file implemented, automatic conversions done from previous versions. 3) Angle dimensioning implemented. 4) Temporary toolpath files created for pocketing & roughing are now created on the TMP path (e.g. RAMDRIVE) if one exists. 5) Input file open errors (e.g. file not found) and output file open errors now require a key to be struck before continuing. 6) A reset operation now queries on saving changed GEO files before proceeding with the reset. 7) Tangent arc to 2 entities added. This is similar to fillets except that the radius is asked for and no trim is done. 8) XYZ Tool change position now initialized to 0 9) Fixed bug-> transform of a window which contains dimensions bombed program 10) Fixed bug->new layers occasionally initialized with erratic thickness 11) Fixed bug->erronious data causing tiny screen scale factors bombing program. Scales may now not be smaller than .00001. 12) Boundaries elements are now drawn in the same direction as the correspond- ing geometry was drawn thus eliminating pixel mismatch between the two. 13) GRAFX II now checks for the presence of the GFX.SYS file before proceeding otherwise an error exit is taken with the message: Configuration file not found...run G2CONFIG program 14) If MetaWindow resident driver is not loaded or an attempt to load a device which doesn't exist is made the following message is displayed prior to the error exit: fatal init. error...graphics driver not present 15) The layer selection menu now always displays the current layer in red indicating that it will be on. 16) A RESET now clears the job name 17) 3 entity trim added 18) A blank line has been added to the GEOMETRY menu between the CREATE selections and the other selections 19) The "TEXT SIZE" item has been added to the dimension menu allowing for the size and angle of dimension text entities to be set. The size of dimension text will now be displayed according to the current display scale. 20) Fixed bug-> graphics screen displayed mirrored vertical after aborting from PRINT SCREEN operation. 21) Degree marks are now displayed on angular dimensions. 22) Eliminated drawing of approach/retract elements in Draw Mode on XY plotter. 23) XY Plot is now done at the user specified scale factor entered just prior to the XY plot. 24) Graphics Print Screen now queries before proceeding. 25) Plotting of dimensions on XY plotter now supported. 26) The current view is now saved in the .GEO file and the view is restored when the file is fetched. 27) Fixed bug-> Turning off auto dimensioning was also turning off leader arrow heads. 28) Changed DELETE ALL info line to: Delete all currently displayed entities 29) Fixed bug-> Selecting a pen number in the LAYERS menu sometimes hung up the program. 30) The following error message now appears when defining the same points for the corners in creating a Rectangle: Illegal rectangle...corner points are the same 31) Dialog boxes are now displayed with a default action selected 32) Completion of linked boundary or point set now displays message to select next action from menu 33) The info line on the "IN/OUT" selection of the boundary menu now specifies "accepted" boundary and the menu selection has been separated from the boundary creation selections. 34) Spelling of ENTITIES corrected in transform entities menu 35) When moving a boundary to another layer, the underlying geometry is now deleted from the original layer. 36) Boundaries and Point Sets are now included in the Transform operations. 37) Reorganization of overlays has freed up about 16K of memory space. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE (8/31/89) 1) Fixed bug-> Selecting the TRIM toggle entry in the CHAMFER menu resulted in erroneous display in the menu. 2) Fixed bug-> Selecting the TRIM toggle entry in either the FILLET menu or the CHAMFER menu did not change the menu entry (ON or OFF) in the other menu. 3) Reorganization of overlays has made more memory available to the program. 4) Undercut avoidance now drops out tool motion which caused undercuts because it was cutting backwards along its associated element. 5) Auto generated linear dimension leaders are now shifted an absolute distance of .1" off of the part. 6) Fixed bug-> The lines trimmed after a chamfer operation may not retain their original angles. 7) Text entities are incorporated. 8) Fixed bug-> Import of DXF file failed on insert block entities. 9) Changed layer copy/move ALL message to: All entities transferred to.... 10) Error conditions encountered in part boundary cutting no longer take fatal error exits. 11) Temporary toolpath files created for boundary cutting are now created on the TMP path (e.g. RAMDRIVE) if one exists. 12) Unnecessary disk overlay activity has been eliminated on boundary cutting and POINT menu operations. 13) The Dimension TRANSLATE menu selection has been changed to MOVE. 14) When linking a boundary and the boundary links onto itself, a message is now displayed and auto linking is disabled. This is to prevent infinite linking which may occur when a closed boundary is linked and the last element picked is not connected to other elements on the boundary. 15) Pocketing now asks for the order in which the outside boundary was picked if the outside boundary undercuts any of the "island" boundaries. Note however that overlapped boundaries are not supported and the results may be erratic. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE (9/21/89) 1) Fixed bug-> Entering text size for text entities asked for width on the 2nd query instead of height. 2) On toolpath CANCEL the user is now queried before the cancellation proceeds. 3) Program number input has been added to the initial parameter screens. 4) Text entity data now reported by INFO selection. 5) Text size input now show default values when they are 0. 6) The line editor now displays more than 64 characters if more are allowed in the line. 7) Fixed bug-> Inputting too many characters for a text line caused program failure. 8) Fixed bug-> Exporting a GEO file changed the job name to the export name. 9) Text entities may now be imported and exported to and from a .GEO file. 10) Inputting characters to the line editor beyond the maximum now results in a beep. 11) Dimension arrows are now scaled. The length of the arrow is equal to the height of the dimension text characters. 12) DXF file POLYLINES and POLYARCS are now translated. 13) Arrows are now filled in on the graphics screen and the pen plotter. 14) HPGL export extension is change from .hpg to .pgl. 15) Text height has been increased on the XY plotter to correspond closer to the text display on the graphics screen. 16) Dimension entities may now be dragged when moved. A rectangle equal in size to the dimension text is dragged, while a tick mark for the leaders is dragged 17) Dimension or text move now sets flag for saving changed file and recalculating limits. 18) Fixed bug-> plotting text 19) AutoCad version 10 DXF files now imported 20) Fixed bug-> Reprocessing .dmb files on lathe jobs were setting IPM and RPM to the default values in the parameter screen when they had been set to zero. 21) TRIM/EXTEND has been added to the LINE and ARC menus for easy access. 22) Fixed bug-> Importing a GEO file changed the job name to the import name. 23) Fixed bug-> Resetting a job with an uncancelled tentative boundary may have resulted in erroneous boundary linking of a new boundary. 24) An optimized point set sequence is now created on Point Set LINK and STEP. 25) Fixed bug-> Removing a point from a point set did not reset the display of the connected path when arrow mode was enabled. 26) Fixed bug-> Point set window sometimes caused program failure when loading another overlay while the routine was still active. 27) When entering text through the line editor the right arrow key or mouse may now be used to insert spaces between words. 28) Associated radius dimensions are now automatically deleted when the referenced arc are deleted. 29) Linear dimensions off of points which are not either on a vertical or horizontal now pop up a menu asking whether the diagonal, horizontal or vertical component is desired. 30) The current scale factor and screen reference point is now saved in the .GEO file and will be restored on subsequent loads of the file. 31) Fixed bug-> Screen limits were not always being derived correctly on linear dimensions. 32) Fixed bug-> Aborting out of an XY plot prevented subsequent plotting until GRAFX2 got reloaded. 32) Fixed bug-> The Auto On/Off and Head On/Off toggles in the dimension menu were redrawing the menu selections with an obscuring background color when selected. 33) Fixed bug-> Text size parameters were sometimes changing due to rounding errors. 34) The Dimension menu PRECISION selection has been changed to PRECIS=n where n is the display of the current precision value. 35) The Non Turning parameter screen has been made into two screens. 36) A Tool Draw parameter has been added to the machining parameter screens allowing the drawing of the tool at endpoints, animated tool draw or no draw of tool when displaying toolpath during the cut part operations. 37) Fixed bug-> TPID and PROGRAM NO. lines may have picked up erroneous characters from strings of prior run jobs. 38) Fixed bug-> Arc leaders with tail points not falling on the arc as defined by the head point and center were being plotted on the XY plot with a step. The end point is now adjusted to be on the arc. 39) Fixed bug-> Line tangent to 2 arcs sometimes went tangent the wrong side of an arc. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE (10/13/89) 1) The default geometry file no longer defaults to the previous file name following a file RESET. 2) File name extensions are no longer displayed on the default name when inputting file names. 3) Fixed bug-> Arc leaders with 0 radius caused program failure. 4) Fixed bug-> Some boundaries were resulting in erroneous indeterminate outside boundary conditions when pocketing. 5) Fixed bug-> Entering boundary number 0 to the outside boundary order question when pocketing resulted in erratic program behavior. If 0 is now entered, 1 will be used. 6) Pocketing stepover defaults to 80% of the cutter diameter. 7) Fixed bug-> GEO files saved in isometric view would not display correctly when fetched prior to an isometric view select from the screen menu. 8) Corrected ANGLE LEADER menu description to "an angle". 9) Fixed bug-> Isometric view sometimes did not default to the proper thickness value. 10) Undercut avoidance has been improved to handle more special cases over the previous versions. 11) Toolpath color may now be selected in the parameter screens. Bright blue is the default. Tool draw at endpoints will draw the tool at the selected toolpath color while animated tool will still be drawn in bright yellow. 12) Fixed bug-> Feedrates were being initialized to 1000 IPM while speeds were initialized to 0 RPM. 5 IPM and 1000 RPM are now used as defaults. 13) The REPORT selection has been added to the machining menu. This gives a report of the machining operations on the job. Operations which have been written to the output file are displayed in red. In the case of using previously existing toolpath files, operations in the input file which have not yet been written to the output file are displayed in blue. 14) Fixed bug-> nap grid spacing may not have been consistent with the specified input values. 15) Fixed bug-> Doing a file RESET by either RESET or FILE GET caused any open toolpath file to be closed at the point the reset took place. Now the new file will not be closed and the old file will be preserved. If the machine menu is up at the time of the RESET, the NC menu will be restored. 16) Importing of GFX point definitions from DMB file produced with GFX has been incorporated. 17) Fixed bug-> Creating a B-Spline curve where consecutive input points were the same caused program failure. Redundant consecutive points are now discarded. 18) Fixed bug-> Occasionally if a dimension leader or arc leader was drawn prior to any dimension text, the leader head was not drawn. 19) Fixed bug-> Hitting any key other than SPACE, ENTER or ESC including the HELP key during a multiple pick solution toggle caused the next choice to come up. Now the computer will beep and the same choice will be active. 20) Certain ARC entity creations, where multiple arc solutions are picked from the screen were erasing solution candidates when a solution arc was very close to another (that is drawn on top of the other). Now this will no longer happen, however note that solution arcs overlapping other geometry will cause gaps when they disappear from the screen. 21) An inconsistency was introduced in the modal parameter data resulting in erroneous snap grid spacing. This is overcome by forcing the bad grid spacing parameter to .1. 22) When opening the toolpath file the current GEO file is automatically backed up to the file geometry.bak if the GEO file has changed since the last file save. 23) Selecting OBJECTS->CURVES now displays a menu allowing the selection of either B-Spline curves, Arc fit curves, or line fit curves. Arc and Line Fit curves have been added in this release. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE (11/07/89) 1) Undercut avoidance is now the default on pocketing operations. 2) On pocketing, when a boundary is picked more than once, the following message is now output: Boundary already picked...try again or process 3) Fixed bug-> Lathe roughing material boundaries with undercuts were causing program failure. 4) Fixed bug-> Linear dimensions off diagonal points did not retain the selected horizontal or vertical component attribute when moved or copied to another layer. 5) Fixed spelling of "Set" to "Sets" in EXAMINE menu. 6) Fixed bug-> Arc and line fit curves generated erroneous geometry when any entities were created prior to the curve points used. 7) Fixed bug-> IGES import failed if the IGES file had a point, line or arc as the first entry in the parameter section. 8) IGES Export has been added. 9) The "PLACEMENT" selection has been added to the IMPORT menu. When selected the point menu is invoked for defining the insert point for subsequent imported geometry. The current insert point is displayed as a small white cross. 10) Fixed bug-> Shifting arcs with DELETE OLD active may have caused corruption of the new arc. 11) When exiting to the operating system the following message is now output on the screen when DOS is loaded: ***Type "exit" to return to GRAFX II*** 12) Fixed bug-> Drawing dimension values of less than 1.0 when precision was set at 0 sometimes caused program failure. The precision in this case is now automatically set to 1 so that a dimension is drawn. 13) Fixed bug-> Screen limits were not being computed when fetching geometry files, resulting in incorrect EXTENTS display. 14) The following "Hot" keys have been added: F7 - Moves directly to top menus from graphics area SHFT/F6 - returns to previous graphics area position from side or top menus 15) The following warning message has been added when pocketing an overlapping boundary: Overlap detected...reprocessing with marked approach/retract may be req'd 16) The active function is now deactivated on a file RESET or GET. 17) On RADIUS auto dimension, the auto leader is now drawn to the arc at the point where the arc was picked rather than to the midpoint of the arc. 18) Angle dimensions now ask to pick the pie slice desired. This allows the angle dimension to be either complement. The placement point is no longer used to determine the angle. This allows the placement or movement of the angle text to any position without affecting its value. 19) Fixed bug-> A CHIP drill cycle was being reported as a DRAW PART operation in the machining operation report. 20) Fixed bug-> When starting up CUT PART operations on a new lathe job, the ROUGH operation which may be initialized on the parameter screen was not active unless reselected from the popup menu. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE (11/22/89) 1) The 63 point limit has been removed for creating B-Spline curves. B-Splines created with arc segments which are automatically linked into boundaries will link up to the first 256 segments. If more than 256 segments are in in the curve simply select LINK in the boundary menu or STEP to the end of the curve. 2) Fixed bug-> F10 abort out of a boundary linking was not working. 3) Fixed bug-> Maximum boundary overflow was not being checked which may have caused program failure on overflow. 4) Some math errors are now trapped before abort to operating system. The following message will appear: Math error encountered...result may be flawed 5) Fixed bug-> Defining a zero radius on a CIRCLE creation caused program failure. 6) Fixed bug-> None of the geometry picking routines in the point menu worked when defining the radius in a CIRCLE creation. 7) Fixed bug-> On some cursor operations the F7 key was moving to the bottom of the graphics window instead of to the pull down menus. 8) ENGRAVE has been added to the root menu. This selection brings up a menu of operations which give the ability to create font files for character engraving and to machine the characters by typing in a text string. 9) When mirroring, points and lines that lie on the mirror line are no longer duplicated unless they are part of point sets or boundaries which are being mirrored. 10) When a deleted geometric entity results in the deletion of the associated boundary or point set, a dialog box now queries whether to proceed with the operation. 11) On GEOMETRY TRANSFORMS, a window or all entity operation will now transform included boundary and point set objects whereas before only their geometry was transformed. 12) On LAYER COPY & MOVES, a window or all entity operation will now transfer included boundary and point set objects whereas before only their geometry was transferred. 13) Layers operations have been moved to an overlay freeing about 5K of memory. 14) Lathe BORE operations generated with this version will now be reported as "Bore" instead of "Rough" in the operation report. 15) Fixed bug-> On an UNBREAK operation, sometimes the object arcs were erroneously reported as not collinear. 16) UNBREAK no longer requires that the object entities be picked nearest to one of their end points. Picking may now be done anywhere on the entity. 17) IMPORT of HPGL files has been added. 18) When entering file names through the keyboard, file name extensions may now be specified which will override the default extensions associated with the particular type of operation. 19) When inputting a file which is not found, the input name will now be preserved as the default allowing simple editing in the case of a misspelling. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE (1/5/90) 1) Fixed bug-> When restoring screen views with PRIOR, FIRST and LAST in the screen menu, the type of view was always being drawn at the current view type. The proper XY or ISOMETRIC view is now restored. 2) Geometry extents are now stored in the GEO file eliminating the need for limits calculation when loading a GEO file saved with this version. 3) Fixed bug-> A DELETE ALL in the ISOMETRIC view may not have erased all the geometry drawn on the screen. 4) Engraving a character which does not exist in the font file now leaves a space where the character would have appeared and gives the message: "c" not found in font file 5) Overlay reorganization of B-Spline curves have freed up about 8.5K of memory. 6) Fixed bug-> In threading operations, if the IPM parameter was set to 0 all motion was being done at rapid feed even if IPR was set. 7) Fixed bug-> The machining operations report had misaligned columns if a feed tool radius went out to more than 3 decimal places. 8) The format of the lettering VEC file has changed whereby the arc direction value is now -1 for CCW instead of 0. 9) Tool geometry has been added. Tool geometry is drawn in GRAFX II and sent to the plot program if a tool library file (.TLL) is specified in the tooling parameter screen. Tool geometry files may be created by drawing tool geometry and EXPORTing it as a TLL file. The program point of the tool should be set to the (0,0) point. TLL file import has also been added. 10) In lathe roughing, boundaries defined in reverse may now be cut parallel to the lathe X axis. 11) Fixed bug-> Selecting RESUME while in step mode cancelled step mode in subsequent operations with the same tool. 12) When entities are created, very small coordinates are now converted to zero. 13) Text entities may now be transformed in the TRANSFORM menu. In the TRANSFORM ENTITIES menu TEXT may be individually selected or may be included in a WINDOW or ALL operation. 14) Version 1.04 of the .GEO file is incorporated. Earlier versions are automatically converted. 15) XYPLOT no longer draws the outside border. This is left to the user. 16) Text entities now accept a text string angle which is input in the SIZE menu selection. This allows the drawing of text in other than a left to right horizontal. 17) RESIZE has been added to the TEXT menu. This selection allows for the individual modification of the size, slant and angle of an existing text entity. 18) Screen limits are now recomputed on a text size ALTER. 19) The dialog box appearing on an END of NC program when more tools are in the old toolpath file now has a CANCEL selection which allows the cancel- lation of the END operation. 20) The initial parameter screen no longer comes up on the CUT PART selection if a new toolpath file is currently open. 21) DXF export has been enhanced for better compatibility with other systems. A DXF header file is now included with GRAFX II which is output at the start of a exported DXF file. This file is named DXFHEAD.DXH and may be edited by the user to modify the default information output in the DXF file. Spaces which appear in layer names are now converted to underscores as required by AutoCad. 22) The axes are now plotted on the XY plotter when axis draw is enabled. 23) Fixed bug-> Pocketing was sometimes failing if a TMP environment was not set in the operating system. 24) The offset part boundary computed for pocketing and roughing is now displayed prior to the generation of the toolpath. This boundary is displayed in gray for diagnostic purposes. 24) Entering ALT/M while in a menu now reports the available memory in the system. 25) Fixed big-> The pocketing stepover default value was not being created unless the pocketing parameter screen was brought up. It now is created when defining the tool diameter. 26) Z surface projection onto a cylinder has been incorporated for mill contouring and pocketing. 27) The step menu during regular contouring now appears at three more places (it did not appear in these places before): a. before the initial positioning move b. before the Z axis feed in (which is after the position to clearance level) c. after the final rapid retract 28) Threading parameters are now stored more compactly in the .DMB file. These parameters must be reentered if recycling .DMB files created with previous versions of GRAFX II. 29) Boundary space is now dynamically allocated in lathe roughing according to the amount of available memory in the computer. The allocated space is reported in the GRAFX2.DGN file. 30) A second check is now made for the software protect device if the first check fails. 31) Arc toolpath may now be drawn in planes other than XY. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.1 (2/27/90) UPDATE 1) The threading parameter screen now queries for the approach and overrun distances allowing for thread synchronizations and multiple lead threads. When inputting these distances, the variable "l" may be used to substitute the current thread lead into the expression. A typical approach might then be "2*l" and a double thread lead might be input as "4*l". 2) In entering expressions, the variable "e" now substitutes the value 2.718282, which is the natural log of 1. 3) Fixed bug->The DRAW PART operation sometimes introduced inconsistent position data into the toolpath file. 4) Fixed bug->Mispositioning in the toolpath file sometimes occurred when roughing undercuts in front lathes or in internal roughing. 5) When writing toolpath with tool draw on, the display of the tool geometry may now be toggled off and on with the F8 key. 6) Tool change positions may now be entered from the POINT menu by typing F5 or pressing the LEFT mouse button from the tool parameter screens. When digitizing these points with the CURSOR selection, you may now type ESC to return back to the parameter screen. 7) When entering X, Y, or Z toolchange positions in the tool parameter screens a "p" or "P" may now be entered which will store the current position of that axis. 8) The input of Z surface cylinder axis data has been modified. The Z Cyl- inder axis line now has the choice "Use last line". This selection is made to use the axis line data stored in an existing toolpath file. If this is selected and no old data exists, the X axis will be defaulted. If "Pick axis line" is selected, the graphics screen will now immediately come up, asking the user to pick the cylinder axis line. 9) Fixed bug-> Pressing ESC in the pocketing parameters screen failed to leave parameter input if Z surface projection was active. 10) The "Writing Toolpath.." talk window is now displayed on Z surface projections. 11) The following cutting parameters which were always initialized to inactive when entering tool parameters are now only initialized if the tool number changes: Tool file, Material boundary, Stock circles, Undercut avoidance, Z surface projection 12) Changing to the ISOMETRIC view while picking boundaries for a POCKET operation will no longer cancel the active pocket routine until the toolpath has been generated for the pocket. If a pocket operation is pending and the ISOMETRIC view is selected, the XY view will immediately be returned as soon as the cursor moves into the graphics area. 13) Fixed bug-> Toolpath draw was not being canceled with F10. 14) Excessive overlay swapping has been eliminated in the initial output of a Z surface projection toolpath. 15) Pressing the PgUp key from the initial tool parameter screens branched to the second screen. The first screen is now repeated. 16) Tool descriptions may now be entered in the TURNING or NONTURNING parameter screens. These descriptions will be output in the operation report which goes to the printer. They may also be output by certain post processors as display comments in the toolchange sequence in which case the descriptions should be enclosed in parenthesis as required by the machine. 17) REPORT has been added to the NC menu. This selection works the same as REPORT in the machining menus except the report is done for any existing toolpath file. The user is asked to input the name of the toolpath file, the F5 key or left mouse button enable menu selection of the file. 18) The isometric angle select graphic has been made more linear over different screen resolutions. 19) Fixed bug->When chaining to a utility program such as POST, NCTALK, etc, if answering YES to the saving a changed GEO file and then Esc when entering the file name, you could not chain to the utility without first saving the file. 20) On low memory environments, the system now attempts to size down the entities in order in order to proceed. 21) The MODES pulldown menu now stays up until EXIT is selected, Esc is hit on the keyboard, or the mouse is clicked outside the menu area. 22) The MetaWindow resident driver is no longer utilized in GRAFX2. 23) New graphics device support has been added. 24) The system font used by GRAFX2 may be force loaded by specifying the font file name in line 18 of the GFX.SYS file. 25) When trimming 1 entity, "on the save side" has been added to the message prompt when picking the entity to be trimmed and "on the save side" has been removed from the message prompt when picking the entity to be trimmed to. 26) BACK PLOT has been added to the NC menu. When selected the system queries the user for the name of a tape file to back plot. The current job name is the default and the left mouse button or the F5 key will allow menu selection from all the .DA files in the current directory. After selecting the tape file, the system then queries the user for the name of a post processor to be used in the data translation of the tape file. The left mouse button or F5 key will allow menu selection of the post processors (.PMB files) which are in the POST directory or current directory if no POST directory exists. The system then displays the message: Translating tape file...please stand by after which the plot program is loaded to plot the file backplot.dmb which was created during translation. The program REVPOST.EXE must be present on the system in order to do back plotting. 27) The "Z depth per pass" parameter has been added to the CONTOUR and POCKET parameter screens. When this value is set to non zero and less than the depth of the total cut, the machining operation will repeat at depths equal to the "depth per pass" parameter until the final depth is reached. The last pass depth increment may be less to reach the final depth. The "depth per pass" can be entered either as a positive or negative number. The system will automatically adjust the direction based on whether you are cutting down or up (although rare). 28) The "Z clearance plane" parameter in the MILL CONTOUR and POCKET operations have been replaced with "Z approach clearance plane" and "Z retract clear- ance plane". This allows individual control over the approach and retract positioning moves for an operation. 29) Fixed bug-> Some erroneous behavior in pocketing has been fixed. Sometimes the first cutting pass was made diagonally from the top of the pocket to the next pass depth instead of cutting straight across. Sometimes the first 2 pass cuts were repeated at the 1st pass depth if the starting element of the boundary was parallel to the cutting passes. Sometimes the tool would start out by plunging to depth, retracting and plunging again before taking the first pass. 30) The following message in pocketing: Overlap detected...reprocessing with marked approach/retract may be req'd has been replaced with: Open boundary detected...press [F1] for possible causes and fixes The help screen now covers the possibilities of approach/retract elements as well as open boundaries requiring closing by trimming the geometry. 31) The LOGO screen is no longer displayed if GRAFX2 is called with a job name argument. 32) In ARC blend to 2 ENTITIES, the solution toggle message has been changed from: accept/toggle fillet to: accept/toggle blend arc 33) In lathe roughing the "Undercut clearance surface plane" parameter has been changed to the "Part clearance surface plane". On each roughing pass the approach move and retract cut will now go past the surface of the previous pass by this amount on primary roughing as well as undercuts. This value defaults to .020 and may be adjusted for tool point angle cutter compensation. 34) The POINT CENTER geometry menu selection description now says: Get the center of an arc or circle 35) Diameter and angular translation have been added to the ARC EXAMINE display. 36) The spelling of "emulate" is corrected in the COMMUNICATIONS TERMINAL menu selection description. 37) When entering CHAMFER SIZES, the second chamfer length now defaults to the same size as the first. 38) Layer names are no longer upper or lower case sensitive in name matching operations. 39) Fixed bug-> Duplicate layer names were being created when renaming a layer to a name which already exists. An error is now reported in this situation. 40) Fixed bug-> Creating new layers past the limit on the number of layers may have caused program failure. The limit is now checked and an error message reported when it is exceeded. 41) "BACK" has been added to the "Execute machining operation" dialog menu. This selection allows the user to return back to the last machining parameter screen rather than proceeding with the machining operation. 42) Parameter input functions now allow the entering of F10 which will dismiss the parameter screen allowing you to see the graphics beneath it. You may then return to the same parameter screen by menu selecting the parameter entry selection in the main menu. 43) In fixed drill cycles the Z axis start point is now made equal to the R level resulting in more correct data to the POST and PLOT programs. 44) Fixed bug-> Part draw operations may have been getting out of sync when back to back part draw operations from an existing toolpath file were being passed through the output file. 45) Z surface projection onto a plane has been incorporated for mill contouring and pocketing. 46) EXAMINE now reports the layer for the reported entity or object. 47) Fixed bug-> Text entities were being garbled when exporting to TLL files. New .TLL files are distributed with this release. 48) RESET now restores all default modes as saved in the grafx.sys file. 49) PICKS have been eliminated from the MODE pulldown menu. GRAFX2 will now always check for multiple matches when picking geometry. 50) Fixed bug-> Trimming an arc to an entity tangent to the arc failed. 51) Fixed bug-> Trimming an arc sometimes trimmed or extended the wrong side of the arc. The endpoint closer to the point picked is now trimmed. 52) Fixed bug-> The use of X-stock or Z-stock sometimes cause erroneous undercut error messages in lathe roughing. 53) Lathe roughing and Mill pocketing parameters are now stored in a more compact format in the toolpath file. 54) Fixed bug-> In the GEOMETRY MODIFY menu, if BREAK was selected and then UNBREAK selected, entering "Esc" while doing an unbreak erroneously restored the break function. 55) The LINE TANGENT to an arc at an ANGLE geometry definition has been changed. The angle now refers to the angle of the line instead of the tangent angle on the arc. Since this now means that there are 2 possible solutions, the arc must be picked closest to the tangency point desired. 56) The message "Lay down endpoint" in the TRIM MANUAL operation or LINE TANGENT ANGLE operation now says "Move mouse to lay down endpoint". -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.1A (3/23/90) 1) When blending an arc to two other arcs using GEOMETRY->ARC->TANGENT ->2 ENTITIES, four potential solutions are now presented. Previously only two solutions were available, namely the two fillets. The two new candidates are blends that enclose the object arcs. The solution is now picked rather than toggled as before. 2) Where appropriate, the TALK window message "Pick line or arc" is expanded to "Pick line or arc near tangency point". 3) GRAFX2.EXE now returns the following message if it does not detect a proper protect device on a functional parallel port of the computer: No protect device detected on parallel port The device interrogation has also been modified to read some marginal devices. 4) The menus "TANG LINE" and "TANG ARC" have been changed to "TAN LINE" and "TAN ARC". 5) The selection ORIGIN has been added to the POINT menu. This creates a point at (X=0, Y=0). 6) The select toggle for both multiple picked entities and fillet selection now use the space bar key for toggling selections. In the case of fillet selection, pressing a key other than the [Esc], space bar [F1] or [Enter] now beeps and ignores the key. Previously an unknown key accepted the displayed fillet. 7) Boundary selections for contouring and pocketing operations may now be accomplished through inclusive windows. When the boundary pick cross hairs is displayed, F9 may now be pressed and a window may then placed around all boundaries to be machined in the operation. When selecting a group of boundaries in this manner, it is necessary that the "cut side" be the same for all of them in any one window since the "cut side" popup will apply to all boundaries in a window. This feature is an effective time saver for machining operations involving many part boundaries such as in engraving. 8) When picking the same boundary for both the material boundary and part boundary in lathe roughing, the following message now appears: Part and Material Boundaries are the same...try again 9) The JOB NAME selection in the FILE pulldown menu now sets the default file name for saving geometry. 10) Fixed bug-> eliminated erroneous error #1020 in cylinder projections if the cylinder axis line was created with point VALUES. 11) When creating CIRCLES the selection in the POINT menu used for the center of the circle is now remembered as the default for doing multiple circles. 12) The following fatal error message now appears when initializing graphics with an unrecognized graphics board adapter code: fatal init. error...graphics driver code not recognized 13) The following fatal error message now appears in lathe roughing when the number of undercuts on the part exceeds 40. Too many undercuts...fatal error 14) Fixed bug-> When getting an undercut boundary overflow error, a memory allocation error was occurring on the system. 15) The following parameter has been added to the Lathe Roughing screen: Back cut along profile at the end of each pass? If this is responded to with a "No" the tool will now retract at a 45 degree angle after each roughing pass instead of cutting along the profile to the clearance level. This feature is implemented for certain types of inserts such as ceramic which are not designed to do back cutting. 16) The "ACCESS" pulldown menu has been added. This menu is for setting options in accessing entities in the data base. Currently there is one selection "LAYERS" which allows for the changing of or turning on and off layers without leaving the menu you are currently working in. 17) Fixed bug-> Eliminated occasional creation of zero length GRAFX2.SYS file with resulting "Incompatible GRAFX2.SYS file..." error. 18) Fixed bug-> Isometric views were sometimes drawing arc toolpath in planes other than XY incorrectly. 19)*The parameter toggle "1 point and 2 angles" has been changed to "1 point and 3 angles" in the PLANE PROJECTION parameter screen to be consistent with the input required for this plane definition. 20) Fixed bug-> While in the FILLET or CHAMFER menus, executing some pulldown tasks such as a FILE GET sometimes caused the program to hang up. 21) Fixed bug-> When selecting lathe ROUGH operation, the OD operation could not be overridden by selection "ID cutting" in the parameter screen. Conversely the same condition existed when selecting BORE. The default OD or ID may now be overridden, however when recycling the toolpath file the operation will state ROUGH for OD roughing operations and BORE for ID roughing operations. 22) Fixed bug-> In a CUT PART operation, if null response was given to the the toolpath filename question a null file was created for the toolpath which could not be accessed. Now, toolpath will not be generated until a valid filename is given for the toolpath. 23) In lathe roughing, if the part boundary does not intersect the material boundary at the tailstock, the system will now extrapolate the part boundary in order to rough the part at the limits of the defined boundaries. 24) ARC ANGLES now sketches the arc circle after inputting the radius as a visual check of the arc placement. 25) GRAFX2 now may be started up while in a DOS print spool without adversely affecting the printout being performed. 26) The GRAFX2 software protect device may now be plugged into any parallel port which is active in the computer. Previously only LPT1 could be used. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.1B (4/ 5/90) 27) PATTERNS has been added to the OBJECTS menu. This selection brings up the PATTERNS menu which currently has selections for creating bolt hole circle, grid hole patterns and point generating functions. When any of these types of patterns is created, a parameter screen appears to input the pattern parameters. If the pattern is a bolt circle or grid pattern, the POINT menu first comes up to select the reference point. After the points for the pattern are generated, a dialog box appears, allowing for the automatic linking of the points into a point set. In the case of point generating functions, the first parameter asks the user to type in the actual function to generate the points. This function is of the type y = f(x). The function input should follow the rules of inputting expressions into GRAFX2. If f(x) is a trigonometric function remember that angles are expressed in degrees so typically the "x" angle should be divided by the constant "r" so that radians are converted to degrees. 28) Machine cutter comp directives were being output prior to any motion. They will now be output prior to the initial X or Y motion in order to generate more correct output by post processors. 29) Fixed bug-> Occasionally Escaping out of a screen window or translate operation was leaving the cursor confined to the graphics area thereby preventing access to the menus. 30) On a screen window or translate pulldown operation, the cursor is now confined to the graphics area on both cursor position selects thereby eliminating the accidental cancellation of the operation by moving the cursor outside the graphics area. 31) Transformed entities operations with multiple repetitions retaining original entities may now be undone when individual entities are picked. Previously only WINDOW or ALL selects could be undone. 32) Fixed bug-> On pocketing operations, when canceling the toolpath after picking boundaries for pocketing, sometimes when restarting the machining and selecting the pocketing boundaries again, the "boundary already selected..." message would erroneously come up. 33) Fixed bug-> After a popup type query in a parameter entry screen, mouse control of the cursor was limiting out too soon. 34) Fixed bug-> After accepting a tool geometry file in the Lathe Parameters screen, the system would not allow going back and deleting the tool file name. 35) Fixed bug-> Occasionally text entities in a tool geometry file would be erroneously output into the toolpath file as another type of entity. 36) Lathe drill operations now require the selection of a drilling line entity instead of a point set. This line should represent the path of the programmed tip of the tool and should be horizontal and usually along the spindle axis. The depth parameter in the drill parameters screen will indicate the drill depth from an existing toolpath file, but is for reference only. 37) Fixed bug-> Tool draw on lathe drilling operations were not being displayed correctly. 38) The linking of point sets may now be aborted with F10. 39) PURGE has been added to the DELETE menu. When selected, all points in the database which are not being used by any entities will be removed from the database. The geometry file will automatically be PURGED on a file save. a) Fixed bug-> Version 1.1A item 11 introduced an error causing the computer to hang up when the center of the circle is input as POINT VALUES or ORIGIN. 40) Fixed bug-> Deleting a BOUNDARY or POINT SET which had the same geometry element included more than once may have caused erroneous program behavior. 41) Fixed bug-> Deleting geometry entities which were included in more than one boundary or point set may have caused erroneous program behavior. Now when a boundary or point set is created and an entity is included which already is in a previous boundary or set, a duplicate entity will be created for the new boundary or set. On existing geometry files which may have shared geometric entities, when attempting to delete a shared entity, the following message will appear: Element appears in more than 1 boundary or point set...cannot delete In this case, to delete the entity, boundaries or sets must first be deleted so that no more than one boundary or set contains the entity before it may be deleted. 42) Fixed bug-> Mispositioning in the toolpath sometimes occurred on a pocketing operation when "finish pass" was enabled in the parameters. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.1C (5/ 3/90) 43) Fixed bug-> When importing DXF file POLYLINES, the entity type for individual POLYLINE segments may have been incorrect. b) Fixed bug-> Windowing boundaries for contour and pocketing operations introduced in Version 1.1A sometimes caused a "temporary toolpath system error" message. c) When placing a window around boundaries for contour and pocketing operations, the cursor is now confined to the graphics area to prevent a reset to a boundary pick if the cursor accidentally extends beyond the graphics area. The window may be cancelled with [Esc]. 44) Fixed bug-> A RESET failed to set the root layer name to "0" if the previous active geometry file had it renamed. 45) Auto dimensioning has been implemented for angle dimensions. On drawings using previous versions of GRAFX2, to use the manually created angle leaders alter the angle dimension with AUTO OFF. To replace the manually created angle leaders with auto leaders, delete the manual leaders. 46) The TRANSFORM OLD KEEP/DELETE toggle menu description has been changed to: Keep or delete original and intermediate geometry This better describes the process when more than one repetition is done in the transformation. 47) The DELETE ALL menu description line has been changed to: Delete all entities in currently displayed layers The TRANSFORM ENTITIES ALL menu description line has been changed to: Transform all entities in currently displayed layers 48) The GEOMETRY TRANSFORM SHIFT shift distance is now remembered as the default for subsequent transformations once it has been entered. 49) Fixed bug-> Pressing the left mouse button while in a parameter screen in some cases erroneously brought up the POINT menu or cancelled the current parameter screen. Unless in a parameter which accepts the left button (such as in digitizing a tool change position), this will now cause the previous query to become active. 50) TOOLING has been added to the NC menu. This selection is for the creation and modification of tooling files (TLL). This expands on the existing IMPORT/EXPORT of .tll files in that tooling parameters may now be entered in these files when accessed via this menu. The TOOLING menu has LOAD, PARAMETERS and SAVE selects. LOAD brings in an existing tooling file for modification, PARAMETERS is for the entering and editing of tool parameters, and SAVE saves the tooling file to disk. Some of the tooling parameters have corresponding parameters in the CUT PART parameters screens. When a new toolpath file is being created from scratch, loading a tooling file in the first parameter screen of a tool change will automatically transfer the tooling file parameters to the tool change parameters. The tool file query has been added to the NON TURNING parameters. It is suggested that non turning tool files be used for parameters only and not for geometry. This is because XY view tool draws only are currently supported for non turning work which most of the time translates to simple circles of the tool diameter, and the systems implied tool draw is faster in this case. 51) GRAFX2 when called from another program now allows the calling job name to have a numeric first character. Previously if a job name had a numeric first character, the geometry file would not be loaded after returning from a utility such as PLOT or POST, etc. 52) EXAMINE has been added to the ACCESS pull down menu. This selection is to report the geometric parameters of points, lines and arcs. This is similar to the EXAMINE in the GEOMETRY menu except that boundaries and point sets are not accessible with the pull down selection. 53) Fixed bug-> If the last displayed screen VIEW was different than the first VIEW, the proper VIEW was not being restored when selecting FIRST off the screen menu. 54) In the machining parameter screens, the drill cycle selection has been changed from a toggle to a popup menu for better visibility. 55) The message and talk windows for pocketing have been modified for clarity. 56) LPT1, LPT2 and LPT3 ports are now supported for the XY plotter. G2CONFIG version 1.01 may be used to set up these ports for the plotter. 57) Fixed bug-> EXAMINE circles reported the translation angle as 0. It now reports 360 degrees. d) Fixed bug-> PURGE when no points have been created gave an erroneous "Not enough memory to execute" message. 58) If draw mode is on, when accepting a boundary or point set, the following message will now be displayed: Boundary or set color not displayed since draw mode is on After hitting a key or mouse button, the boundary or set geometry will then be redrawn in the assigned layer colors. Previously when draw mode was on. the boundary or set would turn red on ACCEPT, but would subsequently turn back to layer colors on any redraw. 59) When fetching a new GEO file or doing a RESET and a toolpath file has not been ENDed or CANCELed, the system now asks if the user wishes to END the toolpath file before proceeding. 60) POSITION has been added to the BOUNDARY menu. This selection allows for the inclusion of tool positioning points within a part boundary definition. Points which are picked before the linking of any boundary elements will be used as approach points and points picked after linking and before accepting the boundary will be used as retract points. When picking the positioning points, the program will ask for a Z value which will be used for the Z level of the tool when positioning on a non turning job. If you are programming a turning job, this value is ignored and can be responded to with the Enter key. 61) Fixed bug-> On pocketing machining operations for a new toolpath file, if the first parameter screen was aped from, the default stepover and undercut avoidance were not being enabled. 62) Fixed bug-> In turning parameters, selecting BACK from the EXECUTE menu sometimes restored a parameter screen which was previous to the last one displayed. 63) Fixed bug-> Axes mispositioning sometimes occurred when creating a toolpath file from an existing toolpath file and one or more tools were passed through from the input file to the output file. 64) Fixed bug-> Approach/retract elements in boundaries were not being marked as such when copied or move to another layer. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.1D (6/ 1/90) 65) The menu description for DELETE PURGE has been changed to: Remove unused points from the database 66) The prompt for the 3rd angle when defining a plane using 1 point and 3 angles has been changed to: Enter rotation angle around Z axis (theta): e) When using positioning approach points in lathe roughing, the tool was positioning back to the tool change position just prior to the roughing passes. 67) Fixed bug-> Inch/metric "G" codes were not being output on tool change. 68) Fixed bug-> The default tool number failed to automatically bump ahead on the subsequent tool if a screen pick operation was executed from a machining parameter screen. 69) If PARAMETERS was reselected from a screen pick operation during a machining parameter input operation, the machining operation parameter screen was not remembered and the operation had to be reselected. Now when PARAMETERS is selected like this, the system will return directly to the last displayed parameter screen and the machining operation is remembered. 70) The cylinder projection axis parameter now defaults to "Use last line" if using an existing toolpath file with a defined cylinder axis other than the X axis or Y axis. 71) Fixed bug-> EXAMINE ARC was reporting the translation angle incorrectly. 72) Fixed bug-> Occasional erroneous motion of the tool up and down in the same spot has been eliminated. 73) When GRAFX2 cannot detect the SIM device the message displayed has been change to: No SIM device detected on parallel port If printer is connected to SIM, check that it is on f) The word "point" in the menu description of the EXAMINE selection of the ACCESS pulldown menu has been changed to "points". g) In the BOLT CIRCLE pattern parameter screen, the query "Direction which..." has been changed to "Direction in which...". h) The menu description for the PATTERN FUNCTION has been changed from: Generate points from an input function to: Generate points from an input math function 74) The "Nothing to UNDO" message now waits for a key or mouse button to be pressed before proceeding so that the message can be read. i) Fixed bug-> The HELP screen for entering PATTERN FUNCTIONS erroneously displayed HELP for tape ID lines. Function HELP is now displayed. j) Fixed bug-> PATTERN FUNCTIONS did not check the x value range when no convergence on the specified final x was possible. Now the following message will be displayed; x cannot reach final value and the function parameter screen will reappear. k) Fixed bug-> PATTERN FUNCTIONS only generated 1 point when a negative x step value was used. l) When patterns are being generated, the following message now appears in the talk window: Generating pattern Press [F10] to cancel 75) Fixed bug->UNDOing a point set or boundary generated by a transform or pattern could not be cancelled by selecting NO from the dialog box informing that the geometry underneath would be deleted. 76) When inputting layer names, if the name is all whitespace characters, the operation is now ignored. 77) The selection "Islands only" has been added to the pocketing parameter "Automatically generate a pass around the profiles?". When this is selected, after pocketing, profiling passes will be generated around all selected boundaries in the operation except the outside boundary. This is useful when face milling a part where the outside boundary is being cut on the outside. 78) Fixed bug-> When interrupting certain graphics "drag" type operations, such as moving text entities or digitizing circles, with a screen ZOOM or TRANSLATE, the crosshair may not have been displayed. 79) Fixed bug-> Pressing F10 on the last TURNING or WIRE parameter screen brought up the EXECUTE dialog box instead of going to the graphics screen. 80) Fixed bug-> Doing any type of screen redraw from the SCREEN pulldown menu when exiting a machining parameter screen may have resulted in the "forgetting" of the currently selected machining operation. 81) When temporarily leaving a machining parameter screen in order to do a required graphics operation such as digitizing a tool change position or picking a geometric element required for a machining operation parameter, the system will now automatically move the cursor into the graphics area to more conveniently select the geometry and display the prompt for the operation. 82) Fixed bug-> When leaving a machining parameter screen via the F10 key, the system erroneously prompted for the boundary or point set selection in order to proceed with the machining operation. Now, when moving into the graphics area, the inactive cursor will appear and the message window will inform the user to make a selection off the menu to return to the last parameter screen. The user does have the option to use the menus to do some other type of operation, such as creating more geometry, but should restore the last displayed menu to get back to the parameter screens. m) Tooling parameters are now transferred from tooling files to the machining parameter screens not only if creating a new toolpath file but when a new tool is inserted into the NC program in an existing toolpath file. 83) CONES have been incorporated into the Z surface projections. 84) The following parameter has been added to the CONTOUR and POCKET parameter screen: "Z" level for top of part: This parameter comes only comes into play when doing multiple Z depth passes (when "Z" depth per pass is non zero). In this case the first depth of cut will be measured from the top surface of the part rather than the "Z" clearance level as with previous versions. When multiple Z depth passes is in effect and the user has entered a "Z" approach clearance plane which is lower than the "Z" top of part, the following message is displayed: Warning..."Z" clearance plane is lower than top surface of part 85) The following parameter has been added to the POCKET parameter screen: Stock left on the profile passes: \ When an automatic pass around the profiles has been specified, this parameter now allows a specification of the amount of stock to be left on the profile passes to be different from the pocketing passes. For example, if 0 is specified here, the part can be rough pocketed and finished with the same tool. 86) Fixed bug-> Disabling undercut avoidance was not preserved when modifying a pocketing operation on an existing toolpath file. In addition, new tools added to existing toolpath files will default to undercut avoidance if doing pocketing. 87) Fixed bug-> This version corrects some errors which occurred in generating toolpath offset from arc elements of a boundary where the radius of the arc element exactly equals the effective tool radius (actual tool radius plus stock). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.1E (7/16/90) 88) END has been added to the STEP popup menu on toolpath generation which allows for the selective ending of a toolpath generation at any point. 89) Version 3.6A of the graphics processor has been implemented which adds additional graphics adapter support and fixes the erroneous operation of the Video 7 EGA extended modes and the non recognition of the Video 7 VGA 1024i board operating in 1024x768 resolution. The new graphics adapter support may be implemented through the latest G2CONFIG.MNU file. 90) Fixed bug-> When leaving GRAFX2 to execute a utility such as PLOT, POST etc., if the geometry file had changed, when prompted to save the file, entering a null response proceeded to exit GRAFX2 without saving the geometry file. Now in this case, GRAFX2 will not be exited unless a file name is specified. In addition, if no job name was yet specified but a name for the toolpath file was, that name will be the default for the geometry file save. 91) Fixed bug-> When QUITting GRAFX2 where the geometry file had changed, when prompted to SAVE the file and answering NO, sometimes GRAFX2 would not be exited until QUIT was selected again. 92) Changed LINE-TANGENT-ANGLE prompt from "Enter angle of tangent line" to "Enter angle of line". 93) Some dialog box menus which automatically returned to the main menu area on completion now return the cursor to the exact position prior to the dialog popup. 94) When changing to a new layer, the layer name in addition to the layer index number is now reported in the message window. 95) The layer select menu now displays the current layer in bold. 96) Boundaries may now start out on or end up on an inside arc whose radius equals the effective tool radius with or without undercut avoidance on. Examples of this are linear or radial slots with end radii equal to the cutter radius. 97) A message is now displayed when attempting to cut a boundary starting or finishing with an inside arc whose radius is smaller than the effective tool radius. 98) Threading has been modified to incorporate more accurate default threading passes. In addition, the tool now returns to the highest clearance level after each pass to avoid clearance problems which may occur when doing tapered threads. 99) "Z" values are now reported on EXAMINE POINTS for reporting MILL positioning points. 100) Multiple screen picks of boundaries and point sets are now handled at the boundary level rather than the geometry level as before. 101) Fixed bug-> Doing an EXAMINE on a boundary which included positioning points sometimes resulted in program failure. Now positioning points are evaluated and reported in the boundary EXAMINE. 102) Non-turning machine now always draw cutter circles rather than tool geometry when doing tool draw during the CUT PART operations. Tool geometry defined in the tooling file is now assumed to be in the ZX or YZ views and will be displayed as such in PLOT.EXE Version 2.12 or later. 103) Tooling files may now be menu selected from the CUT PART parameter screens by pressing the LEFT mouse button or the F5 key. n) Tooling parameters are now transferred from tooling files to the machining parameter screens whenever a new tooling file is specified. 104) When saving a file, the LEFT mouse button is now treated like the Enter key. Previously only the RIGHT mouse button was recognized. 105) Fixed bug-> The HELP screen for entering program numbers and tool description parameters were erroneously displaying the Tape ID HELP screen. Appropriate HELP is now given. 106) When TICKS are enabled the start of boundaries and point sets are now marked with a square. 107) Fixed bug-> When drawing linear dimensions or defining circles, repeated [Esc]'s from the POINT menu may have resulted in program failure. 108) Fixed bug-> When selecting GO BACK from the POINT menu on linear dimension- ing, a previous menu selection may have been erroneously displayed in red. 109) Fixed bug-> Lines were not being extruded in an ISOMETRIC draw when layer thickness was in effect but the default thickness was zero. 110) Fixed bug-> Positioning line between points in point sets and boundaries with ARROWS enabled were being drawn with extruded thickness in the ISOMETRIC view. 111) Points are now drawn on the top surface instead of the bottom surface in the ISOMETRIC view. 112) Fixed bug-> With draw mode on, LETTERing in the ENGRAVING menu is now drawn in the active layer color instead of the boundary color. GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.1F (8/14/90) 113) Fixed bug-> If the tooling file query is skipped over in the CUT PART parameter screen by either a PgDn or Esc, the tool geometry was not being loaded. 114) Fixed bug-> Created layers were erroneously being retained from the prior geometry file when creating a new geometry file without restarting GRAFX2. 115) Fixed bug-> An erroneous menu name was being displayed in the menu tree on geometry transformations when POINT ORIGIN was used to describe a transform parameter. 116) MODES has been added to the IMPORT menu. When selected a pulldown menu appears which currently has one selection. By enabling LAYERS on the pulldown menu, geometry which is imported from DXF, IGES or CADL files will be stored in layer names which is the same name as the layers in the source file in which the entities resided. This may be used as a way to filter out entities not needed when importing geometry from other systems. After sorting the geometry into layers, you may the do a DELETE ALL within the individual layers. When importing into layers this way, you should realize that after the translation is done, you may be left with a blank screen since the layers where the imported geometry resides may not be turned on. 117) Fixed bug-> IMPORT CADL files with lines greater than 132 characters long were overflowing a buffer causing program failure. 118) Fixed bug-> IMPORT CADL files were handling arc angles incorrectly. 119) WINDOWS has been added to the ACCESS pulldown menu. When this selection is enabled, the action on windowing operations is reversed. That is, the operation will be done on all entities which fall OUTSIDE the window instead of inside the window as is usually the case. This mode is non modal and is reset directly after a windowing operation or whenever you leave the main GRAFX2 program. It may also be turned off by toggling the selection in the ACCESS menu. When active, windows are drawn in red instead of white and prior to executing the operation a dialog box will ask you to confirm the operation. 120) During a REDRAW of toolpath, the display of tool geometry may now be toggled on and off with the F8 key and single step display of the toolpath may be toggled on and off with the F2 key or LEFT mouse button. 121) Math system errors are now detected by GRAFX2 and report the occurrence of the error allowing the user to save any files and gracefully exit the program. Previously these errors would immediately exit to DOS, thereby losing any unsaved files. 122) GRAFX2 no longer returns to DOS when the user hits [Ctrl/c]. This prevents the loss of unsaved files if [Ctrl/c] is accidentally entered through the keyboard. 123) On pocketing operations when selecting boundaries to pocket, Shift/F9 may now be pressed to form a window within which all boundaries will be pocketed in separate pocketing operations. This differs from the F9 window which defines the outside boundary and all islands to be pocketed in a single pocketing operation. The new Shift/F9 window does not support island avoidance. 124) Windowing options in contouring and pocketing operations are now explained in the HELP screens when selecting the boundaries to be machined. 125) Fixed bug-> Occasionally when CANCELLING a POCKETING operation from the the STEP menu, some system memory was not returned for use by the program. 126) Fixed bug-> Sometimes when doing a TRANSFORM using a window with OLD DELETE active, boundaries would transform more than the specified number of repetitions. 127) The current GRAFX2.EXE revision level is now reported when entering Alt/v from any menu. 128) Fixed bug-> Screen limits were not being computed if only dimensions and text entities existed. 129) Fixed bug-> No check was being made for overflow when storing dimension or text entities. 130) When storing entities if the entity size limit is exceeded, the error message now beeps and waits for a key to be pressed before proceeding. 131) The selection TEXT has been added to the IMPORT ASCII popup menu. This selection is used to import ASCII text files directly as GRAFX II text entities. 132) Fixed bug-> Erroneous "Z-SURF error #-4" message sometimes occurred when the edge of a Z-projected pocket coincided with the edge of the cone. 133) Fixed bug-> Relative position (PR) data was not being imported correctly from HPGL files. 134) Modifications have been made to EXPORT of HPGL files: a) Coordinates system axes are not exported b) Data is always output with a scale factor of 1.0 c) The zero reference point is always relative to the part origin 135) Crosses for POINT entities are now drawn larger in XYPLOT and when exporting HPGL files. 136) Fixed bug-> The F10 key was not canceling IMPORT of TLL files as the talk window stated. 137) MODES has been added to the LAYERS menu. When selected a pulldown menu appears which currently has one selection. By enabling CASE on the pulldown menu, upper or lower case letters will be considered when searching for layer names. 138) The menu description for the NO selection in the EXECUTE TOOLPATH dialog menu has been changed for grammatical reasons. 139) When creating points as the center of arcs or circles, the arc pick routine now allows you to press the F9 key to bring up a window which will create center points for all arcs or circles which fall within the window. This is particularly useful when point sets are to be created for drilling operations where holes were defined as circles. 140) Fixed bug-> The GFX-DMB selection of the IMPORT menu was not operational. 141) Fixed bug-> Some boundaries with very small mismatches on connecting segment were resulting in erroneous toolpath generation. GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.1G (10/2/90) 142) Fixed bug-> Lathe roughing may not have cut to the specified stock depth on the smallest diameter if the offset material boundary extended lower than the offset part boundary. 143) Fixed bug-> GRAFX-DMB IMPORT sometimes resulted in program failure when importing arcs. 144) The OPERATION DESCRIPTION parameter has been added to the TURNING and NON- TURNING parameter screens allowing the user to input detailed descriptions of the machining operations. 145) Fixed bug-> Directional arrows were being displayed incorrectly for CCW arc boundary segments. 146) Z surface projection onto a sphere has been incorporated for mill contouring and pocketing. 147) Fixed bug-> On pocketing operations when executing a finish pass on islands only, occasionally the wrong boundary was being excluded on the finish passes. 148) Fixed bug-> Importing DXF files sometimes failed due to unrecognized group codes in the DXF file. Unrecognized group codes are now ignored correctly. 149) Fixed bug-> The word "between" was misspelled in the GEOMETRY TRANSFORM TRANSLATE POINTS menu description. 150) Fixed bug-> Boundary linking of arc segments were being corrupted when mirroring boundaries or scaling boundaries with a negative scale factor. 151) Fixed bug-> When ENDing a toolpath file whereby pocketing boundaries were picked but the pocket was never generated with the [Esc] key, an erroneous "boundary already picked" message sometimes occurred when attempting to pick pocket boundaries on subsequent toolpath creations. 152) When setting drawing modes in the MODES pulldown menu, screen redraws will now not take place until you leave the menu. 153) Operation reports to the printer now do unbuffered output, thereby reducing the chance of DOS printer errors if the printer becomes not ready during printing. 154) Fixed bug-> When recovering from a printer error on operation reports where a CUT PART operation was not yet started, the toolpath file was not being closed thereby erroneously reporting a case that a CUT PART operation was in progress. 155) When deleting boundaries or point sets, the dialog menus which ask if you want to delete the geometry underneath them now gives the CANCEL choice which when selected will cancel the delete operation entirely. 156) Picking boundaries for a DRAW PART operation now allows the option of windowing boundaries by pressing [F9]. On non turning and wire jobs, the query for top and bottom surface Z values will apply to all boundaries selected in a single windowing operation. 157) Screen limits are now updated after entering a text string. 158) INVERT has been added to the BOUNDARY menu. This selection allows the user to reverse the direction of an existing boundary. This is particularly useful when a boundary has been mirrored and climb or conventional cutting is to be preserved. When INVERT is active Boundaries may be individually picked or windowed by pressing the [F9] key. 159) When window options are used on some boundary picking operations via the [F9] key, the cross hair is now displayed in yellow to distinguish it from the boundary pick cross hair. 160) The following changes have been incorporated in position points for milling contour and pocket Operations: a. Tool motion from approach position points and toward retract position points is at feedrate. Previously it was at rapid. b. Position point feedrate motion is "step", not "ramp", style and takes place at z-depth. c. Position point motion applies only to Contour and the finish passes of Pocket (position points are ignored on the roughing passes of Pocket). Position points can be associated with islands as well as the outer boundary. 161) The following changes have been incorporated in Z-step repetition for milling contour and pocket Operations: a. If the feedrate motion generated by Contour and Pocket closes on itself, the portion that forms the closed loop repeats at each z-step. Approach motion (before the loop) and retract motion (after the loop) occur only once. b. If the feedrate portion does not close on itself, the entire feedrate segment repeats itself at each z-step (this includes vertical plunge and retract). The motion joining the start point and end point takes place at rapid at the z-clearance level. 162) The following changes have been incorporated in TRANSFORM ENTITIES selections: a. When windowing boundaries, the order of the boundaries changed if any of the boundaries contained only arc elements. Now the sequential order is maintained. This often comes into play when transforming characters from engraving and machining them with a window selection. b. When windowing boundaries, a boundary is now only included if all its elements fall within the window. Previously, a boundary was included if any of its elements fell within the window. c. When OLD DELETE is active, now only the original entities are deleted. Previously the original and intermediate elements were deleted when more than 1 repetition was specified. 163) GEOMETRY has been added to the ENGRAVING menu. This provides for engraved character strings to follow the contour of a predefined line or arc. The line or arc selected will be the baseline of the engraved character string. After selecting the line or arc, the user is prompted for the staring point. After selecting the starting point from the POINT menu, the point is projected onto the path geometric entity. When engraving on an arc, the user is prompted to select with the mouse the side of the arc to engrave on (outside or inside). 164) POLAR has been added to the EXAMINE menu. This reports the radius and polar angle of a point relative to a polar center point. When selected, the POINT menu comes up and prompts the user for the polar center point and the end point. 165) When defining points which are not retained in the geometry file such as some location points, the system is no longer flagged to query for a save of the GEO file when exiting the GRAFX2 program. 166) The number input routine now converts the default or residual value displayed to 0 if it is a very small number. 167) When LOADing a tooling file, the display of the tool geometry is now automatically centered and fit to the screen. 168) The query in the DRILLING PARAMETERS screen: Enter subsequent PECK increment has been changed to: Enter initial PECK increment (if different) This is used by some post processors which provide for an initial depth on PECK or CHIP canned cycles which is different than the subsequent depths. The previous wording was inaccurate and non functioning. 169) The following queries have been added to the NON TURNING PARAMETERS screen: Post Processor Optional M-code #1 Post Processor Optional M-code #2 Post Processor Optional M-code #3 Post Processor Optional M-code #4 These provide for the entering of optional machine codes used by some post processors to customize the tool change output sequences. 170) Fixed bug-> Lathe cuts were sometimes made on the wrong side of the part if the boundary contained an ending positioning point which was not on the tailstock side of the boundary. 171) Fixed bug-> The ID cutting selection parameter was not being retained toolpath file for lathe finishing and threading operations. 172) PART has been added to the MODES pulldown menu. When enabled Draw Part operations will be displayed in white when doing toolpath screen draws in GRAFX II. When disabled, the Draw Part operations will not be displayed in GRAFX II but still will be displayed and plotted in the PLOT program. The ability to disable Draw Part displays has been incorporated so as not to obscure the display of boundaries when picking them for toolpath generation. 173) Fixed bug-> A math error may have occurred on lathe roughing operations if undercutting was selected and no undercuts existed on the boundary. 174) When picking CANCEL from the CUT PART menu and then selecting NO when the dialog asks if you're sure, the system no longer restores the NC menu since the presumption is to continue with CUT PART operations. 175) Fixed bug-> Lathe roughing was erroneously outputting a cutting feedrate of 1.0 regardless of what was input to the parameter screen. 176) The parameter "Active layer" has been added to the TURNING and NON TURNING parameter screens. This parameter allows the user to specify an active layer corresponding to the machining operation being done. When a layer has been specified, it will automatically become the active layer when doing that operation and the screen will redraw to display the layer if necessary. The layer names may be menu picked when entering the parameter and other layers may be turned on and off from the menu as with the LAYER CHANGE operation. 177) The TURNING parameter query "Feedrate constant surface speed" has been changed to "Constant surface speed". 178) Fixed bug-> The tool point angle parameter was not being stored in the tooling file correctly. 179) Fixed bug-> Circular toolpath corresponding to 180 degree arcs was sometimes inverted, that is it was in the opposite circular direction of the geometry arc. 180) Fixed bug-> The error message corresponding to an undercut condition on the initial/final arc was sometimes displayed incorrectly. 181) Fixed bug-> Undercut avoidance failed if the first element of a closed boundary crossed over the last element. 182) Fixed bug-> Lathe roughing sometimes operated incorrectly when only undercutting was selected. 183) Fixed bug-> Lathe roughing parallel to the X axis failed when the boundary contained and undercut whose endpoints formed a vertical line. 184) Fixed bug-> UNBREAK erroneously displayed an error message when unbreaking horizontal and vertical lines. 185) Fixed bug-> UNBREAK would process and modify arcs which had different centers. Now an error message is issued instead. 186) The UNBREAK error messages are now more specific and more understandable. 187) Fixed bug-> Lathe roughing sometimes evaluated orthogonal cuts as angled, and created an erroneous undercut which could have resulted in a math error when attempting to do the undercut. 188) In lathe roughing, when attempting to do a PARX undercut on a boundary defined in reverse, (right to left), a message is now displayed to reverse the boundary and the operation is not attempted. Previously the operation would have proceeded incorrectly. PARZ undercutting of reverse boundaries will however be done. 189) Fixed bug-> The cutter comp parameter in pocketing and contouring operations was not being picked up when redoing existing toolpath files. 190) When changing the scale for engraving letters, the spacing between the characters will now automatically adjust by the scaling amount. 191) When canceling open toolpath files, GRAFX2 no longer does a screen redraw unless the part geometry is intended to stay on the screen. 192) The machining parameter "Generate profile with automatic stock circles?" has been changed to: "Generate profile with stock circles:" with the choices now being: "No", "On sharp corners", "On all corners". Previously the choices were "No" which did not generate stock circles or "Yes" which generated them only on sharp corners (inside angle less than 90 degrees). Stock circles refer to a generated toolpath where the cutter essentially rolls around a corner by forming an arc path. 193) Fixed bug-> Erroneous Z values were generated when the last Z-pass was smaller than the "Z-depth per pass" parameter. 194) The menu selection 1-toggle has been added to the point set menu. This selection toggles 3 different modes for linking point sets. "toggle" will display either "last", "all" or "window" and will remain modal until another toggle is selected. The mode is also preserved as the default when doing a SAVE from the MODES pulldown menu and is preserved in the geometry file when it is SAVED. When "last" is active, the user is prompted for the last point of the point set. Upon reaching this point, the automatic linking process ends. This mode was the only mode available prior to this release and is most valuable when linking point sets for the creation of curves. When "all" is active, all the points in the currently displayed layers will be linked into the point set. When "window" is active, after picking the first 2 points, a crosshair is displayed to window in on the points which are to be linked into the point set. The first 2 points of the point set which were selected will be in the point set whether or not they fall in the window. A reverse window may be set by activating WINDOW in the ACCESS pulldown menu. 195) Fixed bug-> When REMOVEing the last point from a point set, the point did not appear to be removed graphically unless the screen was redrawn. 196) Fixed bug-> When LINKing a point into a point set which already was in an existing point set, an endless loop was entered whereby duplicate points were generated and stored in the point set. 197) The menu selection LATHE has been added to the ACCESS pulldown menu. This selection brings up a parameter screen which allows for the inputting of coordinate data relative to a lathe coordinate system. The first parameter can be set to input data as X and Z coordinates instead of the typical X and Y coordinates. The second parameter may be set to input data parallel to the lathe spindle axis, (X data if the first parameter was set), as diameters. If either of these parameters are set, the coordinate readout in the bottom right of the screen will reflect the selected modes when doing cursor type operations as well as the EXAMINE function report. This feature has been incorporated for those users who are more comfortable with entering coordinate data as they would when manually programming turning machines. The ability to enter data as diameters is also consist- ent with the dimensions given on many prints. 198) When creating fonts (.VEC files )in ENGRAVE, layers which have more than one character are now filtered out and very small data values are rounded to 0. This does not affect the operation of the fonts but eliminates the storing of unnecessary data. 199) When linking boundaries and picking the last line or arc element of the boundary, there now is the option to press the SPACE BAR which will link the boundary to the last connected element and stop. 200) The cursor is now automatically returned to the menus after completing a boundary or point set link. 201) When keying in layer names, trailing spaces are now deleted from the name. 202) Fixed bug-> A "Too many open files.." fatal error may have occurred when reprocessing an existing toolpath file containing tooling files repetitively without exiting the GRAFX2 module. GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.2A (10/25/90) UPDATE 1) GRAFX2 execution has been made more efficient through the use of a more optimizing compiler. 2) Many graphic display operations have been significantly speeded up for some graphic adapter types. These include graphic text write operations and area fills. These improvements apply to standard EGA (640x350) and VGA (640x480) adapters. Using extended modes such as Super VGA will not display the improvements. 3) The following selections have been added to the GEOMETRY->LINE menu: PARALLEL - defines a line through a point parallel to a line or arc PERPEND - defines a line through a point perpendicular to a line or arc 4) Fixed bug-> The Z-surf parameter screen for planes allowed the "Use last" selection for plane definitions when no last plane had been defined. An error message is now displayed in this case. 5) Potential memory errors on saved screen restores have been guarded against. 6) "There is still more..." has been changed to "There are still more..." in the dialog box which appears when ENDing a toolpath file which has more tools left in the input file. 7) Fixed bug-> The "Z" axis plunge feedrate was not being recalled from existing toolpath files. 8) The Spindle Speed queries have now been placed before the Feedrate queries in the machining parameter screens. 9) A cancel cutter comp code is now output if selecting no cutter comp on a machining operation for a tool where cutter comp was selected for the previous operation. 10) Fixed bug-> When generating point patterns and exceeding the point or point entity space, the functions continued to attempt to generate points. Now, the functions automatically abort on these errors. 11) The engraving routine which translates .VEC font files to boundaries now automatically terminates a polyline entity in the .VEC file which may erroneously be unterminated, if a new character is initialized. 12) Fixed bug-> Importing DXF POLYLINES was ignoring lines unless they were in a BLOCK INSERT. 13) DXF IMPORT now gives more specific error messages when encountering errors in the DXF file. 14) When doing PICK in creating boundaries, the cursor now stays in the graphics area after each pick, instead of returning to the menu area. This condition was introduced in 1.1G item #199. 15) The display of tool position coordinates while in step mode has been changed from X Y & Z to X & Z for lathe work. 16) The DONE selection has been added to the POINT menu. This selection does the same thing as GO BACK and is added simply for clarity. 17) The prompts for entering X and Y or Z values associated with the VALUES selection of the POINTS menu, are now constructed syntactically better as follows: Enter the X(Y)(Z) value of the .......: 18) Fixed bug-> The value prompts and talk window messages associated with inputting placement points for imported geometry failed to describe what the point represented. 19) Fixed bug-> Several bugs in connection with undercut avoidance existed. These were especially in the area where a boundary forms a cusp. 20) The CONNECTED selection has been added to the BOUNDARY menu, allowing for the creating of a boundary and its associated geometry to be done by connecting lines point to point. This mode is useful for doing several types of tasks. Connected boundaries may be created for the path of a tool where a toolpath generator may not give exactly what is wanted. This task may be facilitated by setting a tool DIAMETER value in the MODES pulldown menu which appears when selecting MODES from the BOUNDARY menu. When this is done, points defined with the CURSOR mode (digitizing) will rubberband at the width of the tool thereby giving a graphic representation of the material which will be removed. Another visual aid may be invoked by toggling on FILL in the BOUNDARY MODES pulldown menu. When this is done, all accepted legs of the boundary will be filled in by the width of the tool simulating material removal. This shows you where the tool has been. After accepting the boundary, which may be done with ACCEPT in the boundary menu or by pressing the spacebar from any of the crosshair modes in the POINT menu, the boundary may be later machined with a CONTOUR or FINISH operation. Connected boundaries are also useful for creating bridges or fixes in non connected geometry which is being linked into a boundary. You may start a boundary using existing geometry and then switch to connected mode which will then pick up at the endpoint of the last linked element. When creating a connected boundary, a REVERSE or CANCEL will automatically delete the geometry underneath the boundary segment being removed if that particular element was created using CONNECTED. The UNDO box may be used in place of the REVERSE selection in the BOUNDARY menu when creating connected boundaries. This allows you to correct a connected boundary without leaving the POINT menu. 21) A new toggle selection has been added to the DRAW TOOL query on the non turning, turning and wire parameter screens. MATERIAL REMOVAL will simulate the removal of material by drawing the toolpath at the width of the tool. 22) Fixed bug-> Several errors with the graphic display of contour and pocketing toolpath repeated at Z depths existed. An extra toolpath pass was being displayed and was responding to STEP mode. When tool animation was active, the tool was not being erased after completion of the operation. 23) Fixed bug-> Tooling file names were not being stored in the .DMB file for later recall if they did not contain any tool geometry. 24) Fixed bug-> Pocketing sometimes in the first pass cut back along the same path which resulted in errors when doing repetitive Z passes. 25) Fixed bug-> When doing LINEAR DIMENSIONS, pressing [ESC] after defining the first dimension point may have caused program failure. 26) The following operations may now be done to modify boundaries directly without deleting the boundaries and having to relink them. FILLET, CHAMFER, BREAK, UNBREAK GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.2B (11/15/90) 27) Fixed bug-> IPR feedrates were not being picked up on Lathe drilling operations. a) Fixed bug-> Boundaries were being corrupted when chamfering or filleting adjacent elements which were the first and last elements in the boundary. 28) Lathe drilling operations now specify tool diameters rather than tool nose radii. In the Turning parameter screen, if a drilling operation is specified, "Tool diameter" is now asked for, whereas any other operation will ask for Tool nose radius. When creating tooling files, any Lathe tool which is a drill type (drill, center drill, reamer or tap) will now ask for the tool diameter instead of the tool nose radius. b) Fixed bug-> Sometimes material removal simulations in graphics displays of toolpaths or connected boundaries were not displaying the toolpath swath if the center of the tool was not within the screen limits. 29) When linking boundaries the prompt after selecting the starting element is changed from: Pick closing line or arc or press SPACE BAR to link complete boundary to: Pick ending line or arc or press SPACE BAR to link complete boundary 30) Fixed bug-> The word "gauge" was misspelled in the turning parameter screen. 31) Fixed bug-> The machining operation was failing to become active after exiting the WIRE parameter screen. 32) Fixed bug-> Eliminated the output of some redundant codes generated in the .DMB file on turning jobs with part draw operations. 33) The GROOVING operation has been added to the TURNING operations popup menu. OD, ID and face grooving is supported. When doing a grooving cycle, rough only, finish only or rough and finish may be selected. The roughing operation takes one or more plunges along the width of the groove. The stepover distance between plunges is input in the grooving parameter screen. A plunge depth increment may also be specified whereby the tool will plunge the increment in each block and will then dwell the specified number of revolutions until final depth is reached. The finishing operation will start at one side of the groove and contour half way, then position to the opposite side and contour half way with the other side of the tool. Finish passes will only be attempted if using a full radius grooving tool or grooving a square groove, otherwise the following message is displayed: Cannot finish groove with this type of tool Grooves are defined as separate boundaries which are usually undercut into the part profile. They are not limited to square grooves and virtually all groove boundaries can be roughed. The programmed point of the grooving tool will be the center of the left hand radius when OD or ID grooving or the lower radius when doing face grooving. Post processor output will project the program point to the adjacent edges if tool point angles are specified. On a full radius grooving tool the program point is the center of the radius. The program point must be the zero point when creating tool geometry for grooving tools. When creating grooving tool files you must specify the tool width which is measured from edge to edge and not between the radii centers. The width must be entered in the grooving parameter screen if not calling a tooling file. 34) The "Maximum spindle speed" parameter has been moved after the "Spindle constant surface speed" parameter in the first turning parameters screen. 35) The output of program numbers in the tape file may now direct the post processor (if running under POST.EXE version 2.30 or later), to output the starting rewind stop code (%) prior to the program number by entering a ^ character (Shift/6) as the first character in the program number line. The HELP message associated with entering the program number reports this and also corrects the prior version HELP screen which stated that the post processor supplies the word address to the program number. 36) Trailing spaces are now truncated on all data entry routines using the line editor facility. 37) After saving a tooling file, the system will no longer query to save geometry in a .GEO file which may have been created to define the tool geometry. This is to prevent the accidental overwriting of a previously active geometry file when creating tooling files. Tool geometry can always be restored through the TOOLING->LOAD selection or by importing its .TLL file. 38) Rotating text entities will now rotate the angle of the baseline of the text as well as the text position point. 39) Fixed bug-> The wrong HELP messages were being diploid for entering text when renaming layers, entering and editing text entities, inputting ASCII blocks in STEP mode and entering text for engraving. 40) Fixed bug-> Post processing a DMB file created with GRAFX II with a post processor which defaults to incremental output, may have output a G90 before the program number. 41) Fixed bug-> After loading a tooling file while the current active layer was other than layer 0, there was no current active layer and the tool geometry was not displayed. 42) Fixed bug-> Some errors which occurred in generating cutter offsets at element cusps have been fixed. 43) A blank line may now be input as the response to the R level parameter in drilling which will be interpreted as a NULL response. When this is done, post processors will not output an "R" word in drilling cycles. 44) The menu description for RESET has been changed from: All data will be deleted from the computers memory to: All data on the current job will be deleted from the computers memory 45) Excessive disk access on doing dimension entity redraws has been eliminated. GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.2C (1/15/91) 46) Fixed bug-> Pressing "R" was not selecting "Reamer" in the tooling file menus. 47) Fixed bug-> Tool diameters were not being picked up from tooling files on lathe drills. 48) The "Corner cut" or "Feathering" feature has been added to MILL CONTOUR and POCKETING operations. "Corner cut" is primarily meant to be used for engraving work. A corner cut is a series of 3-axis linear chatter mill moves that raise a tapered end mill up into an inside corner of a profile and then bring it back down again. This type of motion leaves a sharp clean edge on the inside corners of, for example, a raised character. This feature is implemented through the following query in the CONTOUR or POCKETING parameter screens: Corner cut profiles with taper tool? (Yes or No) If answered with YES, a CORNER CUT parameter screen will come up asking for the following parameters: Bottom diameter of taper tool: Taper angle of tool: Depth of cut (leaves character land height) Uniform stock (leaves extra land width) Number of cuts in each corner: The "Depth of cut" and "Uniform stock" parameters are duplicated from a previous parameter screen and is repeated to indicate their application in engraving. If corner cutting is specified for pocketing, it only will raise and lower the tool on the profile passes around the boundaries. When doing top view tool display in GRAFX2 or PLOT, the effective cutting diameter of the tool will be displayed as the tool raises and lowers. However GRAFX2 currently will not attempt to fill the toolpath swath in the corners when material removal has been specified. PLOT will display this when cutter fill is in effect. 49)*TAPER CUTTER has been added to the non turning tools menu when creating tooling files. This tool is used for the corner cutting operation of GRAFX II. When a tooling file for a taper cutter is loaded for CONTOUR or POCKET operations, the corner cut parameter screen will automatically load in the tooling information stored in the tooling file. 50) Pocketing operations now can handle more than twice as many elements as before. 51) The angular orientation of characters engraved on arcs are now made to be more accurate. 52) Fixed bug-> UNBREAKing lines in boundaries sometimes flipped the direction of the newly created line segment. 53) Fixed bug-> BREAKing and UNBREAKing elements in boundaries sometimes corrupted the boundary. 54)*GRAFX2 now will not allow entering the operating system with the OS select from the FILES pulldown menu if a toolpath file is currently open. 55) A memory check has been added to minimize restore screen memory errors. 56) Fixed bug-> The HELP screen for popup menus within parameter screen queries was incorrect. 57) Fixed bug-> When creating an engraving font file (.VEC), if the character in the first layer of the geometry file (layer index 0) had more than one boundary, the character was not being correctly translated in the .VEC file. 58)*Importing GRAFX DMB files with the LAYERS mode ON, now assigns the imported data into layers sorted by tool number. Part draw data will be stored in a layer named "PART DRAW" and toolpath data will be stored in layers named "TOOL n" where n is the tool number. 59) Tool geometry stored in DMB files will no longer be translated during GRAFX DMB imports. 60)*Importing GFX DMB files has been expanded to include lines and arcs as well as points. When GFX-DMB is selected from the IMPORT menu, after specifying the .dmb file, a popup menu appears asking whether to import points only, lines and circles only or points, lines and circles. When importing lines, since GFX lines are infinite in length, the linear feed toolpath blocks are first scanned to establish minimum and maximum endpoints for the lines. If these toolpath blocks cannot determine the extreme points, -5 and +5 inches are used arbitrarily. Unbounded geometry imported from GFX geometry definitions may be transformed into bounded geometry in GRAFX2 by using the TRIM/EXTEND feature. 61) Fixed bug-> When selecting two or more boundaries for CONTOUR using a window where multiple Z-passes were specified, only one boundary of the group was was being cut with multiple Z depths. 62)*Parameters from tooling files are now only loaded into the machining parameters if the tooling file is specifically called in the tooling file query. This is either by selecting the tooling file off the menu or typing in the name. This allows the modification of parameters after initially loading the tooling file to be preserved in subsequent runs of the job. If reloading of the tooling file parameters is desired, simply typing over one of the file name letters will constitute specification of a file and will reload the parameters from the file. 63)*Feedrates and spindle speeds may now be specified in tooling files. These values will then be loaded as the machining defaults when loading a tooling file. In addition, a Z depth per cut parameter may be stored for an end mill tool and a maximum depth per cut for roughing may be stored for a single point turning tool or grooving tool. 64) Duplicate geometry is no longer produced when creating boundaries which include the same geometric entities more than once. 65) Fixed bug-> A CONTOUR consisting of a single 360 degree arc (full circle) now repeats correctly as it steps down in Z. Before there would be jumps in between each Z pass. 66) LATHE has been added to the GEOMETRY TRANSFORM menu. This selection is used to create lathe part drawings from profile boundaries. The geometry from the picked boundary is duplicated on the opposite side of the spindle axis and connecting lines are drawn between each endpoint of the boundary geometry and the corresponding endpoint of its duplicate. The OLD KEEP or DELETE toggle and REPS count is ignored during this type of transform. 67) When importing files with the LAYERS mode enabled, newly created layers are now initialized to ON (displayed). This eliminates the apparent disappearing of imported geometry after the translation. 68) Fixed bug-> When inputting axes angles for the ISOMETRIC view, the X axis angle was erroneously reported for the default Y and Z axes angles. 69) Fixed bug-> Some extraneous motion starting some counter clockwise pockets has been eliminated. 70) When cutter comp has been specified on a pocketing operation, it is now invoked after the initial Z axis motion instead of before the first move. 71)*The [Ctrl/Home] and [Ctrl/End] keys are now recognized when inputting data in parameter screens. The keys will move directly to the first or last parameter queries on the current screen. 72) Crosses for points plotted with XYPLOT are now made with uniform size at any scale for the plot. 73) Fixed bug-> Some machining parameters set to 0, were erroneously being retained from prior tools on reprocessed toolpath files. 74) UNITS has been added to the ACCESS pulldown menu. When selected, a parameter screen appears which queries for INPUT UNITS and OUTPUT UNITS. The parameters are entered by toggling between INCH and METRIC for both parameters. Setting METRIC input units adjusts the display scale to millimeters instead of inches. All queries pertaining to English measurements (inches, feet), will be changed to Metric measurements (millimeters, meters). Default measurements used by the system will be in reasonable metric units. Position data displayed in the coordinate window to the right of the menu tree will display the coordinates with a yellow background (like gages) and in 3 rather than 4 decimal places. The output unit designation determines in what units the toolpath data will be Post Processed. If the output unit type differs from the input data type, the Post Processor will convert the data accordingly. Once a job has started, it is not reasonable to switch between unit types. If an attempt to change the input unit type is done after a single point has been stored in the system, a dialog box queries the user before doing the change. Similarly, a dialog box confirms changing the output type once a toolpath file has been opened. 75)*The constant m has been made available when inputting expressions. m is equal to the millimeters to inch conversion factor of 25.4. 76) The audible beep after bringing up a HELP screen in a parameter toggle select operation has been eliminated. 77) The PUNCH description in the COMMUNICATIONS menu has been changed to "Punch file onto paper tape" for syntactical aesthetics. 78) Non square grooves may now be finished by the grooving operation. On the finish pass, if the bottom of the groove is not perpendicular to the tool, the following warning message is displayed: Warning...Gouging of the groove may have occurred In this case the toolpath will still be generated since a special angle on the grooving tool may have been used to avoid gouging the part. 79) Grooves may now be finished with tool widths equal to the effective groove width. In these cases the finish pass will be a single plunge into the groove. 80) Some open boundary conditions resulting from overlapping of boundary elements have been eliminated in pocketing. 81) VIEW has been added to the FILES pulldown menu. This utility enables the user to view ASCII Text files directly from GRAFX2. When selected the system prompts the user for the name of the file to be viewed. Files with .TXT extensions are assumed and listed on the menu if the left mouse button or space bar is pressed but any file name may entered when an extension is specified. Use of the view utility is documented online when it is up. This feature requires that the file lk.com resides in the current path. 82) The X home position and tool change position parameters are now treated as diameter values if DIAMETERS has been set in the ACCESS LATHE parameter screen. 83)*When windowing multiple boundaries for contouring or pocketing a popup window now asks whether to sort the boundaries in the order they are to be machined. The choices are (1) not to sort, (2) sort left to right, (3) sort right to left, (4) sort bottom to top, or (5) sort top to bottom. A secondary sort takes place when the starting point of 2 or more boundaries are equal in the primary sort criteria, such as in a grid pattern. This will follow the increasing or decreasing criteria set by the primary sorting choice. 84) Fixed bug-> When selecting CANCEL or END in step mode, the machining operation was continuing with the next boundary if windowed boundaries was used. 85) The performance of the abort operations with the [F10] key has been improved. The response in many cases is now quicker and carries through to secondary operations of the operation being aborted. GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.2D (4/ 4/91) 86) Fixed bug-> Animated tool draw on pocketing operations with multiple Z-passes was leaving the tool visible at the end of the last pass. 87) Fixed bug-> When inputting file names using the F5 key or LEFT mouse button, if no files of the target extension existed in the directory, program failure may have occurred. Now the following message is displayed: No xxx files found in the path (where xxx is the assumed target extension of the input file) 88)*A new option has been incorporated for inputting file names. When entering the name of an input file, pressing SHFT/F5 brings up a menu of candidate files which may be controlled by entering a file specification in the "Enter File" input window. This specification may be a path, that is a device name and directory path followed by a partial file name which is used to mask file names conforming to the name. The following examples illustrate input strings to the "Enter File" with the resulting menu created by the SHFT/F5 key: Enter File a: all target extension files in the current path on the a: drive \acad\dxf\ca all target extension files starting with "ca" in the directory \acad\dxf \gx2\tooling\ all target extension files in the directory \gx2\tooling The F5 key or LEFT mouse button still brings up a menu of all target extension files in the current directory. 89) Fixed bug-> When selecting CANCEL or END in step mode, the machining operation was continuing if multiple Z-passes was in effect. 90) Fixed bug-> The display of current block information in step mode was not reporting IPR or FPM data for lathe toolpaths. 91) Fixed bug-> The display of current block information in step mode was displaying feeds and speeds in the wrong columns for lathe toolpaths. 92) Fixed bug-> Dwells on fixed cycles were not being output. 93) Fixed bug-> The PART DRAW display mode sometimes was out of synch with what was indicated in the MODES pulldown menu. 94)*While in a parameter screen, the parameter screen may be printed onto the printer by pressing [F7] from any of the queries. 95) Fixed bug-> The word "transform" was misspelled several times in the menus descriptions of the TRANSFORM ENTITIES menu. 96) A negative value may now be specified for the PRECISION value in dimension- ing. When PRECISION equals a negative value the dimension value will not be drawn but a space will be left in the leaders which may be filled in with text. This is useful when drawings may have dimensions referencing table data. 97)*XYPLOT will now derive the drawing size from the GFX.SYS file. Using Version 1.03 or later of the G2CONFIG program the default drawing size may be set to A, B, C, D, E, A3 or A4 size, or to have the plotter determine the drawing size from an inquiry to plotter. Prior to this release, the program always inquired for the size and if the inquire failed the "B" size was used as the default. Now this default has been changed to the "A" size. 98) Point storage addressing capability has been increased from a maximum of 2730 to over 65000. 99) The PgUp key no longer dismisses the initial machining parameters screen. 100) Fixed bug-> LATHE transform was sometimes handling vertical lines incor- rectly, producing unwanted cross lines or reporting an error message. 101) The initial resizing of entities on low memory conditions has been made more reliable. 102) Fixed bug-> In turning jobs, when going from a tool with tool geometry defined in the tooling file to a tool with no tooling file specified, the last defined tool geometry is displayed when displaying the tool path if tool draw is enabled. 103) When doing PARZ undercuts in lathe roughing, undercuts boundaries which do not return to or past the starting diameter of the undercut are now handled by the system. Previously this condition generated an error message and aborted the roughing operation. 104) When recovering from a math error which may have occurred in roughing or pocketing operations, system memory used by these routines are now restored, allowing for a more confident recovery from the error. 105) Fixed bug-> In lathe roughing a math error was occurring when roughing a boundary which was entirely an undercut. 106)*When doing a TRANSLATE->POINTS, the translation vector is now drawn on the screen with red X's at the points and an arrow between them. This translation vector may be removed with the next screen redraw. 106) Fixed bug-> When initially creating a tooling file for a lathe center drill, if the tool type was not explicitly selected off the menu, several of the parameters were not being stored in the tooling file. 107) Fixed bug-> Gouging of the part sometimes occurred on profiles which contained peaked corners meeting at an intersection with a pocketing pass. 108) Fixed bug-> Eliminated some graphics display errors when displaying arc cuts with large radii and material removal simulation in effect. 109)*In the TURNING parameter screens, queries referring to "cutter comp" and "cutter offset" have been changed to "tool nose radius comp" and "tool nose radius offset". 110)*The parameters "Tool nose radius comp:" and "Create toolpath with tool nose radius offset?" have been added to the GROOVING parameter screen. 111) Fixed bug-> Codes for tool nose radius compensation were not being output to the toolpath file in turning operations. 112) Fixed bug-> When dragging the radius on a GEOMETRY->CIRCLE creation, the display of the dragged circle sometimes got corrupted when the radius got too big relative to the screen display scale. The display of dragged circles now revert to a slower circle draw routine when at the point of corruption avoiding this condition. 113) Fixed bug-> Pocketing sometimes failed on boundaries with an ending element which ran directly over the starting element. 114) Fixed bug-> The wrong HELP screen was being displayed for inputting integer arguments in the STEP menu. 115) Fixed bug-> The menu description for DATA in the STEP menu was wrong. 116)*The GFX selection has been added to the STEP menu. When selected, another popup menu appears with a list of syntax commands synonymous with machine control syntax appearing in Datacut's GFX NC programming language. These commands may be used to insert codes or control the output of Post Processors. The commands CLMP, HOLD, INDX, KLOC, OVBP and SPRE may directly output "M" codes as described in the query section of GPOST (see GPOST section of GRAFX II User Reference manual. BLKD controls the output of block delete characters in the output. DWEL enables the output of a dwell block at any point in the program. TSTP, ADOV and OPTN are sometimes used in Custom Post Processors and the write-ups for these Post Processors should be referred for application of these commands although OPTN may commonly be used to shift to the secondary set of canned cycles in machining centers. When selecting ADOV, BLKD, CLMP, OPTN, OVBP or SPRE, another popup menu asks for the argument ON or OFF. If TSTP is selected, an integer argument is asked for and selecting DWEL will result in a query for the number of seconds to dwell. When selected from the STEP menu, the GFX menu stays active until cancelled with the Esc selection or Esc key whereupon the STEP menu takes over again. 117) XYPLOT now outputs the start of transmission and end of transmission strings that are stored in the HP7475.CPL file. 118) Fixed bug-> XYPLOT was not reinitializing after the first plot which resulted in the inability to do more than one plot if the plotter used was connected to a parallel port. 119) STEP mode data display now adjusts the precision when in metric units. 120) Fixed bug-> Attempting to link a boundary which has been broken by a positioning point was resulting in math errors. 121) Fixed bug-> UNDOing a deleted point restored the point to an invalid layer. 122) The last displayed view screen parameters are now stored in the individual layers so that when changing the active layer, its last view will be restored instead of the screen limits. 123) Some of the data stored in .DMB files created by GRAFX II when corner cutting was introduced (1.2C) was inconsistent with previous versions of the DMB file structure. DMB files utilizing corner cutting which were produced with version 1.2C should be regenerated with this version to insure proper plotting of corner cuts when using the latest version of PLOT. 124) The tool color select parameter now displays the color box larger. The frame of the box now changes color when the queries is active and the default tool color is changed from blue to yellow. 125) The menu description for FIRST in the SCREEN pulldown menu has been reworded. 126) Fixed bug-> When doing more than one XYPLOT, plotted text which have nonzero slant or angle was being plotted at zero angles if the angles were the same as the previous plot. 127) Fixed bug-> GEOMETRY EXAMINE was reporting the length of full circle arcs as 0. 128)*"Length of boundary" has been added to the report when doing a GEOMETRY EXAMINE of a boundary. 129) Fixed bug-> When TRANSFORMing positioning points, their "Z" values were not being transferred to the new points. 130) The start of boundary marks when TICKS are enabled are now drawn during TRANSFORM boundary operations. 131)*The non turning parameter "Rotary axis angle" has been changed to "Rotate index table to (angle in degrees)" to better describe the operation. 132)*A message showing "Percent complete" is now displayed while undercut avoidance computation is in progress. 133) The undercut avoidance computation may now be aborted with the F10 key. xxx) Fixed bug-> When choosing STEP in the BSPLINE menu, the value displayed as the current step size was incorrect. 134) Fixed bug-> IMPORT->DXF was failing to create the last line segment on a closed polyline unless the polyline was part of an INSERT BLOCK. 135)*POINT has been added to the DIMENSION menu. This selection will dimension a point defined from the POINT menu. The dimension is drawn in the form (x, y) or (x, z) if lathe dimensions are enabled. The values are displayed in the current precision. If lathe diameters are enabled, x will displayed as twice the vertical distance from the origin. 136) The automatic selection of the side of the boundary to cut has been made more reliable in face grooving operations. 137) Active tool file names are no longer retained from the last job when starting a new job. GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.2E (6/ 4/91) 138)*GRAPH has been added to the MODES pulldown menu. When enabled, the screen displays a grid of lines spaced at the current GRAPH spacing value. When toggling to the ON mode, the modal graph spacing value is asked for. If this value is 0, the current GRID value is used to display the GRAPH. Changing the spacing while GRAPH is currently displayed is accomplished by simply clicking GRAPH twice. 139)*UNDO may now be used to cancel the last generated toolpath while the toolpath file is still open. 140) DOTS or GRAPH will no longer be drawn at the grid points if the grid spacing multiplied by the scale factor is less than .025 inches or .636 millimeters. 141) Fixed bug-> REPORT was reporting only the first operation for each tool. 142) Tool point angles are no longer retained from the previous tool. 143) The default feedrate for turning operations have been changed from IPM to IPR values. 144) Fixed bug-> EXAMINE BOUNDARIES was reporting the wrong endpoint of the boundary. 145) Fixed bug-> When creating lines with ANGLES or TANGENT ANGLES, if the endpoint was laid down without moving the cursor at all, an erroneous line was created. 146) Fixed bug-> When doing a DRILL operation, if DRILL was not specifically picked off the menu even though the parameter screen showed it as active, the operation was not being performed. 147) Tool draw on DRILL operations in turning work now displays the tool at its retract position after the operation. 148)*When doing DRILL or THREAD operations in turning work, if the line picked on which the operation to be performed is in a boundary, any positioning points included in the boundary will be positioned to during the operation. 149) Fixed bug-> ARROWS pertaining to positioning points in boundaries was sometimes being displayed incorrectly. 150) The system will no longer prompt for Z values when picking positioning points in boundaries if lathe ZX coordinates are active in the ACCESS menu. 151)*REPORT has been added to the GEOMETRY EXAMINE menu. When selected, a file is written containing the data of the geometric elements contained in each boundary or point set in the current job. The data is sorted by layers. The file created will default to a .TXT extension and uses the job name as the file name unless changed by the user. 152) When creating a fresh toolpath file, the initial appearance of the CUT PART menu now automatically positions the menu cursor to the DRAW PART operation as an aid to the normal sequencing of operations. 153) The DRAW PART selection of the CUT PART menu is made inactive after the first machining operation is output to the toolpath file. This prevents problems with tool draw output intermingled with toolpath. 154) When selecting geometry already included in a boundary or point set to be used in a new boundary or point set, the entity is now duplicated upon acceptance of the boundary or point set instead at the time of inclusion. This eliminates unnecessary multiple candidates during linking and also prevents the creation of unneeded duplicate geometry in case the boundary or point set is cancelled. 155) When selecting geometry for a boundary or point set which resides in a layer other then the current layer, duplicate geometry is now created in the current layer. This prevents problems associated with boundaries or point sets which have their associated geometry in different layers. 155) The warning message Corner Cut Warning: Effective diameter...... has been changed to Warning...Effective diameter...... so that the whole message will be visible and that it is consistent with the format of other warning messages. 156) Fixed bug-> LAYERS COPY & MOVE transferred the entire boundary when windowing on any element within the boundary. Now the entire boundary must fall within the window in order for the boundary to be transferred. 157) Fixed bug-> TRIM/EXTEND on full circles was causing erroneous results. 158) Fixed bug-> TRIM/EXTEND 3 OBJECTS was causing erroneous results. The algorithm now calls for the selection of the 3 objects in their linked sequence. 159) UNDO now restores the original geometry following a TRIM/EXTEND operation. 160) Fixed bug-> Some 360 degree arcs were not being displayed. 161) Fixed bug-> Ticks were not being displayed on arcs on a TRIM/EXTEND operation. 162) When drawing arcs isometrically with thickness, connecting lines between the top and bottom surfaces are now drawn at the lateral extreme points in order to portray the edge perspective. 163) The talk window for windowing operations has been made more descriptive. 164) If the Esc is pressed while picking boundaries or sets for machining operations (except for zigzag pocketing), the cursor will now be returned to the menu area in order to proceed from that point. This has been implemented to clarify the user interface for the novice user. 165) Fixed bug-> While picking the solution arc during an ARC->ENDPOINTS operation, if another task was initiated such as from the SCREEN pulldown menu, program failure may have occurred. 166) Fixed bug-> While picking the solution arc during an ARC->TANGENT->POINT, if the ROOT or GO BACK menu selection was made, the prompting sequence was not restarted on a subsequent ARC->TANGENT->POINT operation. 167)*The column number of the cursor location is now displayed when entering text into a text entry window. 168)*PICK has been added to the ACCESS pulldown menu. When selected a popup window will appear with a graphic which provides for the narrowing or widening of the picking tolerance factor when selecting geometric elements with the crosshairs. 169) The proximity requirement for picking arc elements with the crosshairs has been made closer to that of line elements. 170)*When picking boundaries for GROOVE operations, the F9 key may now be used invoke a window for selecting multiple groove boundaries. After windowing groove boundaries, a popup menu will inquire on sorting the boundaries for the sequence they will be cut. 171) Fixed bug-> EXAMINE->POINTS sometimes reported a random number for the Z value which could have resulted in the computer hanging. 172) Fixed bug-> Z values from previous operations were sometimes assigned to points erroneously. 173) Fixed bug-> After a DELETE->ALL, sometimes the size of the boundary/set space was reported as a negative value. 174) Fixed bug-> A random condition which only occurred on some computers resulted in the inability to access the top row pull down menus. GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.3A (7/30/91) 1) Fixed bug-> Some erroneous loops sometimes generated by undercut avoidance has been eliminated. 2) Menu select descriptions have been added to the drilling cycles, boundary sorting and GFX step mode pop up menus. 3) Fixed bug-> The talk window was not changing the "Use <-- or -->" after a toggle parameter or color select. 4) Dynamic memory allocation of menu descriptions has freed up a large chunk of memory and eliminated the "loading text" message and associated delay when starting up the program. 5) *MODES has been added to the EXPORT menu. When selected, a pulldown menu appears which currently has one selection. By enabling BOUNDARY on the pulldown menu, only the geometry from boundaries or point sets will be exported instead of the geometry entities. This is particularly useful if you wish to export the data in continuous paths in the linked sequence of the boundaries. When this mode is disabled, first the point entities are exported, then the line entities and then the arc entities. 6) Fixed bug-> An anomaly introduced in version 1.2E associated with the screen display while dragging text entities has been eliminated. 7) Fixed bug-> Program failure may have occurred when specifying tooling files in the machining parameter screens with path names greater than 15 characters. Path names up to 20 characters may now be specified and if path names greater than 20 characters are entered, only the first 20 characters will be read. 8) During a file IMPORT, if lines with the 2 endpoints the same are encountered, an error is no longer reported and the entity is simply ignored. 9) *BOUNDARY has been added to the IMPORT modes pulldown menu. When enabled, imported geometry which is of a continuous path type will be automatically linked into boundaries or point sets. This mode affects the IMPORT of GRAFX-DMB files which will place continuous toolpath contours into boundaries and continuous drill cycle sequences into point sets. The mode also places the IMPORT of DXF POLYLINES into boundaries. All other IMPORT file types are unaffected by this mode. 10) Fixed bug-> When multiple element candidates were toggled during a geometry picking operation, if an element was a tentative boundary element, it was being restored to a red color instead of yellow. 11) On an EXAMINE POINT or EXAMINE REPORT, "Z" values are no longer reported if the point is not a positioning point in a boundary or point set. In the case of lathe xz coordinates only 2 axes points are reported in any case. 12) Fixed bug-> introduced in version 1.2E which disabled the depth of cut query in the POCKET parameter screen. 13) Fixed bug-> The original point set was not being deleted when transforming point sets with OLD DELETE active. 14) Fixed bug-> "Spindle NONE" and Coolant NONE" were not being retained when loading in an existing .DMB toolpath file. 15) The surface projections query now pops up a menu instead of a toggle select. 16)*When selecting a Drilling operation for the machining operation query, a second menu will now immediately pop up asking for the type of drilling cycle. This replaces the drill cycle parameter in the Drilling operation parameter screen which has now been omitted. The Drilling parameter screen will however display the selected drilling cycle in the parameter screen description. 17) Fixed bug-> With ARROWS displayed, the diamond marking the last included point while building a point set, was being displayed one element back. 18)*DEPTH has been added to the SET menu. When this is selected, points in a point set may be selected to attach a Z depth value. When the point set is drilled, points with the depth attribute will be drilled to the tagged depth while points which are not tagged will be drilled to the depth specified in the drilling parameter screen. This may be applied to points within pending or already accepted point sets. When entering the Z value, the [Esc] key may be used to untag a previously tagged point. 19)*When moving the cursor to the UNDO selection in the top menu, the info window now displays what the result will be if the UNDO is selected. 20) Text entities now display more symbols in the character set by use of a new ROMANSIM.FNT file. 21) Sizing of text entities is now better maintained through different scale factors for both displaying and XY plotting. 22) Fixed bug-> After pressing the Esc key while entering some data through the line editor, subsequent text in that entry window may have been displayed in the wrong color. 23) After pressing the Esc key in response to the "Rotation angle" question in the ROTATE transformation, the temporary center point of rotation is now erased from the screen. 24) After generating a point set from the PATTERN menu, when the POINT SET menu is automatically displayed, the cursor is now started in the menu area for easy access to the next action. 25)*Point sets generated from the PATTERN menu may now continue from a pending point set. For example, a bolt circle may be linked into a point set and instead of ACCEPTING the point set another bolt circle may be generated and when accepted, both bolt circle patterns will be included in a single point set. 26) Fixed bug-> Pressing the [Esc] key while digitizing the first point on a circle definition, linear dimension or point dimension operation was resulting in program failure. 27)*Talk window display of function keys have been changed to a standard form of Fn=function. 28) The HELP screen for defining a point with the cursor has been modified to include some more information. 29) The HELP screen for inputting Home Position and Tool Change Position parameters has been modified to include the use of the letter "p" for entering the current position of the axis. 30) Fixed bug-> Pressing the left mouse button key while in the "Program Number" query was exiting the initial parameter screen. Now the left mouse button backs up to previous query. 31) More graphics adapters are now supported. They may be selected with the latest version of G2CONFIG.MNU. 32) Fixed bug-> When trimming collinear lines and arcs, a "no intersect" error message sometimes appeared. 33) Boundary picking which involves the drawing of the picked boundary was spending excessive time in drawing when multiple geometry entities were within the picking tolerance. A new approach to drawing picked boundaries has eliminated this excessive time which may have been exceedingly long when boundaries containing a large number of elements were involved. 34) When doing a GEOMETRY EXAMINE of boundaries with a very large number of elements, the info window may have popped up displaying a blank window for what may have seemed a long period of time while the boundary statistics were being compiled. Now, the window is not popped up until the statistics have been compiled and a message appears in the talk window informing the user that statistics are being compiled. 35)*SPIRAL has been added to the PATTERN menu for generating points along an Archimedean spiral. When selected, the user is asked to define the center of the spiral using the POINT menu, after which a parameter screen pops up in order to input the other spiral parameters. As with the other point patterns in the system, the user has the option to create a point set automatically after the points are generated. Typically the spiral point set is created and then CURVES is selected to generate an Archimedean spiral curve which may be contoured. With this approach, entering 4 points per quadrant in the spiral parameter screen and fitting the curve with arcs will give an extremely accurate and smooth result. 36)*A selection has been added to the BOUNDARY menu which invokes a mode used when automatically linking or stepping boundaries. This mode is used to dictate which direction the boundary proceeds when a branch point is reached. The PICK selection is how the system previously always worked. Upon reaching a branch point the system asks the user to pick the next element to link into the boundary. The CW or CCW selection may be selected which will automatically choose the element which is most in that direction when branch points are encountered. If a branch point has more than 12 possibilities, PICK mode is reverted to. 37)*If UNDO is clicked directly following the generation of a toolpath operation, a pulldown menu now appears with the DELETE and CONVERT selections. 38) Fixed bug-> In lathe ROUGHING with a material boundary and tool offset (tool radius + uniform stock) in effect, sometimes the part limits were extended by the material boundary extents offset by the tool offset and resulted in undesirable cuts at either or both end of the part. Now the material boundary may extend the part limits only by the boundaries defined limits rather than by its offset limits. 39) Fixed bug-> When UNDOing a deleted arc with an associated radius dimension, the dimension was being restored rather than the arc as one might expect. 40) Fixed bug-> A run time error may have occurred after zooming in on a drawing containing dimensions until the scale factor became too large. The text of dimension entities is now suppressed when either the height or width of the text character becomes larger than twice the screen height or width, thereby preventing this problem. 41) GETTXT run time errors no longer exit to DOS. 42) Fixed bug-> Several problems resulting in undercut avoidance errors have been fixed. 43) Fixed bug-> When dismissing the TRIM menu after selecting the first element for a 1, 2 or 3 object trim, the operation was not being cancelled, i.e. subsequent TRIM operations began by asking for the 2nd element instead of the 1st. 44) When in the Top menu or Dialog boxes, the UP and DOWN arrows now move the cursor a screen pixel at a time instead of exiting its screen port. 45)*Spiral pocketing has been added to the non turning machining operations. After selecting POCKET as the operation to be performed, another popup menu appears immediately to select either ZIG ZAG or SPIRAL pocketing. ZIG ZAG pocketing refers to the toolpath generated as the POCKET operation in previous versions. SPIRAL generates a new type of pocketing toolpath which starts cutting from the center of the pocket and generates concentric passes outward to the part profile. Spiral pocketing is documented in the GRAFX II User Manual Supplement. 46)*The cut side popup menu which appears after selecting boundaries for CONTOUR or ZIG ZAG POCKET operations has been expanded to include INSIDE and OUTSIDE. Now the user need not know in which direction the boundary has been defined when doing these operations if it is desired to cut inside or outside the part boundary. 47)*After the cut side popup menu appears, a second popup menu now appears asking for the cut direction. The menu selections are FORWARD, REVERSE, CLMB and CONV. If FORWARD is selected, the boundary will be cut in the same direction in which it was defined. REVERSE cuts the boundary in the opposite direction that it was defined. CLMB maintains a climb cut around the boundary while CONV maintains a conventional cut around the boundary. 48) On a ZIG ZAG POCKET operation, if the boundaries are selected but the pocket is not started by pressing ESC, the toolpath file now retains the machining parameters specified if END or another tool is selected. Previously the data was not retained in this case. 49) Fixed bug-> The message "Tool is too big for groove" sometimes came up when the tool width was equal to the groove width. This occurred because of numeric rounding errors which are now being handled. GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.3B (8/7/91) UPDATE 50) Fixed bug (introduced in 1.3A)-> When toggling TRIM ON/OFF in either the fillet or chamfer menu, the other menu may not have been updated to display whether trim was on or off. 51) Fixed bug-> When chamfering, if after selecting the first line, the cursor was moved out of the graphics area, erroneous results may have occurred. 52) Fixed bug-> The "Tool Point Angle" parameter was not being retained in grooving tool tooling files. 53) Fixed bug-> When temporarily exiting a CUT PART parameter screen with the F10 key followed by a screen redrawing operation, when restoring the parameter screen, the tool diameter (radius) and toolpath color parameter may have been overwritten by the parameters of the last displayed tool. 54) When the maximum number of POINTS is exceeded, a key must now be pressed following the error message in order to proceed. 55) On file IMPORT operations, after the maximum number of POINTS or geometric entities is exceeded, the IMPORT operation is now aborted at that point. 56) Fixed bug-> Erroneous program behavior was occurring when the number of defined POINTS exceeded 2730. 57) Fixed bug-> When loading GEO files, the files stopped being loaded when any of the default entity sizes were exceeded. Now if new sizes are set by G2SIZE, those values are used as the limit. GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.4A (11/20/91) UPDATE 1) *All references to the word "translate" have been changed to the word "import" in IMPORT operations and "export" in EXPORT operations. 2) The file name being imported or exported is now displayed during the operation. 3) When importing file types which are checked for layer names (DXF, IGS, CDL, DMB, VEC), the current layer name is displayed in the message window during importation. 4) ASCII file import now assumes a .TXT extension when importing text files or a .PTS extension when importing point files. 5) The dialog box message when hitting the F7 key from a parameter screen has been changed to: Proceed with PARAMETER PRINTOUT? 6) *The "Turn all layers on (off)" menu selection on the layer select menu has been made into two separate menu selections for "off" and "on" rather than one selection which toggles when selected. 7) The active layer on the layer select popup menu is now displayed in bold black for clarity purposes. 8) The HELP screen for changing layers has been made more descriptive. 9) If the "Active layer" parameter in the machining parameter screens refers to a layer which does not exist, the cursor will now not move to the next query until the layer name has been corrected or deleted. 10) When loading or saving tooling files, the file path is now remembered as in the default for subsequent tooling file operations. 11) A cancel cutter comp code is now output on a tool change or END of program if cutter comp is still in effect. 12)*DELETE has been added to the BOUNDARY and SET menus for deleting accepted boundaries or point sets without having to back out to the DELETE menu. 13) Fixed bug-> When INVERTing boundaries, the start of boundary marker was not being inverted. 14)*INVERT has been added to the SET menu. This selection allows the user to reverse the direction of an existing point set. 15)*AUTOSV has been added to the MODES pulldown menu. This selection allows the user to toggle on or off the automatic backup of the geometry (.GEO) file and set the threshold level at which AUTO SAVE takes place. The threshold level is the incremental number of POINTS defined before the backup is triggered. Virtually any entities created in GRAFX2 result in the creation of POINTS. During an AUTO SAVE, the current geometry file is saved into the file GEOMETRY.BAK. If necessary, this file may be recovered by doing a FILE GET of GEOMETRY.BAK (the .bak extension must be specified). 16) Undercut avoidance no longer is performed if no tool offset is in effect. This is the case if a boundary is cut OVER or the tool radius plus stock is equal to zero. 17) Fixed bug-> In turning, when choosing parameters and using the same tool as the previous operation, the tool geometry was not being displayed while outputting the toolpath data. 18)*When creating a toolpath file using the existing .DMB file, the old file is now backed up into a file named TOOLPATH.BAK. 19) XYPLOT support has been added for HPGL center origin plotters. This type of plotter should be selected from G2CONFIG. 20) Fixed bug-> Program failure may have occurred while inputting the angles on plane projections using 1 point and 3 angles. 21)*The FACE operation has been added to the turning machining operations. Selecting this operation generates automatic facing cycles to rough and finish a part face. Utilizing these cycles rather than PARZ roughing or finishing cycles enables high quality facing operations to be done directly from the part geometry instead of having to define special boundaries. 22) Fixed bug-> On some operations when selecting entities within a window, after escaping out of the window definition the operation still proceeded. 23)*The CUTOFF operation has been added to the turning machining operations. Selecting this operation generates an automatic part cutoff cycle to cutoff a finished part from the bar stock. Utilizing this operation enables a high quality part cutoff operation to be done directly from the part geometry instead of having to define special boundaries. 24)*The "Tool Point Angle" query for turning operations and lathe tooling creation now inputs the value through a popup menu instead of direct input of the angle. 25) Fixed bug-> IMPORTING a .GEO file which contained TEXT entities may have caused math errors unless a PLACEMENT point was predefined. 26) Positioning points are now utilized in grooving. When doing internal grooves, the tool no longer attempts to approach and retract from inside the groove but now relies on positioning points for approach and retraction. 27) Fixed bug-> When lathe roughing with a material boundary, the smallest diameter segment may have been skipped if it was an angled such as a chamfer. 28)*When inputting the tool number after selecting PARAMETERS in the CUT PART menu, an "i" may now be entered to insert an operation before the next preexisting operation in the input file and an "a" may be entered to append an operation to the end of the file. In the append operation, if operations remain in the input file, they are passed through to the output file before starting the new operation. 29)*When loading parameters from an existing DMB toolpath file, more than one operation in the same tool may be loaded by specifying the same tool number to the input query which appears after selecting PARAMETERS in the CUT PART menu. An illustration of this is if you wish to get at the third operation in Tool 2, you select Tool 2 twice and select KEEP at the EXECUTE dialog menus which passes the first 2 operations of Tool 2 to the output file then select Tool 2 again which loads the parameters for the third operation. If the third operation did not already exist in the input file, you would then be inserting a third operation when selecting Tool 2 for the third time. A new operation is defined each time you input a number, an "i" or an "a" to the "Enter Tool Number" query. 30)*Toolpath file operations may now be randomly accessed through a menu selection. When inputting the tool number after selecting PARAMETERS in the CUT PART menu, if the F5 key or the left mouse button is pressed, a menu of all existing operations in both the input and output files are displayed. The menu selections are of the form "Tn/o description", where "n" is the tool number of the operation, the "/o" which only appears on turning jobs is the offset number and "description" is the operation description. The description will be the response to the "Operation description" query in the first parameter screen of each operation, or if no input was made for this parameter, the menu description is replaced with the generic name for the operation. No "Tn" is displayed for "Draw Part" operations. The last processed operation is displayed in red in the menu. If an operation does not have a tool change associated with it when it should or has one when it shouldn't, The "T" in the menu will be in lower case. The rules of tool change consistency are discussed later. By selecting the operation off the menu, you will be brought directly to the selected operation and any operations in the input file before the targeted operation are passed to the new output file. You may select an operation which is before the operation you are currently at which will then automatically append all the remaining operations from the input file to the new output file before reopening the output file as a new input file and moving to the selected operation. The new DMB file will not be closed and the original one will not be rewritten until you END the job. When operations are being passed through to the output file, and an inconsistent tool change condition is passed, a warning message is displayed instructing the user to re-execute the operation. This may be done by simply bringing up the operations menu and selecting the operation(s) with the lower case "t" and re-executing the toolpath generation. Tool changes are assumed when the tool number changes from the previous operation or if the offset number changes in turning. When executing a toolpath, a tool change is output to the DMB file automatically when this condition exists. However, when deleting an operation, such as the first operation of a new tool, the next operation may need to be re-executed in order to make the tool change which was deleted. 31) The operations REPORT used to display an operation entry for each time an entity was picked or group of entities windowed for a machining operation. Now the entries correspond to the definition of an operation, which is defined by the execution of the machining parameters screen. 32) Fixed bug-> When attempting to lathe ROUGH a part boundary which forms a straight line parallel to the roughing axis with no material boundary, a math error was occurring. Now the roughing operation is aborted and the following message appears: No material to rough...use material boundary or non straight part boundary 33)*When entering the axes toolchange positions in the machining parameter screens, an "h" may now be input which will enter the home position for that axis. The home positions are gotten from the initial machining parameter screen. 34)*Boundary selections for lathe FINISH operations may now be accomplished through inclusive windows. When the boundary pick cross hairs is displayed, F9 may now be pressed and a window may then placed around all boundaries to be machined in the operation. 35) Fixed bug->The "Enter tool description" heading in the parameter entry popup was misspelled. 36)*Lathe FINISH operations now automatically extend the toolpath on both sides of the boundary so that the tool diameter clears the ends of the part. The boundary is extended by the tool radius plus the "Part surface clearance plane" parameter which has been added to the finishing parameters. 37)*Lathe ROUGH operations now automatically extend the primary toolpath on both sides of the boundary so that the tool diameter clears the ends of the part. The boundary is extended by the tool radius plus the "Part surface clearance plane" parameter. 38) Fixed bug-> On grooving operations, if the OD or ID grooving selection differs from the last OD or ID selection made in previous operations, the toolpath was generated on the wrong side of the part. 39) Fixed bug-> Some contours at the end of lathe bore roughing passes were erroneously being skipped. 40) "F5=Menu" now appears in the talk window when inputting input file names or layer names. 41) A blank line may now be input as the response to the Rotary axis parameter in milling which will be interpreted as a NULL response. When this is done, post processors will not output rotary axis motion. If 0 is input to the parameter, a 0 degree output may be made by the Post Processor. Formerly, 0 was used as the null value which prevented a move to 0 degrees. 42) Fixed bug-> Entering a 0 value for M-code or G-code in the step menu was not being picked up by the Post Processor. 43) Fixed bug-> Erroneous behavior in zigzag pocketing was occurring when bringing the crosshairs out of the graphics area in-between picking the first boundary and commencing with the toolpath generation by hitting the Esc key. Examples of this were the loss of multiple Z depth cutting and windowed boundary operations. 44)*When doing multiple Z depth cutting, the primary path of the tool is now displayed in gray before the actual toolpath is output at the Z depths. 45) When doing multiple Z depth cutting, the output of toolpath has been significantly speeded up, especially for zigzag pocketing operations. 46) Fixed bug-> Instances of erroneous toolpath output doing multiple Z depth zigzag pocketing operations have been fixed. 47)*When searching out DRAW PART operations, the boundary is now displayed in white and if doing non turning work, the "Z" values for the top and bottom of the part are displayed. A popup menu appears, allowing the user to choose what to do. The choices are to REDO the operation, KEEP the operation, DELETE the operation or do nothing by selecting CANCEL. DRAW PART operations may be searched by entering "d" to the tool number query or directly picking off the operation menu. 48) Fixed bug-> Program failure may have occurred in NC->TOOLING->PARAMETERS when selecting a turning tool after having selected a non-turning taper cutter. 49) Fixed bug-> In NC->TOOLING->PARAMETERS, Tooling parameters displayed on the screen may not have corresponded to the displayed tool type when switching between non-turning and turning tooling types. 50) Fixed bug-> When doing BREAK or UNBREAK operations, the new resultant geometry was being created in the current layer instead of the layer assigned to the original geometry. Now the original layer is maintained. In the case of a JOIN operation, where the two entities are in different layers, the layer of the first entity picked is used for the new entity created. 51) Fixed bug-> When doing a DIMENSION->MOVE or TEXT->MOVE, the drag box was erroneously being displayed while selecting geometry in defining the second point of the translation. 52) Fixed bug-> The menu descriptions for TAP and SPOT in the drilling cycle operation popup menu were reversed. 53) Fixed bug-> Importing a .TLL file which was created by an EXPORT instead of as a tooling file, altered the first entity in the file. 54)*The following parameter has been added for GROOVE roughing operations: Plunge retract feed factor (0 = rapid): This parameter determines at what feedrate the tool retracts from inside the groove on roughing operations. The factor is the multiple of the plunge feedrate. For example if the roughing feedrate is .012 IPR and 3 is entered for this parameter, the tool will retract from the groove at .036 IPR. Entering a 0 will result in the retract as a rapid move. In previous versions the retract was always done at the roughing feedrate. 55) Fixed bug-> When a finish pass was being generated in a zigzag pocketing operation, the direction of the toolpath may not have been what was selected on boundaries which were individually picked. 56) When defining geometry using POINT->VALUES, the VALUES selection now remains highlighted on the POINT menu after defining a point indicating the current menu selection. 57)*UNDO now restores the original geometry following a FILLET or CHAMFER operation. If filleting or chamfering a boundary however, UNDO will be disabled. 58)*HORIZONTAL and VERTICAL have been added to the TRANSFORM->TRANSLATE menu. These operations work similarly to TRANSLATE->POINTS except that the translation will only be done in the horizontal or vertical component between the two translation points. 59)*When the CUT DIRECTION menu pops up on a milling operation, the CLMB and CONV selections are now inactive if the spindle is not on. 60) Fixed bug-> The "Finish pass spindle speed" in spiral pocketing was not being output if it differed from the roughing spindle speed. 61) Fixed bug-> Digitizing was not working and turning the digitizer on may have caused a "Too many open files" fatal error in GRAFX2. 62)*The digitizer communications port is now initialized whenever "On" is selected in the DIGITIZE menu. If the initialization is unsuccessful "On" will not be enabled and the following message will be displayed: Error initializing digitizer 63)*Some parameter wording in the SPIRAL POCKET and ZIG ZAG POCKET parameters have been changed for clarity and consistency. Automatically generate a pass around the profiles? is changed to: Generate a finish pass around the profiles? Stock left on the profile passes: is changed to: Stock left on the finish pass: 64)*Zigzag pocketing has been redesigned and enhanced with new features. Several parameters have been added or modified to implement the changes. Following are the changes in the operation of zigzag pocketing: 1) The plunge in and out of the work at a point when the start of the pocket forms a peak has been eliminated. 2) The roughing path is now displayed in gray prior to the toolpath generation. 3) The starting point of the roughing passes may now be specified by defining it as an entry positioning point in the outside boundary or "seas" inside of "islands". This allows for the pre-drilling of pilot holes so that the end mill does not have to plunge into material. 4) A secondary "Z" clearance plane may be specified for retraction when the tool must jump to a new point inside the pocket. This is done through a new parameter: "Z" clearance plane between plunges: 5) A separate lateral feedrate may be specified for the tool cutting from the plunge point to after the first roughing pass where there is material on both sides of the cutter. This is done through a new parameter: "1st pass feedrate: 6) The rough cutting direction which was specified as "parallel to X" or "parallel to Y" may now be specified at any angle so that the top to bottom and left to right direction may be controlled as well as complete control over the angle of the roughing passes. The "Direction of the pocketing passes" parameter is replaced with: Roughing pass cutting angle: 7) The stepover between roughing passes has been changed from the distance between passes to the fraction of the cutter diameter. The "Stepover distance between passes" parameter is replaced with: Stepover factor (fraction of tool dia., .8 e.g.): 8) A new cutting style mode has been incorporated which results in the tool staying down inside the pocket for as long as possible before having to jump to another area when encountering islands or convolutions. The former style of each pass proceeding from end to end and jumping over every island and convolution may still be chosen also. The style is selected through a new parameter: Roughing cut style: 9) If a finish pass with the same tool is desired, another parameter screen now appears to input the finishing parameters. The finish pass Stock and Corner cut parameters have been move to this screen and the following new parameters allow a different feed and speed to be used on the finish pass: Finish pass feedrate (IPM or mm/min): Finish pass spindle speed (RPM): When reprocessing existing toolpath files with zigzag pocket operations generated with previous versions, the parameters will automatically be converted to the new process except for the Roughing cut style which will default to "Stay down" mode. 65) Fixed bug-> After a zigzag pocketing operation where "Islands only" has been selected for a finish pass, if a new operation is created using spiral pocketing, "Islands only" will appear in the finish pass parameter even though it cannot be selected. Now "Yes" will appear in its place. 66) The toolpath operations parameter "Generate profile with stock circles:" now ends with a question mark. 67) Fixed bug-> Changing the screen view more than 5 times in a session with GRAFX2 may have caused random type errors in some computers. 68) Fixed bug-> Creating an ARC tangent to 2 entities was not working if the first entity picked was an arc. 69) Grooving finish cycles now only plunge in once when the tool width exactly equals the groove width. 70) Fixed bug-> The "Part surface clearance plane" parameter was missing from The "Finish only" operation of Grooving. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.4B ( 1/ 6/92) 71) The stepover spacing between roughing passes in Zig Zag pocketing is no longer reduced if the defined spacing divides evenly into the overall cross sectional length of the pocket. 72) Temporary file created during Zig Zag pocketing are now deleted after completing the operation. 73) The drawing of the primary toolpath in Zig Zag pocketing has been made more efficient. 74) Fixed bug-> "Z Zero Reference=" output to the .DA file in wire jobs was misspelled. 75) Fixed bug-> Part draw operations may have been displayed with material removal simulated on a screen redraw operation if the last machining operation performed had "material removal" selected for the "draw tool" parameter. 76) Fixed bug-> When displaying non turning drilling operations, the crosses at the drill points were being drawn as wide as the drill when "material removal" was selected for the "draw tool" parameter. 77) Fixed bug-> Some popup menus may have occasionally been displayed with the wrong width. 78) Fixed bug-> When displaying the menus of the existing machining operations in the toolpath file, if more than one menu screen was required the highlighting of the selection of the last executed operation may have been wrong and when displaying past the first menu screen, random program errors might have occurred. 79) Fixed bug-> When the maximum number of line entities was exceeded during an IMPORT operation, the program store 1 line past the limit which may have caused program errors. 80) Fixed bug-> After inserting a machining operation in front of an existing operation, the next operation menu display may not have shown the operation following the inserted one. 81)*A hardcopy printout of the currently displayed toolpath operations menu may now be gotten by pressing the F7 while in the menu. 82) Fixed bug-> Using a window to select the boundaries to be machined in a grooving operation may have resulted in program errors. 83) If 0 feedrate is specified in the grooving cycle or facing cycle finish pass, the roughing feed is now automatically used for the finish pass. 84) When doing as SCALE from the SCREEN menu, if a scale factor is not input thereby using the current scale factor, the screen will no longer do a center and redraw. 85) GEOMETRY->EXAMINE->REPORT now outputs the data with 4 decimal places instead of 5 if metric input units is active. 86) GEOMETRY->EXAMINE->SET now reports the total path length of the point set. 87) Fixed bug-> The 1-CW and 1-CCW automatic BOUNDARY->LINK modes would sometimes select an incorrect element at a branch point. This has been fixed. 88) Fixed bug-> The facing cycle finish spindle speed was not being output if different from roughing passes when doing both rough and finish in the same operation. 89) Fixed bug-> Erroneous axis output to the .DMB file may have occurred in the first positioning block if the "Z depth per pass" parameter was set in zigzag pocketing. 90) Fixed bug-> Math errors may have occurred in zigzag pocketing if Esc was pressed while selecting the boundaries with a window. 91) When UNBREAKing two arcs that meet at both endpoints (i.e. that form a circle), the arcs will now be joined at the junction closest to the first pick point. 92) Geometry tick marks created on trim operations are now erased when UNDOing the trim operation. 93)*GEOMETRY BREAK and UNBREAK operations may now be reversed with an UNDO. 94) A math error recovery routine has been added to zigzag pocketing which allows for a "graceful" recovery following any unexpected math error. 95) Fixed bug-> Sometimes when trimming an arc, the portion that was supposed to be saved was trimmed. 96) Fixed bug-> The XY feedrate was not being output if CONTOUR with OVER was used in conjunction with a boundary which had an approach position point. 97) Fixed bug-> UNDOing an unsuccessful or aborted FILLET or CHAMFER operation may have caused program failure. 98) Fixed bug-> An EXAMINE of an arc which crossed the 0 degree quadrant may have reported the wrong arc length. 99) Fixed bug-> Engraving on arc with metric input units active rotated the characters the wrong amount. 100)*JUSTIFY has been added to the ENGRAVE menu. When selected a popup menu appears with five selections. They are: NONE - engraving done on geometry will prompt for a start point for the lettering. This is how GEOMETRY lettering worked in previous versions. LEFT - When enabled, engraving done on geometry will not prompt for a start point but will position the engraved text so it starts flush with the left side of the line or arc base geometry. The characters will be engraved at the current set scale. RIGHT - When enabled, engraving done on geometry will not prompt for a start point but will position the engraved text so it ends flush with the right side of the line or arc base geometry. The characters will be engraved at the current set scale. CENTER - When enabled, engraving done on geometry will not prompt for a start point but will position the engraved text so it is centered onto the line or arc base geometry. The characters will be engraved at the current set scale. ALLIGN - When enabled, engraving done on geometry will not prompt for a start point but will position the engraved text so it completely spans the line or arc base geometry. The engraving scale factor will automatically be adjusted to exactly fit the text on the geometry and will remain at that factor after the operation. The justification popup menu comes up with the selection bar on the mode which is currently active. The currently active mode is also saved when doing a MODES->SAVE or saving the geometry file. 101)*Zig Zag Pocketing now pockets ALL boundaries selected, even if they are separate from each other. This feature is particularly helpful for inset engraving (use the F9 key and window all the letters). 102) Fixed bug-> UNDO of WINDOW or ALL transform operations involving boundaries was not operating correctly. 103) Fixed bug-> Text entities which were part of a transform operation were unaffected by an UNDO of the transform. 104)*After the generation of a PATTERN, the info line for UNDO stated that the last transform would be deleted. Now the message specifically identifies that a pattern is to be deleted. 105)*Engraving operations may now be deleted with the UNDO. 106) Rubberbanding is now in effect when using the cursor to define horizontal or vertical lines. The rubberbanding is drawn only in the direction of the resultant line. 107) Zig Zag Pocketing tool motion has been refined to keep the tool down on each linear pass as long as possible, bending around the edges of islands as required. This method produces a better finish while requiring fewer tool jumps. 108)*Zig Zag Pocketing now handles boundaries whose first and last elements geometry is collinear and do not necessarily start and finish at the same point. This facilitates the use of part boundaries that overlap from start to end for the purpose of achieving better machining finishes. Pocketing utilizing the STAMPFNT font is now possible with this feature. 109) Fixed bug-> Transforming boundaries was not checking for overflow of the boundary space limit. 110) Fixed bug-> When entity size overflow errors occurred while doing transforms, sometimes it was difficult to abort the transform operation. Now, the attempted transform of an entity type will cease once its limit is reached. 111)*File IMPORT operations may now be deleted with the UNDO. 112) Fixed bug-> If a boundary or point set was linked directly following a TRANSFORM operation, the next UNDO operation was erroneously referring to the last TRANSFORM and would delete the boundary or set along with its included geometry. 113) The number of characters in a tooling file path and name (.TLL) retained in the .DMB file has been increased from 16 to 20. 114) AUTOSAVE is now temporarily disabled during mass geometry creation tasks such as transform, import, pattern and engraving operations. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.4C ( 1/27/92) 115) Fixed bug-> When importing ASCII XY point data, the file menu created from the F5 key listed .TXT files instead of .DA files. 116)*The following new selections have been added to ASCII IMPORT. R T - Polar point data (Radius, Angle) T R - Polar point data (Angle, Radius) 117) Fixed bug-> Internal clipping done on the EXPORT of HPGL files sometimes resulted in missing or erroneous geometry in the exported file. Clipping is no longer done when exporting HPGL files. 118) Fixed bug-> Exported HPGL files sometimes showed extraneous lines when the files were imported into some other software programs. This was due to moving to the pen select position without issuing a pen up command first. 119)*HPGL exports and imports now use a default extension of .PLT instead of .PGL for consistency. Users may convert existing files with the following DOS command: rename *.pgl *.plt 120) A internal clipping routine has been incorporated when drawing TICKS. This can speed up a zoomed in drawing with ticks a magnitude of about five times as fast. 121) Fixed bug-> Erroneous program behavior may have resulted if specifying a tooling file of 20 characters long in the machining parameters. 122)*Wildcard file extensions may now be specified for the SHIFT/F5 file menu when entering an input file name. The following path specification will build a menu of all files with a .DAT extension in the d:\data\ path: d:\data\*.dat 123) If an error occurs during Zig Zag Pocketing, multiple Z level passes or finish passes will no longer be generated on the operation. 124) DELETE by WINDOW now deletes the enclosed boundaries and point sets first so that the dialog box to confirm the boundary deletion does not come up for each boundary. This dialog box will now only appear if a geometry entity falls inside the window which is part of a boundary which does not entirely fall within the window. 125) Fixed bug-> HPGL IMPORT may have not imported arcs and circles correctly. 126) HPGL exports now scale and translate the data to be consistent with the output for the selected plotter. This is done because outputting the data at full scale and relative to the part origin may cause HPGL data overflow, for instance if metric coordinates are active. Note that this new procedure reverts back to the way HPGL exports were done prior to Version 1.1F of GRAFX2. 127)*When doing a SAVE of a geometry file, if the file name is different from the current job name the following now occurs: 1) A dialog box pops up and inquires whether or not you wish to change the current job name to the new file name. Previously the job name always changed to the new name. 2) If a .DMB toolpath file exists for the original file name, a dialog box pops up and inquires whether or not you wish to duplicate the toolpath file for the new name. This new feature allows for the archiving of a job as it exists at a certain point before making more changes. 128)*Job name handling has been modified to more easily store data in direct- ories other than the \gx2 directory. The job name now retains the path to the files and uses this path as the default when accessing .GEO and .DMB files. When executing utilities such as POST, PLOT, GPOST, NCTALK, etc., the job name and path set in GRAFX2 is retained after returning from the utility (utilities dated after January 8, 1992). 129)*GRAFX2 now supports the setting of default paths to data files. This is accomplished through the creation of the file PATHS.SYS residing in the gx2 directory. The following specifications in the PATHS.SYS file are currently recognized: Specification Description bak=path the default path to GEOMETRY.BAK backup file geo=path the default path to the .GEO and .DMB files pmb=path the default path to the .PMB Post Processors tll=path the default path to the .TLL tooling and import files vec=path the default path to the .VEC engraving font files dxf=path the default path to the .DXF import/export files igs=path the default path to the .IGS import/export files cdl=path the default path to the .CDL import files plt=path the default path to the .PLT HPGL import/export files gfx=path the default path to the .PT GFX export files the "path" in the above specifications refer to the DOS path where the files are to reside. They may include a drive letter followed by the directory structure. The following is an example of a possible path specification for DXF files: dxf=d:\acad\dxf Here the default path for DXF files is the subdirectory "dxf" under the directory "acad" found on the "D" drive. If the drive letter of the path is the same as your "gx2" directory, you need not specify it. Here is some more examples of path specifications: geo=data tll=tll This sets the default path to .GEO and .DMB files to the "data" directory under your "gx2" directory or \gx2\data and sets the default path to .TLL tooling files to the "tll" directory under your "gx2" directory or \gx2\tll. Setting a path for Post Processors with a pmb=path specification in the PATHS.SYS file will override a path to Post Processors set with the "set post=path" specification in the autoexec.bat file. The path to Post Processors are also recognized by the POST.EXE and GPOST.EXE utilities dated after January 8, 1992. When pressing the F5 key or the left mouse button while entering an input file to GRAFX2, the menu created will be for the default path to the type of file being fetched. SHIFT/F5 is used to create file menus for a specified path. If a PATHS.SYS file contains recognized path specifications to paths which do not exist on your system (maybe incorrectly specified paths), a message will appear when GRAFX2 loads and the specification will be ignored. The PATHS.SYS file may be created during configuration with the G2CONFIG program Version 1.06 or higher. 130) GRAFX2 was not being reloaded when returning from utilities if the path (including drive number), in which it resided was greater than 16 characters. The maximum path length has now been increased to 32 characters. The increase works in conjunction with utilities release after January 14, 1992. 131) Fixed bug-> In some uncommon situations, Zig Zag Pocketing would fail to completely clean up the pocket. This has been fixed. 132)*More efficient tool jumping in Zig Zag Pocketing, Stay down mode has been incorporated. When the tool is forced to jump to a new start position, that start position is chosen as follows: 1st priority..... All the potential start locations which do not require the tool to plunge into the material are grouped together. This group includes locations associated with entry points into landlocked seas (enclosed pockets). The closest location from among this group is then selected as the end point for the tool jump. 2nd priority..... If there are no "material-less" plunge locations available, the closest "plunge into the material" location is chosen. If this location happens to be the first entry into a new separate pocket, the topmost or bottommost start location of that pocket is then chosen. Since very few into-material plunges are usually required, the above means that, in practice, enclosed pockets which have no entry points (and therefore require a plunge into the material) will be machined last. Approach motion to an enclosed pocket which has an entry point is always to the start position which is closest to the entry point. 133) Fixed bug-> Inverse windowing was not reversing the included boundaries on TRANSFORM of windowed entities. 134)*Inverse windowing is now extended to machining operations supporting the windowing of boundaries and to the BOUNDARY INVERT function. 135) Fixed bug-> When Corner Cutting was enabled, stock circles were always generated, even when they were not called for. 136) The generation of stock circles during corner cutting sometimes might have created an undercut situation even though undercut avoidance was enabled. In order to preserve undercut avoidance in these situations, stock circles are now suppressed during corner cutting if (a) the corner prior to the stock circle was corner cut and (b) the stock circle would cause its modified prior element to produce an undercut. 137)*GFX has been added to the export menu. This selection will export the geometry in the enabled layers to a file of the form "fname.PT". The file produced by this export will be POINT, LINE and CIRCLE definitions for the GFX part programming language. 138)*When loading GRAFX2 from DOS with either NC2 or GRAFX2 without a job name, a dialog box will now appear asking if you wish to load the last job worked on. 139) In dialog boxes, the highlighted text is now displayed in a dimmer red color for better visibility. 140) The current block status line displaying tool position and speeds & feeds is now suppressed on a screen redraw if step mode has been turned off. 141) Fixed bug-> "Enter operation description" had a misspelling in the text entry window associated with the machining parameter screens. 142)*A repeat task hot key has been added to the user interface. While doing a screen crosshair operation or picking off the main menu, the F8 hot key may be pressed to repeat the last of a group of operations performed without exiting from the current task or having to pull down a menu. The operations which will be retained for the hot key are the EXAMINE operation from the ACCESS pulldown menu and the REPAINT, ZOOM, UNZOOM, TRANSLATE, EXTENTS and PRIOR operations from the SCREEN pulldown menu. When GRAFX2 starts up, prior to executing one of these tasks, the repeat hot key will do a REPAINT operation. 143)*TOOLPATH has been added to the MODES pulldown menu. When selected, a secondary pulldown menu will appear with the following choices: ALL TOOL OPERATION LAYER Selecting one of these modes will control the display of toolpath when doing a screen redraw. If you are in the process of creating a toolpath file, the drawing of toolpath on screen redraws will be as follows: ALL - Display all toolpaths up to the current operation. This is the mode always done in prior versions of GRAFX2. TOOL - Display only toolpaths associated with the current tool number. OPERATION - Display only the toolpath in the current operation. LAYER - Display only toolpaths whose operations "Active layer" is currently an "ON" layer. This includes the current layer which is automatically set to the "Active layer" when in an operation. The LAYER mode is a way of segmenting multi faced jobs such as in horizontal mills with an index table. The geometry for the different faces may be put in separate layers and the associated toolpath operations may have their "active layers" set to the corresponding face layers. By then turning on the face layer individually, you can view at one time only the geometry and toolpath associated with each face. It should be noted that toolpath display filtering does not occur while searching out an operation and that this also currently has no effect on the PLOT program. 144) Fixed bug-> Using a configuration file created by a G2CONFIG prior to version 1.05 may have caused an XYPLOT or HPGL EXPORT in GRAFX2 1.4A or 1.4B to hang the computer. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.4D ( 2/ 5/92) 145) Breaking an arc at a point which was the center of the arc created erroneous arc solutions. Now the following message appears and the BREAK operation is nor performed: Error...the break point is the center of the arc, no unique solution 146) Selecting ORIGIN from the point menu during tasks which require further input now automatically proceeds with the task without having to physically move the cursor in the graphics area. 147) Point set creation is no longer cancelled when leaving the graphics area during the window operation on a LINK-WINDOW point set. 148) Fixed bug-> The addition of the F8=REPEAT to the talk window in 1.4C created too long a line in the talk window when selecting the first entity in a boundary link. The text has been modified to fit on the line. 149) Fixed bug-> Program failure may have occurred if displaying a tool during toolpath generation which had the maximum number or more of geometric elements for tool geometry. 150) The maximum number of geometric elements allowed for tool geometry may now be set in the G2SIZE.SYS file. The default size is 60 elements. If the maximum size is exceeded, the following message now appears: Tool geometry limit exceeded...partial tool will be displayed 151) The "Z ZERO REFERENCE" text output to the Post Processor for the "WIRE EDM PARAMETERS" has been aligned correctly. 152) Fixed bug-> Setting a path to the .dmb toolpath file through the "geo=" reference may have caused an error when selecting a prior operation off the toolpath file operations menu. xxx) Fixed bug-> Introduced in 1.4C, the VIEW command from the FILE pulldown menu was not working because the file extension was being dropped. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.4E ( 2/14/92) 153) Fixed bug-> After transforming entities by other than ALL, WINDOW or by BOUNDARY with KEEP OLD followed by geometry creating operations, UNDO was restoring the geometry prior to the TRANSFORM and deleting the geometry created afterwards. 154) Fixed bug-> Sometimes an erroneous file name was listed when the dialog box appearing when loading GRAFX2 asks whether to load the previous job. This would happen if a screen save to a file happened when the dialog box popped up where the erroneous file name is the temporary screen save file "xxxxxxxx.tmp". 155)*The following new parameters have been added to the WIRE PARAMETERS: Tool file name: Wire description: Operation description: Active layer: Wire length: 156)*The WIRE tool type may now be specified for creating tooling files. 157) On lathe roughing the material boundary will no longer be generated with stock circles if stock circles has been specified for the toolpath. 158) Fixed bug-> On PARX lathe roughing, undercut positions were being used when figuring the minimum and maximum points of the primary profile boundaries, thereby sometimes causing unwanted plunging at the end of the primary roughing. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.5A ( 4/16/92) UPDATE 1) Fixed bug-> Errors may have occurred when saving a file and the file name specified was greater than 8 characters. 2) Fixed bug-> When doing NC->REPORT, a pause after filling the screen occurred when outputting to the printer but not for outputting to the screen. This was reversed. 3) The output of the following lines have been eliminated from the NC->REPORT to the printer: a) **********operations left in the input file********** b) The heading after each screens worth of operations 4) The column alignment for NC->REPORT has been improved. 5) Fixed bug-> Occasionally in lathe roughing erroneous toolpath was generated when an undercut returned to the same plane at which it began. Minute mathematical inconsistencies have now been accounted for to prevent this occurrence. 6) The default assignment of feeds and speeds when they are 0 is no longer done when modifying preexisting operations. 7) In threading operations, a 0 feedrate may now be specified to feed in and out of the threading passes at rapid. 8) *FLIP has been added to the dimension menu. When selected, the user is directed to pick a dimension entity with the crosshairs. If the dimension selected is either a linear, angle or radius dimension entity, the AUTO arrow leaders associated with the dimension will be flipped between the outside and inside of the dimension. Previously only outside arrow leaders could be generated in AUTO mode and outside remains the default when an AUTO dimension is generated. When a dimension is flipped to have inside arrow leaders, the length of the leader extending from the arrow will be of a length equal to the length of the arrow which is controlled by the defined length of dimension TEXT. 9) GRAFX2 now suppresses all "Z" moves to default part clearance levels in the toolpath file for wire EDM operations. 10) When inputting FPM or RPM values into parameter screens, fractional data is now automatically rounded into whole numbers. 11) When inputting the radius of spheres or cylinders into surface projection parameter screens, negative values are now automatically converted to their absolute values. 12) On GEOMETRY->TRANSFORM->SHIFT, the shift parameter may now be reentered by pressing [Esc] when selecting the geometry to shift. Previously you had to reselect the SHIFT menu selection. 13)*The menus of file names created by the F5 or Shift/F5 when specifying an input file name now has "- Prior list" in each menu if the list of files exceeds one screen. This allows the user to move forwards or backwards in the file list or quickly move to the end of the list by selecting this from the first menu. 14) Extra spaces have been eliminated from some of the queries in the PROJECTIONS parameter screens. 15)*The "Coordinates on tape" parameter has been added to all the Z surface PROJECTIONS parameter screens. This parameter toggle selects between "Tip" or "Center". If set to "Tip", the coordinates output to the G-code tape file will be relative the bottom tip of the ball end mill. "Center" outputs coordinates relative to the center of the tool. This was the mode that existed prior to this release. "Tip" is now the default on new jobs. (Existing jobs will default to "Center" since that data is recorded in the .DMB file.) You do not have to define the geometry of the Z-surface any differently when using "Tip". It is advisable, however, to define tool geometry in the .TLL file relative to the tip, rather than the center, of the ball end mill in order to produce more realistic plots. 16) The dialog boxes resulting from saving a geometry file under a different name (see 1.4C, 126) now will not come up if a toolpath file (.DMB) is currently open. In this case, the job name will not be changed. 17)*ARC-CIRCLE has been added to the GEOMETRY->MODIFY menu. This selection will convert a selected arc into a full circle. If UNDO is executed after this operation, the original arc will be restored. 18)*UNDO now restores original geometry prior to a MANUAL TRIM operation. 19)*The ENDPOINT selection in the POINT menu now accepts the picking of point entities in addition to the endpoints of lines or arcs. 20)*OSNAP has been added to the MODES pulldown menu. When toggled on, whenever the POINT menu comes up, it will default to the ENDPOINT selection, otherwise the CURSOR selection will be the default as before. OSNAP stands for object snap and refers to creating a point on an object as opposed to the cursor mode which digitizes the point unrelated to an existing geometric entity. 21)*The menu description of SNAP in the MODES pulldown menu now has the word "cursor" in place of "orthogonal". The description referring to orthogonal snap was inaccurate. 22)*The CUT SIDE and DIRECTION selections made from the popup menu on CONTOUR and ZIG ZAG POCKET operations are now retained in the toolpath file. When modifying an existing operation, the menus will initially highlight and point to the selection made the last time the toolpath operation was generated. Note that if more than one pick is made for any single operation, only the first side and direction selections for the operation are retained. 23)*The drawing velocity in XYPLOTs may now be slowed down by a parameter set in the GFX.SYS file. This is sometimes desired to get better quality plots by moving the pen slower on the paper. This parameter may be set by using a version 1.07 or later of G2CONFIG. 24)*Approach and retract elements on boundaries are now marked when creating .VEC font files for engraving and are restored in the characters when lettering. 25) If the maximum number of any geometric entity is exceeded while doing lettering, the lettering operation will now immediately abort. 26)*Vector font file (.VEC) creation in ENGRAVING has been expanded to include non boundary geometry, points and text entities. When the .VEC file is built with the CREATE selection in the ENGRAVE menu, first the boundaries are written to the file followed by any geometry not already included in a boundary, and then any text entities found. This gives the opportunity of storing all these types of data in special font files which may easily be retrieved into a geometry file by simply typing the keyboard character assigned to the pattern. 27)*When building .VEC font files, the layer names used to assign the geometry to the keyboard keys may now have the form: k_text where "k" is the actual keyboard character identifying the pattern followed by the underscored character and "text" can be any text up to the maximum of a total of 32 characters for a layer name. 28) Fixed bug-> The UNDO toolpath function (DELETE or CONVERT) did not work and may have caused .dmb write errors when the toolpath file existed in a different path than GRAFX2.EXE. 29) POINT->SHIFTED has been modified. When selected, the user is now prompted for X and Y values which will result in a point which is shifted by the values from the last point defined. Previously the base point was defined by a point sub-menu first. To shift a point which was not the last point defined, use the TRANSFORM-> TRANSLATE menu. 30) When selecting TOOLPATH off the MODES menu, the selection will now be highlighted directly after selecting anything but ALL in its submenu. previously, this highlighting only resulted on a RESET or new file load. 31) "Drilling depth" has been added to the tooling file parameters for NON TURNING Center Drills. This value will load the "Final "Z" depth of hole" parameter when fresh loading the tooling file. If the top of the part is not zero, simply add the "Top of part" value to the parameter. 32) On FILLET, CHAMFER or UNBREAK operations, after picking the first geometric entity and then selecting BACK or ROOT on the menu, a subsequent return to the operation queried for the second entity. Now, in this case, the first entity is queried for to be consistent with the highlight display scheme. In effect this means that changing the menu cancels the operation. 33)*BISECT has been added to the LINE menu. When selected, the programs directs the user to pick two lines for which a line bisecting these lines will be formed. If the two lines selected are parallel, a parallel line of equal distance between the two lines will be formed. The length of the bisector line will be an average of the lengths of the two object lines as calculated from their intersection point except when the object lines are parallel in which case the bisector line is bounded by the parallelogram formed by the object lines. xxx) The file BACKPLOT.DMB created when backplotting is now written to the path set by "path=geo". 34) The "Draw tool" parameter when generating toolpaths now defaults to "Animated" instead of "No". 35)*APT has been added to the export menu. This selection will export the geometry in the enabled layers to a file of the form "fname.APT". The file produced by this export will be POINT, LINE and CIRCLE definitions for the APT part programming language. 36)*COMPACT has been added to the export menu. This selection will export the geometry in the enabled layers to a file of the form "fname.C2". The file produced by this export will be POINT, LINE and CIRCLE definitions for the COMPACT II part programming language. 37)*The following new specifications in the PATHS.SYS file are now recognized by GRAFX2. apt=path the default path to the .APT APT export files c2=path the default path to the .C2 COMPACT II export files 38) Pressing [Esc] in the EXECUTE menu when generating a toolpath now will redisplay the menu, thereby being a no op. 39) Fixed bug-> Occasional math errors from isometric viewing of toolpath has been eliminated. 40) The parameter "Cutter comp" has been changed to "Wire comp" in the WIRE parameters screen. 41) "Create toolpath with wire offset" has been eliminated from the WIRE parameters screen. This parameter had no effect on the toolpath. To generate toolpath without offset simple choose OVER on the CUT SIDE popup menu. 42) Fixed bug-> When PURGING with large amounts of points (more than 2730), sometimes the geometry data became corrupted. Note that purging automatically occurs on a SAVE of the geo file. 43) Fixed bug-> If a geometry creation operation was performed directly following a PATTERN operation, the next UNDO operation was erroneously referring to the last PATTERN and would delete the last pattern along with the new geometry. 44) GRAFX2 may now input files with no extensions. When specifying a file with no extension, if the input operation involves a default extension, the file with the default extension is first searched for and if not found the file with no extension is then searched for. 45) If the maximum number of any geometric entity is exceeded while doing a layer copy or move, the operation will now immediately abort. 46) When a layer copy or move is active, after a RESET or new FILE GET, the receiving layer will be re-queried for before proceeding with the copy or move. This is to protect against transfers to the layer index active in the prior file which may be meaningless or non existent in the new file. 47) The "Fixture offset number" parameter has been added to the NON TURNING parameters screen. This combined with POST.EXE Version 2.33 or later and GPOST.EXE Version 3.28 or later allows for the support of fixture offset codes in user creatable generic Post Processors. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.5B ( 4/30/92) 48)*On drilling operations in turning work, if a non zero value is now entered for the "Final "Z" depth of hole" parameter, this value will now override the endpoint of the drill line. This allows multiple drill operations to use the same drill line even when drilling to different depths. 49)*GRAFX2 now automatically uses UMB (Upper Memory Block) extra memory. UMBs lie in the 640K to 1Mb region of memory. On 386 or 486 computers, EMM386 style memory managers may be used to map any extended memory you may have into this region. If you have such a memory manager installed on your system and it is providing extra memory in the form of UMBs (Upper Memory Blocks), GRAFX2 will automatically detect and use this extra memory for its internal operations. This means extra memory space for entity storage or for Zig-Zag Pocketing, for example. The amount of extra memory provided depends on your configuration but is often in the 30K to 100K range. NOTE: There is no performance penalty if a memory manager is not installed on your system. As a concrete example, DOS 5.0 provides an EMM386.EXE memory manager which is installed in the CONFIG.SYS file in a manner resembling this: . DEVICE=HIMEM.SYS . DEVICE=EMM386.EXE NOEMS . DOS=UMB . You will need to consult your own manuals for an exact installation. These are the minimum requirements: a. a 386 or 486 machine b. extended memory c. a memory manager (EMM386 type) 50)*The parameter "Back chamfer size" has been added to the PART CUTOFF parameter screen. When a non zero value is entered, the part cutoff cycle will automatically machine a 45 degree chamfer of this size on the back of the part. The machining sequence for cutoffs with chamfers are as follows: 1) Machine a groove by the clearance amount deeper than the chamfer end point, and away from the back face by the clearance amount. 2) Retract and machine the chamfer. 3) Reposition and finish the part cutoff cycle from just above the point where the chamfer meets the back face. 51) Fixed bug-> When creating a CIRCLE by generating the radius from an existing point, a zero radius error was being reported if no previous CIRCLE was created by entering the radius value or digitizing the radius. 52) Location points for LINEAR and POINT dimensions and the point of BREAK operations now default to CURSOR mode even when OSNAP mode is active. 53) GEOMETRY->CIRCLE messages have been improved. The message reporting the option of pressing the space bar to enter the radius value is now more accurately displayed only while in POINT->CURSOR mode. When doing a geometry pick to create a point forming the radius, the radius value from the center of the circle to the crosshairs is now dynamically displayed the same it has always been when in CUSOR mode. 54)*FILTER has been added to the IMPORT->MODES menu. When this mode is enabled, file imports of DXF, IGES, CADL, DMB(Grafx) and TLL files can filter out data by layers. In this mode, only data which resides in layer names which have corresponding layer names which are ON in GRAFX2 will be imported. 55)*When windowing boundaries on a zigzag pocketing operation, the popup menu for sorting the boundaries will now always appear. Previously this would only happen if a finish pass was specified or a SHIFT/F9 window was used. 56) Fixed bug-> Introduced in 1.5A, the finish pass stock value may have been corrupted when redoing zigzag pocketing operations. 57) On CIRCLE creation, the radius entry will now automatically go to CURSOR mode which permits the space bar to enter the radius value. If a snap point is desired to define the end of the radius, any of those point types may simply be selected off the POINT menu. 58)*In the TURNING PARAMETERS screen "Tool length offset Number" has been changed to "Tool offset number". 59) Fixed bug-> Introduced in 1.5A, CHIP drilling cycle may have been corrupted when redoing an operation. 60)*The "Spindle", "Coolant" and "Index angle" parameters have been moved from the first NON-TURNING parameter screen to the second. 61)*The WIRE PARAMETERS has been reorganized into 3 screens. The following parameters have been added in order to facilitate automatic skim cutting. Material removed per pass: A null response results in a single pass around the selected boundaries. This is how the wire operation worked prior to this release. A positive value non zero value results in multiple progressive passes. A "0" value will result in a multiple spring pass operation. Starting stock: This parameter appears only on positive non zero "Material removed per pass" conditions. The first pass will leave the starting stock minus the "per pass" amount and each subsequent pass will cut deeper by the "per pass amount" until the "Uniform stock left" value is reached. No. of spring passes: This parameter appears only on zero "Material removed per pass" conditions. These number of passes will be made at the "Uniform stock.." value. Reverse direction on alternate passes? This parameter appears only when a value has been entered to the "Material removed per pass" parameter thereby implying multiple passes. After completing a pass, the following pass is done in the reverse direction. This is usually only done on open boundaries where back and forth cutting can be accomplished in a continuous motion path. 62) The INFO hot key selection now displays all information in a single pop up window instead of displaying the JOB, SCALE and LAYER in a line which overlays the top menus as previously done. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.5C ( 6/ 3/92) 63) The GRAFX2.DGN file now report font loading in a more concise way: Font file XXXXXXXX.FNT loaded = nnnn bytes 64)*POLAR POINT definitions now derive their center from the last point defined rather than defining the center point within the definition. This alleviates some confusion of keeping track when using a POLAR point as part of another definition such as a LINE ENDPOINT. 65) Version 1.05 of the .GEO file is now being used in GRAFX2. All prior versions of the .GEO file are automatically converted when read in. Among the changes in the GEO file are a data alignment mechanism which will allow this version to read future versions of GEO files and be able to skip over unrecognized entities. 66)*After creating a RECTANGLE, UNDO will now delete the entire rectangle instead of just the last line created. 67) Fixed bug-> The Upper Memory Block scheme introduced in 1.5B may have prevented some .COM programs from running after exiting GRAFX2 until the computer was rebooted. 68) On startup or reset, GRAFX2 was doing an unnecessary screen redraw before loading any geometry. Even though this caused no problems, overlays were read in for the operation adding extra time to the initialization process. This has been eliminated. 69) The index angle parameter on non turning operations is now always initialized to null when starting a new job. 70) The "Tool offset number", "Tool length offset number" and "Tool diameter offset number" parameters now come up automatically equal to the tool number only if the tool number has changed from the last operation. 71) Fixed bug-> introduced in 1.5B, wire comp was not being output to the toolpath file when called for in the operation parameters. 71) "Z Zero Reference =" output to the .DA file in wire jobs now aligns to the other informative data. 72)*On non-turning drilling operations, positioning points may now be defined anywhere in the point set, not just at the beginning and end. When this is done, upon encountering an interior positioning point, positioning moves will be made to the positioning points and the drilling cycle will be reinstated on the next non positioning point member of the point set. This is commonly done for clamp avoidance. Previously the point sets had to be broken up in order to achieve this result. 73) The JUSTIFY popup menu in engraving now comes up with the active selection highlighted. 74)*WORKVIEW has been added to the ACCESS pull down menu. Its selection allows access to a new entity type called Work Views. Work Views is used for a variety of reasons. Primarily it allows a user to organize his work in GRAFX2 into sections which will be addressed independently. A number of associated conditions are defined in the work view and these conditions can be instantly enabled by selecting a particular Work View. When WORKVIEW is selected from the ACCESS menu, a Work View name is asked for. The user may type in a new or existing Work View name or press the LEFT mouse button or the F5 key to bring up a menu of existing Work View names. Entering a new Work View name automatically creates a new Work View. Entering an existing Work View name accesses that Work View. Once a Work View is entered or selected, the current Work View is changed and a parameter screen appears as follows: NON TURNING TURNING Work view name: Work view name: Local X origin: Local X origin: Local Y origin: Local Z origin: Local Z origin: Turret: (rear or front) Index angle: Layers: Work view offset number: Layers: The TURNING version appears if XZ coordinates has been enabled in the LATHE parameter screen of the ACCESS menu. Work view name: This parameter comes up with the name used to access the Work View. The name may be edited in order to rename the Work View. A maximum of 16 characters may be used in the name including spaces. Local XYZ origin: These parameters set the local coordinate system in the Work View. When a Work View is made active whereby any of the axes is non zero, a local coordinate system results. The results of this is that a second set of axes are draw in cyan corresponding to the local coordinates when AXES is enabled in the MODES menu. The display of the coordinate position in the bottom of the screen when moving the cursor in the graphics area is relative to the local system, and the examine function reports the local coordinate values. Index angle: This parameter associates an index angle to the Work View. This is most applicable to indexing on horizontal machining centers. Work view offset number: This parameter associates an offset number to the Work View. When set to a non zero value, the post processor may output a work offset block and subtract the Work View origin values from the Post output values. Currently 1-62 may be input to activate work coordinates in Post Processing. Layers: This parameter stores in the Work View the desired layer state. That is the ACTIVE layer for the Work View as well as the ON layers. Upon reaching this parameter, a menu of the existing layers appears on the screen. The ON and ACTIVE layers for the Work View is selected in the same way as they are when accessing layers through a menu pick. The parameters need not be answered, especially after a Work View has already been defined and one simply wants to change to the Work View. Hitting the Esc key immediately dismisses the parameter screen and leaves the system in the selected Work View. When WORKVIEW is selected from the ACCESS menu, the repeat task is set to selecting a Work View and subsequent accesses of Work Views may be accomplished with the F8 hot key until this hot key is changed by another task. Currently a default 20 Work Views are allocated. Work View "0" is automatically created on a new job and is suggested to be a default view which can easily be restored by the user. The number of Work Views allocated may be increased or decreased with the G2SIZE program. The "Active work view" parameter has been added to the first parameter screen of the TURNING, NON-TURNING and WIRE PARAMETERS. Like the "Active layer" parameter, specifying and "Active work view" in a machining operation, makes that Work View active when executing the operation. In addition, if an "Active work view" is specifically specified (picked off a menu or a character is typed), the following parameters automatically are set by the parameters in the Work View: Machining Parameter Work View Parameter Application ------------------- ------------------- ----------- Rotate index table to.. Index angle (Non-turning only) Work offset number Work view offset number (All) Lathe type Turret (Turning only) 75)*The parameter "Work offset number" has been added to the NON-TURNING parameters. This parameter is used to associate a machining operation with a work offset usually for the purpose of using work coordinates in Post Processing. This parameter will be loaded as a default when an "Active work view" is specified and the work view has a "Work view offset number" assigned to it. 76) Fixed bug-> in the lathe FINISH operation, the clearance plane value was being ignored if the tool radius was set to zero. 77)*The "Maximum spindle speed", "Spindle speed" and "Constant surface speed" parameters have been moved from the first to second turning parameter screen. 78)*The F8 repeat task hot key now includes the PICK picking factor selection from the ACCESS menu. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.5D ( 6/25/92) 79) When returning to GRAFX2 after shelling to DOS with the OS selection, the path and drive where GRAFX2 resides is now automatically restored in case the current path and drive was changed by the user while in DOS. 80)*After entering the second angle in the ARC->ANGLES geometry definition, the assumed arc is now displayed in green and the complement arc is displayed in gray and the user is prompted to accept or toggle the solution arc. The green arc will be defined when the [Enter] key or LEFT mouse button is pressed and the solution arc flipped when the [Space] bar or RIGHT mouse button is pressed. 81) Fixed bug-> Math errors which may have occurred in lathe roughing/boring operations where the wrong lathe type was selected have been eliminated. 82)*SET has been added to the GEOMTERY->TRANSFORM->TRANSLATE menu. This transformation adds the ability to translate geometry onto a pre defined point set. By combining TRANSLATION with PATTERN features of the system, the user now has a very powerful and convenient way of generating geometric patterns. When selected, the point menu appears in order to define the base point of translation. After defining the base point, the user is prompted to select the point set to translate on to. After doing this, the ENTITIES menu appears from which the user selects the type of entities to translate onto the point set. Note that the NREPS= specification has no effect when translating onto point sets. 83) When defining a POINT->ORIGIN in a work view, the point is now defined as the local origin instead of the global origin. 84) Fixed bug-> When selecting "Active work view 0" from the CUT PART parameter screen when no work view has previously been initialized, math errors may have occurred. 85)*Angular fractions using minutes and seconds may now be accomplished when entering expressions by using the ">" operator. For example: 50>45>30 will be evaluated as 50 degrees, 45 minutes, 30 seconds or 50 + 45/60 + 30/3600 degrees. 86) The isometric display of geometry during creation or deletion operations are now correct where crosshair operations are not required. 87) Fixed bug-> Occasional erratic program behavior occurred during a point purge or GEO file save when work view 0 was not specifically created. 88) Fixed bug-> Boundary cutting operations may have failed when more than 2730 points were defined in the geometry database. 89)*The GRAFX2.DGN file now reports entity size data stored in Version 1.05 GEO files and later. The report for each entity type is of the form: entity type -> limit, used where "entity type" is point, line, dimension, etc; limit is the size parameter for the entity in effect when the GEO file was created; used is the amount of entities of that type actually stored in the GEO file. This report is useful for when an input GEO file exceeds the size limits, the sizes may be read from the GRAFX2.DGN file and G2SIZE may then be used allocate sufficient room. 90)*The heading for the Trim/Extend menu has been changed from TRIM to TRIM/XTEND. 91) On HPGL export and plotting, the following data is now output up to 4 decimal places instead of 2: SI - character size, SL - character slant, DI - absolute direction 92) Text or labels are now imported on HPGL imports. 93) Fixed bug-> GRAFX2 was not setting a data flag in its output file when drilling to a Z depth of 0. This may have resulted in the wrong drilling depths being plotted in PLOT. 94) Fixed bug-> Retract positioning points were being ignored after lathe undercut roughing operations. 95) When doing a FILE GET of the file GEOMETRY.BAK, the program now asks for a job name presuming that this is a restore from a backup file. 96) Fixed bug-> An erroneous file read error reported when doing a FILE GET of an exported GEO file has been eliminated. 97) Fixed bug-> Specifying an input path of 24 characters on a GEO file import may have resulted in erroneous characters displayed in the message: "Importing filename.." 98) A maximum of 32 characters may now be specified when inputting a file name. Previously 24 characters was the maximum. 99) When a work view is activated in the machining parameter and any of its layer ON state changes from the current state, the screen will now auto- matically redraw. Previously, the screen would only redraw if the work views active layer was different from the current active layer. 100)*The "Z" axis values output to the toolpath file are now automatically adjusted relative to the local "Z" origin of the activated work view specified in the operation parameters. In essence this now creates full 3 axis relocatable origins when generating toolpaths. All "Z" values in the operation parameters are entered relative to the local origin and are then output relative to the common origin. For example if the local "Z" origin is +2.0 the following shows the output relative to the input. INPUT OUTPUT Depth of cut: -1 Z1 "Z" approach clearance plane: .1 Z2.1 "Z" retract clearance plane: 2 Z4 "Z" clearance plane between plunges: .06 Z2.06 "Z" level for top of part: 0 Z2 Final "Z" depth of hole: -2.5 Z-.5 In addition, the Z level specified by positioning points will be modified in a similar fashion. On DRAW PART operations, the top and bottom surface planes will be modified by the currently "active" work view. Note however, that in this revision, "Z" modification is not accomplished on data associated with surface projections. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.6A (11/4/92) UPDATE 1) "Z" axis modification on surface projections is now accomplished when generating toolpaths in a work view with a non zero local "Z" origin. 2) Arc motion data output to the .DMB file now stores "Z" axis data for the center point of the arc. 3) Fixed bug-> Entering exactly 16 characters when accessing a work view name or 32 characters when entering a layer name may have caused program failure. 4) Fixed bug-> When editing an ASCII line whereby the number of characters in the line equaled the maximum number of characters allowed for the particular operation, some editing functions may have failed. 5) *The following new parameters have been added to the WIRE parameters: Power: (On, Off or None) Machining conditions code: 6) The integer input routine now the input echoes in black instead of red. 7) Tool point angle data is now output in the "CUTR" block in lathe programming for use by POST. 8) Fixed bug-> Introduced in 1.5A, Z depth data was not being output in WIRE operations. 9) Fixed bug-> Introduced in 1.5A, rapid positioning to the start of the boundary was not being output in WIRE operations. 10) HPGL IMPORT now handles positioning data associated with the PU and PD instructions. 11) The process for restoring picked entities to their proper color has been improved. 12) Picked geometry entities are now highlighted when doing a GEOMETRY>EXAMINE. 13) When defining ARC>ANGLES, if the endpoints are the same such as an arc from 0 to 360 degrees, the choice toggle will no longer appear since there will be only one solution. 14) A timing adjustment has been made to the communications routines for digitizing to handle faster data busses. Previously digitizing may not have worked on very fast computers. 15) When inputting ASCII text through the GRAFX2 line editor, control characters may now be input. This is useful for such cases as preceding ASCII text with a Ctrl/t character (ASCII 24) to suppress output to the tape (or machine program). ASCII characters which do not have a graphics font character defined in the font file will echo as a down arrow . 16) The screen cursor SHOW and HIDE functions have been made better to ensure proper displays. 17) The F8 repeat functionality is now turned off during a windowing operation to prevent recursive display problems. 18) Fixed bug-> Occasional display of full circles on very small arc toolpath segments has been eliminated. 19) In Zig-Zag pocketing, if the tool travel along an arc would be less than .000001, a short linear move is now output in its place. 20) The arc pick function has been improved by extending the pick area around the arc endpoints. 21) Fixed bug-> In DRILL operations, double motion was being made to approach positioning points in the point set. 22) Text entities are now transformed in the isometric view. HPGL output will limit the slant of the text characters to greater than 63 degrees. 23) When entering a non zero value to the "Work offset number" parameter, a popup menu now appears asking whether to shift the output data or not. This parameter directs the action of the POST when processing the "wo" work coordinates function. No shift is usually used when work coordinates are used to make small adjustments in the machine program whereas shift is used when work coordinates are used to establish multiple part origins such as in "tombstone" horizontal milling using a rotary axis or in multiple parts setups. 24) Fixed bug-> UNDO may have functioned incorrectly on new geometry created immediately after a manual trim operation. 25)*Support for the FPLOT Pen Plotter Emulator has been added to GRAFX2. This is a third party software product which inputs HPGL instructions and produces high quality plots on a variety of dot matrix and laser printers. In order to integrate it into GRAFX2, FPLOT should be installed into the same directory as GRAFX2.EXE and setup for the desired printer. G2CONFIG is then run and FPLOT is selected from the "Select a plotter" menu. It is not necessary to input the other plotter parameters if FPLOT is selected. After doing this, if XYPLOT is selected from the SCREEN pulldown menu, the plots will be produced on the printer device. The "PRINT screen" command will still continue to do low resolution screen dumps as before. 26) On HPGL imports, leading spaces on instructions lines are now ignored. 27)*The "Work view offset number" parameter in the creation of WORK VIEWS is now included when LATHE parameters is active. 28)*The "Work offset number" parameter has been added to the TURNING and WIRE parameter screens. 29) HPGL IMPORT now handles LB instructions which exceed a single line and supports the DT define terminator instruction. 30) Fixed bug-> Repeatedly doing HPGL imports may have resulted in a "Too may open file" DOS error. 31) Fixed bug-> The spelling of "Gauge" in comment fields sent to the Post Processor in turning work has been corrected. 32) Fixed bug-> In turning work, changing a nonzero gauge length from a previous tool to 0 in a subsequent tool was not being picked up in the parameters when redoing the operation. 33) When selecting entities with the cross hairs results in multiple candidates, the message window now reports the CHOICE number as each candidate is toggled. 34) When selecting boundaries to machine with a window (F9 activates), the boundaries included were being displayed in the inverted pixel mode usually resulting in the light gray draw color. They will now be drawn in pixel overwrite mode resulting in the bright cyan color consistent with the single boundary pick draw color. 35) Fixed bug-> Tick marks on some dimension entities may have erroneously been omitted on screen redraws. 36) Fixed bug-> Sometimes, after choosing from the CUT SIDE menu, the tool would "cut on the wrong side" - especially if the boundary had one or more cusps. 37) Error recovery when reading in bad .GEO files has been improved. 38) ATTRIBUTES has been added to the BOUNDARY, SET and CUT PART menus. This selection brings up the ATTRIBUTES menu which is used to store features or machining information directly into elements in part boundaries and point sets. The usefulness of this new feature is immense. Most simply it provides a way of providing much more control of the toolpaths generated from GRAFX2 and opens up the access to the custom features of many Post Processors. When ATTRIBUTES is selected from the aforementioned menus the ATTRIBUTES menu appears with the following selections: APPEND - Add an attribute to a boundary/set element MODIFY - Examine, Modify or Delete attributes of a boundary/set element COPY - Copy the attributes of a boundary/set element to another element MOVE - Move the attributes of a boundary/set element to another element DELETE - Remove all the attributes from a boundary/set element SHOW - Draw elements with attributes in highlighted color REPORT - Output text file listing boundary/set axis data and attributes ELEMENT/GLOBAL - Toggle between attributes associated with individual elements and those associated with the entire boundary/set When attributes are attached to an ELEMENT in a BOUNDARY or SET, any toolpath generated of the type which tracks the boundary or point set, will execute the attributes prior to the motion associated with that element. When attributes are attached GLOBALLY to a BOUNDARY or SET, any toolpath generated of any type, will execute the attributes according to the type of GLOBAL attribute specified. This allows the programmer to do such things as change a feedrate, control cutter comp., insert and ASCII block, send a control code to a Post Processor, jump a clamp, etc. in the middle of a machining operation. This technology permits the storing of these types of features inside the geometric model, whereby the machine codes then automatically are output when the toolpath is generated and the data becomes permanently recorded in the geometry file. The type of attributes available closely resemble STEP MODE operations in GRAFX2, but several new ones have been introduced. The ATTRIBUTE pop up menu appears when APPEND is selected or and insert attribute operation is executed within a MODIFY selection. The attributes are: FEED - Change the feed rate (ONE-SHOT or MODAL) SPEED - Change the spindle speed Z LEVEL - Manually move to a new "Z" position (STEP or RAMP at a FEEDRATE) G-CODE - Insert a control code M-CODE - Insert a machine code DATA - Insert a data value ASCII - Insert an ASCII block directly (with or without "N" word) SYNCH - Set a synchronization point for 4 axis lathe or wire programs BREAK - Set a breakpoint whereby toolpath generation enters STEP mode ID TEXT - Store ASCII text to identify the boundary/set element GFX - Invoke menu for GFX machine control syntax When the GFX selection is made, another popup menu appears with syntax found in the GFX part programming language. These types of commands often control customized features of Datacut Post Processors. ADOV - Turn on/off acceleration deceleration override BLKD - Turn on/off output of block deletes in the post processed output CLMP - Output a clamp on or clamp off "M" code DWEL - Output a programmed dwell HOLD - Output a program stop "M" code INDX - Output an index "M" code KLOC - Output a keylock "M" code OPTN - Turn on/off option shift for post processors OVBP - Output an override bypass on or override bypass off "M" code SPRE - Output the "M" code assigned to the SPRE ON & OFF functions TSTP - Execute a "TSTP n" command NOUT - Control the block sequence "N" words DC - Execute a GFX "DC n" type command When boundaries and sets are copied or moved through LAYER or TRANSFORM commands, their attributes are preserved in the new boundaries and sets. Boundary attributes are listed in the ATTRIBUTES > REPORT. MODIFY brings up a menu of the attributes which are stored in the picked element and enables the user to change the attributes' values, delete individual attributes or insert new attributes in front of or after any other attribute associated with the element. 39)*When selecting PARAMETERS from the MILL or LATHE CUT PART menu, the default tool number which appears in the "Enter Tool Number" query, will no longer automatically bump up if an existing toolpath file is being reprocessed. In this case, the tool number of the next operation in the toolpath file will be used as the default. The tool number will however automatically bump up on appended operations to the toolpath file. 40)*When selecting PARAMETERS from the WIRE CUT PART menu, the default tool number on which appears in the "Enter Tool Number" query, will no longer automatically bump up on appended operations. 41)*In WIRE parameters, the use of the "Work offset number" parameter has been changed. This parameter which took a work coordinate G code value directly (e.g. 54, 55), now takes an index of the base "G" code value consistent with the GRAFX II system scheme of handling work coordinates. 42) Fixed bug-> When inserting a new operation at the beginning of an existing toolpath file using the `I' response to the "Enter Tool Number" query, the operation was being inserted before any existing draw part operations. It is now inserted after the draw part operations. 43) When executing a CONVERT toolpath to geometry from the UNDO pulldown menu, the current placement point for file imports is now ignored to avoid confusion. 44) Fixed bug-> When milling, if an existing non drilling operation with corner cutting or projections was changed to a drilling operation, the corner cut parameter screen or projections parameter screen may still have appeared. 45) After toggle selecting a boundary from multiple candidate solutions, the selected boundary is now displayed in highlighted color instead of returning to original color. 46) When selecting a geometry element which is supposed to be included in a boundary or point set, multiple solution elements which are not part of a boundary or set are no longer entered into the multiple candidate toggle. 47) Fixed bug -> When initializing WORK VIEW 0, its active layer may have been picked up from the previous job. 48)*The LAYERS parameter in WORK VIEWS now displays the ACTIVE LAYER for the work view. 49) The HELP screen on POP UP and PULL DOWN menus now lists the availability of the [Esc] key to dismiss the menu. 50) Contour type motion which is programmed with a zero feedrate is now displayed as rapid motion. 51)*The LATHE selection on the ACCESS pull down menu has been expanded. When selected, the query "Is this a turning job?" now is included in the parameter screen. When YES is selected for this query, this parameter will be used as the criteria for machine type defaults such as the queries associated with a work view and the default menu selection on CUT PART when starting a new toolpath file. YES will also cause the LATHE selection in the ACCESS menu to be highlighted for a quick visual confirmation on what type of job is being processed. In the case of preexisting geometry files, if the ZX or DIAMETER parameter in the LATHE ACCESS menu was YES, this new parameter will also be assumed to be YES. 52) Fixed bug-> Occasionally, when canceling a part draw operation, output code may have gotten out of synch which may have resulted in bad results in Plotting or Post Processing. A check is now made before starting any machining operation which will synchronize part draw codes if they had gone awry. 53) Fixed bug-> Exceeding the boundary/set space when doing ENGRAVE lettering may have caused erroneous program behavior. This condition now results in a graceful exit from the operation and an automatic cancel of any pending boundary. 54) After dialog boxes are popped up, the crosshair or cursor is now always returned to the position prior to the dialog box. 55)*The parameter "Back turn part?" has been added to the LATHE ROUGH and FINISH parameter screens. When "yes" is selected, machining of the part is done in the reverse direction typically using a right hand turning tool. 56) The GROOVE FINISH cycle now uses a much improved method of calculating its reverse point, thereby reducing the probability of gauging irregular shaped grooves. 57)*The following parameter has been added to the MILL initial parameter screen: Non turning machine type: VERTICAL HORIZONTAL UNSPECIFIED When HORIZONTAL is selected, PLOT version 2.19 or later will plot the toolpath file generated with a horizontal orientation on the "Z" and ISOMETRIC views. 58)*Fixed bug-> Undercutting may have been skipped when the difference between the starting level and finishing level of the first element of the undercut was an exact integer value (such as 1.0000000). 59) Fixed bug-> Lathe roughing and boring was only processing 1 retract positioning point. Now all retract positioning points are processed after a roughing operation. 60) Fixed bug-> Part gouging may have occurred in certain unique situations when PARX rough turning a profile with an undercut. 61) Fixed bug-> Defining a plane for ZSURF projection using the "2 points" selection was miscalculating the Z-level of the plane. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.6B (1/25/93) 62) The length of parameter input screens are now automatically sized to the number of queries on the screen. 63) The reporting of feeds and speeds in the info window when in step mode has been greatly improved. 64) In SKETCH mode with SNAP on, arrow keys now move the cross hair at least one pixel position. Previously, small snap grid spacing relative to the distance of a pixel may have disabled cross hair movement using arrow keys. 65)*When laying down the endpoint in LINE>ANGLES or LINE>TANGENT>ANGLE geometry creation, the LEFT mouse button may now be pressed which allows the selection of a line or arc to SNAP the endpoint of the new line to. This new feature combines a TRIM operation inside the line definition in a single operation. 66)*When entering X, Y & Z values in geometry creation, the last value input for each axis is now retained as the default value when entering the next value for the axis. This can provide a time saver in inputting data in many types of situations. 67) The select cursor now automatically starts in the MILL box when initiating a new toolpath file on a job where "turning job" has not previously been set in the ACCESS > LATHE menu. 68)*VARIABLE has been added to the ACCESS pull down menu. This selection is for examining or setting values for variables which may be used in entering mathematical expressions when inputting data in the system. After selecting VARIABLE, you are prompted for the variable letter which must be a single alphabetic character a-z. Upper case letters are accepted but converted to lower case. When the letter is input you are then queried for the value to be assigned to the variable. The current value of the variable is displayed as the default which you may keep by pressing enter or change by typing in a new value. The new value may be entered with an expression, which means any variable may be used to input new variables. Once a variable has been assigned a value, you may then use the letter to represent the value when entering expressions. After selecting ACCESS > VARIABLE, the F8 repeat hot key may be used to further access variables without having to go to the ACCESS menu. 69)*When inputting POINT VALUES for LINE HORIZONTAL or LINE VERTICAL, the value of the second point on the axis which doesn't change is no longer asked for since its ignored anyway. 70) Fixed bug-> The repeated pressing of the F8 repeat key while in a function using selections with the crosshairs may have resulted in a stack overflow error and return to DOS. 71)*After an UNDO > CONVERT converts the last toolpath generated into boundaries, a dialog box now queries whether or not to delete the toolpath that was converted. Previously the toolpath was always deleted. 72) When FILLETing or CHAMFERing a boundary element whereby the start point of the boundary changes, the small box marking the start of the old boundary is now erased. 73)*While selecting the first geometric entity in a FILLET operation, the F9 key may now be pressed to invoke a windowing operation reflected by the change in color of the cross hairs. All pairs of lines which intersect each other at a common point falling inside the window will have fillets with the last specified fillet radius created between them and the lines then be trimmed if the TRIM flag is ON. In this type of filleting oper- ation, the smoothest fillet will automatically be created without the toggle being invoked as in individual filleting operations. 74) Fixed bug-> In the MODES menu when selecting a TOOLPATH mode, the high- lighted state of TOOLPATH in the menu was erroneously being transferred also to the DRAW mode in the menu. 75)*CONNECTED has been added to the SET menu. This allows for the creation of points along with their simultaneous inclusion into point sets. When CONNECTED is selected, the POINT menu appears to define points. As points are defined, they are correspondingly made part of a point set as denoted by the yellow color and diamond graphic around the last point in the set. While building a point set in this manner, the UNDO button may be clicked to delete the last point defined and remove it from the set. The REVERSE selection in the POINT menu accomplishes the same thing and the CANCEL selection in the POINT menu deletes all the points that were defined in the set being built. The point set may be accepted with the ACCEPT menu selection or by pressing the space bar on the keyboard. 76)*The corner cut parameter screen has been modified as follows: a. An "Effective tool diameter.." parameter has been added. Its displayed value is automatically updated whenever a change to another parameter on the screen requires it. If you manually change the "Effective tool diameter", the value displayed by the "Depth of cut parameter" will change correspondingly. The effective tool diameter is no longer displayed in the coordinate display window. b. The "Taper angle of tool" parameter now defaults to 60 if no tooling file has been specified. c. Corner cut parameter errors are now reported immediately upon entry and the current cursor pointer returned to the erroneous parameter. If desired, the error may then be bypassed by using the down arrow. d. The actual diameter of the tool (shank diameter) in the first screen no longer is changed to the effective tool diameter. e. The "NEXT SCREEN" selection has been added to the bottom of the parameter screen so that the screen is not automatically dismissed after entering the "Effective tool diameter.." parameter. 77) GRAFX2 now protects itself from generating errors when creating cutter offsets on line segments which have zero length in the XY plane. 78) Fixed bug-> Windowing operations of arcs were giving erroneous inclusion results. 79) Fixed bug-> UNDO was failing to be set to the operation performed following an ARC-CIRCLE operation in the GEOMETRY > MODIFY menu. 80) When creating tooling files, the tool description is now limited to a maximum of 69 characters so that when creating tool lists, each record which includes the tooling file name will not exceed 80 characters. 81) Fixed bug-> If selecting other than the first entity in BOUNDARY > PICK, and a full circle was selected as the entity, the counter clockwise direction was always taken on the entity no matter which side of the element was selected. 82) Fixed bug-> When PARX roughing a boundary which started on an undercut, undercut boundary overflow and program failure may have occurred. 83) When entering ISOMETRIC angles, the stored angles now are automatically wrapped so that: -180 <= angle <= 180. 84) Fixed bug-> "Horizon" or edge perspective lines on isometric draw was not connecting to the top surface if the "Z" axis angle was not vertical or horizontal. 85)*When setting isometric angles using the axes graphic, the "Z" axis may now be oriented using the ">" key to increase the angle or the "<" key to decrease the angle. 86) "Z" level query when defining positioning points are now excluded if the "Turning job" parameter is yes in the LATHE ACCESS parameters instead of the "X and Z data" parameter as before. 87) Fixed bug-> Screen overflow was occurring on HELP on selecting layers in the WORK VIEW parameters. This HELP screen has now been made into two screens. 88) When entities are created, very small coordinates are now converted to zero. 89) Fixed bug-> Elements with DWEL attributes in some cases were outputting a DWEL 0 block directly after the DWEL n block. 90) Some excessive overlay swapping has been eliminated related to tool draws. 91) Fixed bug-> On turning operations with no tool file following an operation with a tool file, the geometry of previous tool file was being displayed. 92) Fixed bug-> On screen redraws with toolpath, the tool draw mode of tools may have gotten out of synch if the mode changed between operations. 93) Fixed bug-> On lathe roughing involving a retract positioning point and a PARZ undercut which does not return to or past the diameter of the start of the undercut, an extra positioning move may have been output prior to the retract to the positioning point. 94) Lathe roughing has been made more robust in handling boundaries defined in any direction. Previously boundary direction may have been crucial in back turning undercuts. 95)*When selecting point entities with the cross hairs results in multiple candidates, the message window now reports the Z value of the point if it was defined as each candidate is toggled. 96) Fixed bug-> When the first operation fetched from an existing toolpath file was a PART DRAW operation, the part boundary was not being displayed in white unless a machining operation had previously been displayed at sometime in the GRAFX2 session. 97) Fixed bug-> After doing a GEOMETRY > BREAK on a boundary element containing an attribute, ATTRIBUTE > SHOW was erroneously indicating attributes existing on all new elements spawned from the original through BREAKS. Now its shows existence of attributes only as retained by the first element after the BREAK(s). 98)*RESTORE has been added to the FILE pulldown menu. When selected, the file GEOMETRY.BAK from the backup data path will be accessed. A JOB name to load the file to will be asked for, and if a JOB name had been in effect when the backup file was created, this name would be displayed and could be applied by accepting with [Enter]. (If RESTORE is applied to a GEOMETRY.BAK file which was created with a GRAFX2 prior to this version, the displayed name will probably be erroneous. In this rare instance, simply delete the displayed name, then press [Enter]. If no GEOMETRY.BAK file is found in the backup path, a message is displayed and the operation cancelled. 99) Fixed bug-> On GEOMETRY > TRANSFORM > MIRROR, if USE LAST was selected without previously establishing the mirror line, a math error resulted. Now, in this case, an error message is generated directing the user to establish the mirror line. 100) Leading + signs may now be used when entering expressions. Previously, these resulted in an "improper or missing operand" error. 101)*Tolerance calculations may now automatically be accomplished when entering expressions by using the "|" operator. For example: n1|n2 - RANGE: returns the value (n1+n2)/2. e.g. 1.5|1.51 = 1.505 n|t1|t2 - TOLERANCE: returns n+(t1-t2)/2. e.g. 2|.005|0 = 2.0025 5|+.002|-.005=4.9985 when entering tolerances, the + sign is optional 102)*CONNECTED has been added to the GEOMETRY menu. This selection implements an alternative method of defining geometry in GRAFX2. This method pro- vides a quicker approach to geometry creation when inputting dimensions from prints where the dimensions are mainly given relative to each other or to a common datum point. When CONNECTED is selected from the GEOMETRY menu, the POINT menu appears to establish the starting point of the first dimension. After this point has been defined, the CONNECTED menu appears with the following selections: POINT - Create line segment to a point (uses point menu) DELYAX - Create line segment incrementally in X *DELTAY - Create line segment incrementally in Y *DELTAXY - Create line segment incrementally in X and Y XC - Create line segment to X coordinate *YC - Create line segment to Y coordinate *XCYC - Create line segment to X,Y coordinate FILLET - Create fillet between last and next line segment CHAMFER - Create chamfer between last and next line segment REVERSE - UNDO the last element in the connected geometry BOUNDARY - Link the connected geometry into a boundary *If X and Z coordinates are enabled in the ACCESS > LATHE pulldown menu, the following selections replace those in the above menu: DELTAZ - Create line segment incrementally in Z DELTAXZ - Create line segment incrementally in X and Z ZC - Create line segment to Z coordinate XCZC - Create line segment to X,Z coordinate Some parts have many of their dimensions depart at perpendicular angles to each other. In this case the DELTAX and DELTAY(Z) or XC and Y(Z)C select- ions allow these dimensions to be input with a single value. To further speed up the process, after a single coordinate type dimension has been entered, the menu cursor automatically shifts to the corresponding one in the other axis. This eliminates the need to move the menu selection, thereby saving a step. If the DIAMETERS parameter is set in the ACCESS > LATHE pulldown menu, "X" values entered for XC or XCZC in the "XZ" coordinate type menu only will take the diameters as input. FILLET and CHAMFER is selected in the logical order in which they appear on the part. If a fillet or chamfer falls between line A and line B, after line A has been defined, the fillet or chamfer is selected and when line B is defined, the fillet or chamfer is then created between the two lines. When a fillet or chamfer is pending, the FILLET or CHAMFER menu selection will be displayed in RED, signifying that one is pending. Attempting to connect a fillet or chamfer to a last segment which happens to be a fillet (can only be attempted after REVERSE), will result in the message "Cannot connect fillet (chamfer) at this point" After a complete part surface has been defined, BOUNDARY may be selected to create a boundary from the connected geometry in the order in which it was defined. After this is done, the CONNECTED menu is automatically exited and the GEOMETRY menu restored. Whenever the CONNECTED menu is exited by GO BACK, ROOT or BOUNDARY, the connected geometry sequence is terminated. To subsequently append connected geometry after an exit, simply select the endpoint of the last segment as the startpoint of the new connected geometry. During the process of defining connected geometry, REVERSE or UNDO will continually delete segments all the way back to the start of the sequence. 103) GRAFX2 no longer overrides sequence numbering set by the Post Processor unless a nonzero value is entered in the starting sequence number parameter or a value other than 1 is entered in the sequence number bump parameter. 104) Fixed bug-> Approach positioning point moves on lathe drilling operations was being output before the operation identifying block in the DMB file which may have affected certain custom Post Processors which made logic decisions based on the type of operation. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.6C (3/ 3/93) 105) When importing DXF files, GRAFX2 now ignores INSERT blocks which do not reference BLOCK names thereby avoiding the error message "DXF file error in BLOCK INSERT". These types of INSERT blocks may be used in "Anonymous blocks" which have no relevance to GRAFX2 imports. 106) When the message "No work views currently exist, cannot select" appear in the operations parameter screens, any work view names which may be in the original DMB file are now automatically deleted after passing the query. Previously, the residual work view name stayed on the parameter screen. 107) The HELP messages for inputting file names have been modified to reflect differences in input files from output files. 108)*FAMILY has been added to the NC menu. This selection allows users to create part family toolpath parameter files denoted by the .DMF extension. These files are basically the same as .DMB toolpath files which are created by the user and stored on the system as default templates when families of parts are programmed by using the same or similar machining operations on different geometric part shapes. When FAMILY is selected off the NC menu, the user is asked for the name of .DMB file to be transferred to the part family file. The default is the .DMB file corresponding to the current job name but any existing .DMB file may be specified. Next the user is asked for the name of the part family file which will get a .DMF extension attached to it. The default path for GEO and DMB files is assumed. After specifying the name of the part family file, a dialog box appears asking if PART DRAW operations should be stripped out when creating the part family file. This usually will be YES since part family files normally apply the same machining operations to different part profiles and the PART DRAWS would be redone for the different geometries. Accessing the part family files is done when entering the name of the toolpath file during toolpath creation. After entering the DMB file name, which is usually the same as the JOB name, instead of terminating with the [Enter] key, the user terminates with the [F5] key. This brings up a menu of all the DMF files found in the GEO/DMB default path. If one of these files is selected off the menu, the operations parameters of the selected file will be used as the defaults in creating the new toolpath file. If a part family file is selected in this manner where the DMB file for the job already exists, a warning dialog box will appear, asking the user if the existing DMB file is to be overwritten. 109) The values of the VARIABLE list is now stored in the GEO file so that when the file is reloaded, the values of the variables which may have been previously set, are preserved. 110)*The sign convention for measuring the X and Z gauge lengths in turning work has been reversed through popular demand. When inputting gauge lengths, the values now entered should be the sign distances from the center of the tool nose to the turret home positions. If modifying an existing DMB file which was created with the old convention the following message will appear: Gauge lengths in existing DMB file have been flipped per new convention If programming gauge lengths with this version of GRAFX2, be sure that you are Post Processing with POST.EXE dated AFTER 2/8/93 which recognizes the new convention of gauge length input. Please note that this changes the X and Z gauge length descriptions on page 3-150 of the GRAFX II User Reference Manual. IT IS STRONGLY ADVISED THAT IF GUAGE LENGTH PROGRAMMING IS BEING UTILIZED, THAT THE USER CAREFULLY SCRUTINIZE THE G-CODE OUTPUT BEFORE RUNNING THE MACHINE TO BE CERTAIN THAT THE PROPER PROGRAMS AND USAGE HAS BEEN APPLIED THEREBY RESULTING IN THE CORRECT DATA BEING DELIVERED TO THE MACHINE. 111) Fixed bug-> On lathe ROUGH and BORE operations, the output block identify- ing the type of operation was being output after any approach position points which may have caused problems on some custom Post Processors which had logic associated with operation types. 112)*POINT has been added to the TRANSFORM > MIRROR menu. When selected, the point menu appears so that the mirror point may be defined. After defining the mirror point, a popup menu appears asking whether the mirror line which will be defined through the point should be HORIZONTAL, VERTICAL or at an ANGLE. If ANGLE is selected, the user is asked to input the angle. After the theoretical line through the point has been defined, the ENTITIES menu appears in order to select the entities to be mirrored. The theoretical mirror line appears on the screen until the next redraw. 113) An unnecessary OFST block generated in lathe roughing has been eliminated from being output to the DMB file. 114) Fixed bug-> "Horizon" or edge perspective lines on isometric draw was not being drawn at the true edge if the "Z" axis angle was not vertical or horizontal. 115) Fixed bug-> ZSURF Projected tool motion was being displayed incorrectly. This bug was introduced in Revision 1.6B and is fixed here. 116) Fixed bug-> The GFX->DC type attribute was being output in the wrong format to the .DMB file. 117)*LINETYPE has been added to the LAYERS menu for setting the linetypes of all line entities drawn in the current layer. When selected, a menu pops up which displays 5 different linetypes. Any of these linetypes may be selected by positioning the cursor over any of the selections and clicking. A diamond graphic is displayed next to the linetype currently active for the current layer. 118) Fixed bug-> The initial "Z" home position and toolchange position may have been modified by the local "Z" coordinate of the active work view of the last operation executed during toolpath generation. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.6D (5/11/93) 119)*The current active work view is now stored in DRAW PART operations. This allows the DRAW PART operations to be filtered in PLOT in when in WORKVIEW mode. When searching for a DRAW PART operation in GRAFX2 toolpath genera- tion, its associated work view will then be restored as the current active work view. 120) Fixed bug-> Renaming a layer was removing its color selection for DRAW MODE. 121) Fixed bug-> Toolpath was not being drawn on threading passes when the feedrate was set to 0 in order to have the tool position to depth before each pass. 122)*The MILL initial parameter "Non turning machine type:" has been changed to "Machine orientation:". The action of the parameter remains unchanged. 123) Fixed bug-> Setting/changing a workview while in the middle of another task may have caused GRAFX2 to lose track of the task. For example, if while defining the start point of a lettering operation in ENGRAVE, WORKVIEW was entered through the ACCESS menu, the subsequent lettering task would not operate correctly. 124) After dismissing the parameter screen to input a HOME or TOOLCHANGE position with the POINT menu, the very next parameter is now always positioned to when the parameter screen is restored. 125)*The following parameter has been added to the ACCESS > LATHE parameter screen: Input "X" toolchange position as diameters? This parameter only appears when the parameter "Input values parallel to the spindle axis as diameters?" is set to YES. If the new parameter is then set to NO, HOME and TOOLCHANGE positions in the "X" axis will be input as their nominal (radial) values. 126) Fixed bug-> In GEOMETRY > CONNECTED, when inputting a FILLET or CHAMFER followed by the SELECTION of POINT, the POINT menu which appears had a menu selection erroneously overwritten after defining the next endpoint. 127) When doing a TRANSFORM > LATHE operation, the connecting lines created between the original and mirrored profile will now be created in the same layer as the selected boundary instead of the currently active layer. 128) When dragging TEXT or DIMENSION entities, the cross hairs is now displayed along with the drag box. 129)*The ability to CUT and PASTE operations has been added to GRAFX2 toolpath generation. This feature enables the user to move operations around in the toolpath file and store commonly used operations to be used repetitively or to be inserted into jobs from preexisting files. Any operation including DRAW PARTs may be cut to a file. When selecting "FILE" from the dialog box which appears after leaving the operations parameters or after searching a DRAW PART operation, the system asks the name of the file and appends a "DMC" extension to it. The default path for GEO and DMB files is assumed. This FILE CUT in essence moves the toolpath operation data from the current toolpath file to the new file. Only one operation can exist in any DMC file. A FILE PASTE operation is performed as follows. After PARAMETERS is selected from the MILL, TURN or WIRE menu, the user simply enters a "g" to the "Enter tool number" prompt to insert the operation at that point in the output file. The system then prompts for the name of the DMC file to load. The F5 key or LEFT mouse button may be used to bring up a menu of all the DMC files found. The utility program "DMCLIST.EXE" is distributed with the GRAFX II system to create a list with descriptions of the DMC files found on the system. From the DOS prompt, type DMCLIST followed by the [Enter] key. This will create a file called DMCLIST.TXT listing the DMC files in the following format: DMC file name - (DMB file name) Operation Description The (DMB file name) refers to the name of the original toolpath file from which the DMC file was cut. 130)*The following operations parameters may now be changed and passed through to the toolpath file with a KEEP execution: Tool number:, Tool length offset number:, Tool diameter offset number: Fixture offset number: and Tool offset number: This allows for the reordering of tool stations without having to re-execute the operation. Note however that the informative text in the Post Processor output "-----Tool n Offset n----" will not be affected. In order to change this text which gets stripped out before being sent to the machine, you need to re-execute the operation. 131)*The interface for defining positioning points in BOUNDARIES and POINT SETS has been changed. Now, when POSITION is selected, the POINT menu appears allowing the user to define the point used for a positioning point at that moment, whereas before the point had to be predefined. If however, the PICK is used to define the point and the point picked is not already part of an existing boundary or point set, that point will be used and a new point will not be defined. After defining a positioning point, the POINT menu is immediately dismissed and the BOUNDARY or SET menu reappears. If more than one positioning point is needed, the user simply reselects POSITION to define another. 132) Fixed bug-> After producing a dimension leader arrow in an XYPLOT or HPGL export, an arc which immediately followed may have had extraneous data preceding it. 133) Fixed bug-> Eliminated math errors when placement point of angular dimension was at intersection point of lines which include angle. 134) Fixed bug-> If the cursor was moved out of the graphics area at the "Pick pie slice" prompt on a DIMENSION > ANGLE, the dimension was then immediately drawn in a random location as soon as the cursor was returned to the graphics area. 135) Fixed bug-> On IMPORT>ASCII>xy of fixed format data, the number of decimal places were not being asked for. 136) Fixed bug-> On IMPORT>ASCII of fixed format data, after the number of decimal places were entered to the query, program failure may have occurred. 137) When there is not enough memory to execute a Point PURGE the message "Not enough memory to execute" now says: "Not enough memory to execute a Point Purge" 138)*The structure of the "SYNCH" attribute has been changed to now store a SYNCH code and SYNCH value. This is to add flexibility for the handling of synchronization for 4 axis lathes and wire machines. SYNCH attributes created with GRAFX2 versions prior to this release will not be compatible and those attributes should be deleted from the GEO files. The need to do this is unlikely since no software has so far been released using SYNCH attributes. 139) Fixed bug-> HPGL LB instructions IMPORTED as text was not being positioned to a redefined PLACEMENT POINT. 140)*In CONNECTED GEOMETRY, when inputting the value to any of the single axis line segment definitions, the F5 key or LEFT MOUSE button may now be pressed to enter CURSOR mode. CURSOR mode uses the MOUSE or ARROW keys to lay down the end point of the line segment or select an existing line or arc to SNAP the end of the line to. 141)*The "ANGLES" selection in the LINE menu has been changed to "ANGLE". 142)*ANGLE has been added to the GEOMETRY > CONNECTED menu. When selected the program asks for the angle of the line segment and then automatically enters CURSOR mode to lay down the endpoint or SNAP to an existing line or arc. 143) When laying down and endpoint in CURSOR mode, the cursor is now updated to the last screen position when entering the SNAP task. 144)*When laying down and endpoint in CURSOR mode, the F5 key may now be used in addition to the LEFT MOUSE button to enter the SNAP task. 145) The HELP screen for laying down endpoints in CURSOR modes has been made more appropriate. 146)*A special enhancement has been made to 1 object line trim/extend. Now, if a line is trimmed to a parallel line, the line will trim/extend to the endpoint of the "trim to" line on the end closest to the pick point. This is particularly useful in line snaps which utilize this trim/extend function. Previously, trimming a line to a parallel line resulted in and error. 147)*UMB (Upper Memory Block) extra memory allocation for entity sizing is now supported for DOS operating system Versions 6 and higher. Previously support was for DOS 5 only. NOTE: In the current memory scheme of GRAFX2, only up to a maximum of 5399 points may be allocated even though available memory might indicate the ability to go beyond this number. 148) Fixed bug-> Some older .GEO files containing boundaries used in part draws may have resulted in the omission of extrusions on the part draws using PLOT version 2.19 or later. GRAFX2 now attempts to fix these boundaries when reading the files in. If however, files originating with the defect were saved with a recent version of GRAFX2, the defect may go unnoticed and the boundaries would have to be re-linked to repair them. 149)*Dynamic entity sizing has been incorporated into GRAFX2. With this feature, entity sizes may be adjusted automatically to accommodate individual entity requirements as they are needed while GRAFX2 is running. Available memory is dynamically allocated during this process. This can eliminate the need for G2SIZE in most cases, however G2SIZE can still be used to set default sizing and fine tune allocations where a particular job reaches the limit of available memory. The entity size report displayed when INFO is selected shows the entities available from the last resizing. These numbers will change whenever a dynamic resizing is done by the system. Since the size reallocations use a process of swapping the database to disk, it is recommended that a disk caching utility be installed in your system. The SMARTDRV utility which comes with DOS 5 and higher or WINDOWS 3 or higher can be used. It is recommended that computer memory resources be dedicated to disk caching over a RAM drive since a large disk caching buffer will be just as effective as a RAM drive for temporarily saving screens and temporary files in GRAFX2 in addition to the other benefits such as speeding up overlay swapping. 150) Fixed bug-> When creating a PATTERN of points with a FUNCTION, an extra redundant point was sometimes being generated when the X step value divided equally into the range of X. 151) The value of the "x" variable is now restored after creating a PATTERN of points with a FUNCTION. Previously, the variable "x" assumed the X values of the points being generated. 152)*PLOT has been changed to VIEW/PLOT in the NC menu and the menu description now specifies that the plot may go to the graphics screen or hard copy device. 153) Inputting angles as -DD CURVES > ARC FIT was not working correctly when the there was an even number of points in the point set being fitted. 155) Positioning points in point sets are now ignored when fitting arcs to them. 156) The tool type code is now stored in the toolpath (.DMB) file for access by other utility programs. 157) Fixed bug-> The menu tree may have displayed wrong selections on TRANSFORM operations which temporarily brought up the POINT menu. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.7A (6/11/93) UPDATE 1) Fixed bug-> Executing and UNDO > CONVERT after a toolpath generation operation may have resulted in memory allocation errors or program failure. 2) Fixed bug-> When DRAW PART was active, it was not being displayed in RED in the menu. This bug was introduced in this version of GRAFX2. 3) Improvements have been made for "Z" top and bottom surfaces in DRAW PART for PLOT extrusions. Occasional problems related to local "Z" origins in work views active during DRAW PART operations have been eliminated. When REDOing a PART DRAW operation, the previous "Z" surfaces are now supplied as the defaults when reentering the values. 4) When importing or doing an UNDO > CONVERT of .DMB files, data which is in other than the X-Y plane is now transformed into the X-Y plane for storage into the GRAFX2 data base. 5) More memory has been made available to zigzag pocketing through data swapping. 6) Fixed bug-> In zigzag pocketing, when the number of boundaries included in a single pocketing operation exceeded the limit of 64, the program may have hung up. Now, when the limit is exceeded, a message is displayed and the pocketing operation is executed on the number of boundaries within the limit noting that the operation may be incomplete. 7) The maximum number of boundaries allowed in a zigzag pocketing operation has been increased from 64 to 128. 8) Fixed bug-> Retract positioning points were being ignored if the last element of the boundary was a lead-out element. 9) Fixed bug-> The FLIP mode of dimensions were being lost when copied/moved to layers or UNDOing their deletion. 10) Input parsing on HPGL IMPORT has been made more robust. The following changes have been incorporated: a) negative data, such as that generated by HPGL-2 is now accepted during the IMPORT operation. b) data arguments delimited by spaces only are now accepted c) leading spaces are now handled on all data arguments d) the "SPn" command where n > 0 now initiates a PEN DOWN condition 11) In HPGL IMPORT, user units resulting from the "IP" and "SC" commands are now handled. 12)*The LAYERS and FILTER modes now apply to HPGL IMPORTS. Layer names are assigned as the pen numbers in the HPGL file. 13) Screen limits are now reset after an UNDO of a TRANSFORM, ENGRAVE, PATTERN, IMPORT or RECTANGLE. 14)*RESIZE has been added to the FILE pulldown menu. When selected, an resizing of the entity space will be executed according to the then current usage of entities. 15) Fixed bug-> When copying/moving boundaries from one layer to another, if the boundary had GLOBAL ATTRIBUTES only, the attributes were not being duplicated in the target layer. 16)*VEC has been added to the IMPORT menu. This selection imports Datacut vector format files. VEC files are the format used for engraving font files. The entities imported are points, lines, arcs, text, boundaries and point sets (when BOUNDARY mode is enabled) and layers (when LAYERS mode is enabled). Lead in/out elements of boundaries are maintained in VEC imports. 17)*VEC has been added to the EXPORT menu. This selection exports Datacut vector format files and is very similar to the CREATE selection on the ENGRAVE menu except for the following. ENGRAVE > CREATE outputs all boundary/set data as linked boundaries and sets then outputs the remaining geometric and text entities. EXPORT > VEC with the BOUNDARY mode off, outputs all geometric and text entities and with the BOUNDARY mode on, outputs only boundary or point set data. 18) Fixed bug-> GRAFX2 may have not recovered gracefully after an error calling FPLOT such as FPLOT.EXE wasn't found or there wasn't enough memory to execute FPLOT. 19)*The SNAP task entered from CURSOR mode in the CONNECTED GEOMETRY > ANGLE definition has been expanded. Now, after pressing the LEFT Mouse button from CURSOR mode, a popup menu appears with the following choices: GEOMETRY - Snap line segment to an existing line or arc DELYAX - Create line segment incrementally in X *DELTAY - Create line segment incrementally in Y XC - Create line segment to X coordinate *YC - Create line segment to Y coordinate *If X and Z coordinates are enabled in the ACCESS > LATHE pulldown menu, the following selections replace those in the above menu: DELTAZ - Create line segment incrementally in Z ZC - Create line segment to Z coordinate This feature gives more flexibility in inputting geometry as it is represented in the print. When the popup menu appears, the default selection is GEOMETRY which is the task that SNAP mode always performed previously. 20)*While creating CONNECTED GEOMETRY, the last endpoint is now displayed in the coordinate window to the right of the menu tree window. 21) The UNDO transform is now active after a TRANSFORM > LATHE operation. 22) The info window for the Work View Names menu now reports "Select this work view name" 23) Fixed bug-> When generating SPIRAL PATTERNS, a redundant point may have occasionally been generated at the end. 24) Fixed bug-> Incorrect "Z" axis positions may have been output on jobs utilizing workviews with non zero local "Z" origins after operation searches were performed. 25) Fixed bug-> Immediately after selecting a destination layer on a LAYERS > MOVE or COPY, if a new GEO file was loaded or a RESET done, any attempt to leave the MOVE or COPY menu resulted in a query for the layer name. Now, the menu will automatically exit after the FILE > GET or RESET, thereby eliminating the problem. 26) Fixed bug-> erroneous program behavior may have resulted from a LAYER > COPY or MOVE of boundaries or sets which resulted in a dynamic memory resize. 27) During a LAYER > COPY or MOVE, the following message is now displayed in the talk window: Copying (Moving) to layername where layername is the name of the destination layer -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.7B (8/25/93) 28)*The "Freeze layers?" query has been added to the WORK VIEWS parameter screen. When set to YES, the LAYERS parameter is omitted from the parameter screen on subsequent accesses to the WORK VIEW, thereby prevent- ing the modification of the layer list for that work view. Subsequent changes to the layers may be accomplished by resetting the query to NO and reentering the WORK VIEW to select the LAYERS parameter. 29) The current engraving SCALE and SPACING is now stored for automatic recall in the GEO files and as the defaults on a MODES > SAVE. 30) UNZOOM now maintains the current center of the screen when redrawing at the halved scale factor. Previously, the center of the part was moved to the center of the screen. 31) When loading a tooling file with NC>TOOLING>LOAD, the talk window message now reports "Loading tllname" instead of "Importing tllname". 31) If AUTOSAVE is enabled while loading a tooling file with NC>TOOLING>LOAD, or while accepting a boundary or set, it will now be disabled during these operations. 32) After an NC>TOOLING>LOAD, if SAVE is selected off the FILE pulldown menu, the current JOB name will now not be displayed as the default to help prevent the accidental overwriting of the last GEO file. 33)*Parameters for defining a TAP tooling file have changed. The "Threads per inch" parameter has been added and the "FPM" parameter has been eliminated from turning tools. 34)*The "Threads per inch" parameter has been added to threading tooling files. When a non-zero value is stored, it will come up as the default when loading the tooling file for a threading operation. 35)*The following parameters have been added to the Turning tap drilling cycle parameter screen: Threads per inch (chase in): Threads per inch (chase out): When the "chase in" parameter is set to a non zero value, chase tapping at the specified lead using the threading cycle will now be output by Post Processors with the "Chase in/out TAP "G" code" parameter set. If this parameter is 0 or if the Chase parameter is not set in the Post Processor, POST will output a feed in and out (G01) as it always did previously. Post Processor support for this is found in the POST and GPOST programs dated after 6/22/93. The "chase out" parameter is provided for instances when the lead in and lead out are not the same. If "chase in" is specified and "chase out" is zero, the lead out will default to the same as the lead in. 36) In lathe grooving, when the tool exactly fits into the groove, the roughing operation will now take a single plunge in and out of the groove. 37)*In lathe grooving, the reversal point for the finish pass may now be controlled by the attaching a "G-code 740" attribute to the element of the groove boundary whose start point will determine the "halfway" point in the groove. It should be noted that setting this point where the tool has to change its depth direction as it contours may cause gouging when using tools which are not full radius. 38)*FOCUS has been added to the SCREEN pulldown menu. When selected, the screen is redrawn at the current scale and centered on the current focus point. The current focus point is updated as every GRAFX2 point is defined. It is also updated as each vertex of a BOUNDARY or POINT SET is linked. FOCUS provides a powerful tool in homing in graphically to the area of a part being worked on. When linking large boundaries from IMPORTED data which may have mismatches, this tool is invaluable by eliminating the need to constantly ZOOM and UNZOOM. After FOCUS is executed, the F8 REPEAT Hot key is assigned to the function thereby creating a much greater timesaver when using this function. 39) Fixed bug-> When doing a GEOMETRY>MODIFY>BREAK on a boundary element, sometimes the linked order in the boundary of the two resultant elements were reversed. 40)*The following parameter has been added to the BORE2 drilling cycle parameter screen: Bore cycle shift distance: This parameter corresponds to what is sometimes referred to as the "Fine boring cycle" in some machines where the boring bar feeds in, the spindle turns off and the tool shifts away from the wall of the bore by the amount specified by this parameter before retracting, so as to not come in contact with the bore as the tool retracts. Post Processor support for this is found in the POST and GPOST programs dated after 6/25/93. 41)*ELLIPSE has been added to the geometry menu. The selection creates an extremely easy method of defining ellipses which are approximated with arcs in the system. ELLIPSE brings up the ELLIPSE sub menu with the following selections: RECTANGLE - inscribe the ellipse inside a rectangle CENTER - describe the ellipse as center point, horizontal & vertical radii ARCS=n - set the number of arcs created to approximate the ellipse. The number of arcs can be between 4 an 99. After an ellipse has been created, executing an UNDO will delete all the arcs defining the ellipse. When CURSOR mode is used to define the RECTANGLE type of ellipse, the inscribed ellipse will be dynamically displayed as the rectangle is dragged with the cursor. 42) The minimum number of points, point entities and line entities allocated on a dynamic entity resize operation has been increased to lower the frequency of resizing when these entities are initially introduced after the initial resize. 43)*New features and parameters have been added to the PART CUTOFF operation in turning. The new parameters are: "Z" retract clearance increment: This parameter specifies the amount the tool will retract away from the stock after the part is cut off. If 0 is programmed, this motion will not take place. Previously the value for the "Part surface clearance plane" parameter was used for this. Back chamfer feedrate: This parameter appears only if a non zero value is entered to the "Back chamfer size" parameter. Entering a non zero value to this parameter will result in the machining of the chamfer at this feedrate. While the rest of the machining is done at the feedrate specified in the second TURNING PARAMETERS screen. The feed type for this feedrate will always be the same as that for the overall feedrate (e.g. IPR or IPM). Retract tool straight up to clearance plane? No Yes When "Yes" is specified, following the last motion of the part cutoff cycle, the tool will retract straight up to the clearance plane. This provides a safe retract in case the part does not drop (broken tool or misprogrammed ID). If "No" is specified, the tool will take a direct path to the toolchange position which would usually travel through the area the part used to occupy prior to dropping. Enable part catcher? No Yes Selecting "Yes" will bring up the PART CATCHER PARAMETERS screen with the following parameters: Advance part catcher diameter: This parameter provides for the input of a diameter to which the cutoff tool will cut into the part before the part catcher will be advanced. This allows a delay in advancing the part catcher in order to minimize the amount of chips that will fall into it. If "0" or the NULL response is entered for this parameter, or if the diameter is greater than the cutoff "OD" or less than the cutoff "ID", the part catcher will advance prior to the plunge into the part (but after the back chamfer if one has been specified). Dwell in secs. for part drop: Specifying a non zero value will result in a programmed dwell just prior to retracting the part catcher thereby allowing time for the part to drop into it. NOTE: Part catcher "M" codes generated by these parameters are supported by POST.EXE dated after July 6, 1993. Existing Post Processors may be updated by entering "M" code values for the "Advance part catcher "M" code" and "Retract part catcher "M" code" parameters, using GPOST.EXE dated after July 6, 1993. 44)*PARAMETRIC has bee added to the OBJECTS > PATTERN menu. This is a point generating function similar to FUNCTION except that the x and y coordinates of the points are derived from two input equations. One equation expresses x as a function of an auxiliary variable t and the other expresses y as a function of t. The range and step value of the parameter t is specified. The input screen is as follows: x = enter function of t y = enter function of t t initial value: t step value: Automatically link the pattern into a point set? Yes No 45) When parameter screens are printed with the F7 key, the title of the parameter screen is now printed before the parameters. 46)*FONT SIZE has been added to the ENGRAVE menu. This selection accomplishes the same thing as SCALE but the base character size of the font is input in terms of pointsize at 72 points per inch. 47)*The INCREMENT / ABSOLUTE toggle selection has been added to the TRANSFORM > ROTATE menu. When ABSOLUTE mode is set, the input angle will be interpreted as the absolute resultant angle of a base line after the transform. After inputting the angle, the crosshairs will appear in order to select the base line. The default INCREMENT mode simply rotates the selected geometry the amount specified by the angle. 48) When inputting text through a popup window while in a parameter screen, a small cursor is now displayed next to the query if the contents are null. 49) Fixed bug-> On finish only lathe facing operations, if the "Cancel constant surface speed when positioning?" parameter had previously been set for a rough facing operation, the RPM block was being output even though it now did not apply. 50)*REMOVE has been added to the LAYERS menu. This selection is for removing the currently active layer. After completion, the currently active layer is changed to the first layer in the layer list. If the layer being removed has any entities in it, a dialog box will query whether to proceed and delete all the entities contained in the layer. Executing an UNDO directly after a LAYERS REMOVE will reinstate the removed layer and any deleted entities. 51) The reversal point derivation for lathe groove finishing when the bottom of the groove consists of a parallel line broken into more than one segment has been improved. 52) Fixed bug-> UNDO was turned off for any entity creation done right after linking a point set generated from a PATTERN > FUNCTION. 53) Point set linking has been embellished. GRAFX2 now internally recognizes grid like patterns of points and links them in a bi-directional zigzag pattern for later machining. The original points may have been imported from a CAD system and need not be in any particular order at all. Points generated along a curve are also recognized as such and linked sequentially. There is no change to the interface; this new linking process is automatic and internal. 54)*HATCH has been added to the OBJECTS menu for creating crosshatching patterns inside closed boundaries. After selecting HATCH, the program asks for the angle of the hatch lines and the spacing between them, after- which the user selects the boundary or boundaries to be filled with the pattern. The hatch angle and spacing will be preserved in the GEO file when it is saved and as the system defaults when a MODES > SAVE is done. If more than one boundary is selected for a crosshatching operation, boundaries nested inside others will alternately not fill and fill and those not nested inside others will individually fill with the pattern. When selecting the boundaries with the crosshair, the F9 key may be used to invoke a window which to include the boundaries inside the window. After selecting all the boundaries by either single selects, windows or combinations of the two, the crosshatching operation will commence by pressing the Esc key. The lines generated by the crosshatching operation can be deleted with an UNDO. Crosshatch lines may be considered as special line entities. Once created, they are treated just like any other line entities except that they cannot be linked into boundaries and they will not have TICKS drawn at their endpoints. HATCH has also been added to the DELETE menu to provide an easy method of deleting crosshatch lines. When selecting this, the crosshairs are enabled to form a window containing the hatch lines to be deleted. All other entity types including non hatch lines are unaffected by this operation. HATCH has also been added to the LAYERS > COPY/MOVE menu to provide an easy method of transferring crosshatch lines between layers. When selecting this, the crosshairs are enabled to form a window containing the hatch lines to be copied or moved. All other entity types including non hatch lines are unaffected by this operation. 55) Fixed bug-> When searching out PECK or CHIP operations with initial peck increment values of 0, a non zero initial peck increment value from a previous operation may have come up in the parameters. 56) Selecting CANCEL or REVERSE while creating a boundary or point set, or selecting REMOVE while creating a point set, now redraws the geometry underneath in red if the original geometry was part of another boundary or point set. 57) When doing a LAYERS > MOVE to a visible layer, the transferred entities are no longer erased from the screen during the operation. 58)*DUPLICATES has been added to the DELETE menu. When selected, redundant geometric entities not part of boundaries or point sets in the current active layer will be deleted. 59) When changing a color with LAYERS > PALETTE, the screen will now redraw automatically if in DRAW MODE. 60) Positioning blocks within the generated passes of a threadcutting cycle generated by GRAFX2 are now marked for custom Post Processor filtering. 61) Fixed bug-> When importing closed POLYLINES from a DXF file, the closing segment may have ended at an incorrect vertex endpoint. 62)*The following parameter has been added to the Bolt Circle Pattern parameters: Angular placement of points: UNIFORM RANDOM The default UNIFORM selection creates bolt circles in the same way as prior versions. The RANDOM selection is for creating a pattern of points on a bolt circle diameter at non uniform angles which are to be input specifically. Selecting RANDOM redraws the parameter screen with only the "diameter", "total number of points", and "point set link" parameters to be entered. After entering these parameters, the parameter screen is dismissed and the query "Enter angle of next point:" is repeated for the "total number of points" specified in the parameters. 63)*PT TO PT (point to point) has been added to the mill toolpath generators. This machining operation will result in the tool traveling in linear segments through a point set. If the points in the point set have "Z" axis positions associated with them the tool will travel to their position in 3 space. The "Z depth" parameter is added to the defined "Z" values of the points for the "Z" position of the tool. 64)*DXF IMPORT now imports a POLYGON MESH as 3-D points entities. These point entities may subsequently be linked into a point set and machined as 3 axis surfaces with the PT TO PT toolpath operation. 65) ISOMETRIC VIEW now plots the "Z" position of points in non turning applications. Points having "Z" positions can be positioning points or 3-D points from certain IMPORT operations. 66) Fixed bug-> On lathe FACING or CUTOFF operations, if the first cutting line selection was invalid (too horizontal for facing or not vertical for cutoff), redundant and erroneous positioning points may have been output to the file before the correct data was output after selecting a valid cutting line. 67) An expanded list of threadcutting cycle parameters is now output to the toolpath file for passing data to some Post Processors. 68)*THREAD operations in turning now support face threads. Face threads are automatically detected from the geometry of the threading line. 69)*The 5400 point limit has been removed. GRAFX2 now uses a banked memory scheme for storing points. The theoretical limit has arbitrarily set to 25000 points however physical computer memory will create a limit well under this. 70) Fixed bug-> Point sets were not being closed in VEC file EXPORTS when the BOUNDARY mode was enabled. 71)*VEC file import and export now supports 3 dimensional points. 3-D points may be those created by 3-D mesh polygons, positioning points or point set elements assigned drilling depths. 72) Dynamic entity resizing now incorporates a step-down retry approach when memory is exhausted in order to maximize the utilization of available memory for entities. 73) A talk window message now appears during the process of accepting a linked boundary or point set. 74) Fixed bug-> When doing ASCII imports, the talk window message "Importing fname" was overwritten if user input was required, such as number of fields to skip or number of decimal places. The talk window message is now restored after the input function. 75) ASCII imports of "xy" or "XxYy" point data now accepts and stores 3 dimensional point data. 76)*IGES file import and export now supports 3 dimensional points. 3-D points may be those created by 3-D point imports, positioning points or point set elements assigned drilling depths. 77)*CADL file import now supports 3 dimensional points. 78) Fixed bug-> Entity sizing or resizing with less than 2 layers or work views may have resulted in erratic program behavior on a RESET. 79) Fixed bug-> Operations which created boundaries or sets may have resulted in erratic program behavior when reaching the current size limits of boundary space. 80) More memory is now freed up to run optional FPLOT plotter emulator thereby minimizing the occurrence of the "Not enough memory to run FPLOT.EXE" error. 81) More memory is now freed up for zigzag pocketing so that zigzag pocketing no longer shares any available memory with entity storage. 82)*The length of the POINT SET path is now displayed immediately upon accepting the point set. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.7C (8/30/93) 83) When generating random bolt circle patterns, the circle of the pattern is now drawn in light gray prior to the input of the angles to help verify the parameters entered. 84) The following changes have been made affecting the EXPORT to DXF, GFX, APT and COMPACT II formats when the BOUNDARY MODE is on and there are no boundaries or point sets defined: a) The message stating that the EXPORT operation is cancelled was not being displayed. It is now displayed to notify the condition resulting in the cancellation of the operation. b) The cancellation of the EXPORT occurred after the output file was open, resulting in the creation of a zero length output file. Cancellation is now done as soon as the operation is selected from the menu prior to entry of an output file name. 85) Fixed bug (introduced in 1.7B)-> Isometric view was displaying the Z top surface of line entities at 0 even if set to another value with LAYERS > THICKNESS. Previous to 1.7B, the lines were plotted correctly but TICK marks for lines and arcs were always displayed at Z0. TICKS will now be displayed at the proper Z. 86) Fixed bug-> When loading a .GEO file which was saved in the ISOMETRIC view, the displayed axes with AXES MODE on were all drawn at 0 degrees rather than the store isometric angles. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.7D (9/ 9/93) 87) Fixed bug-> In OBJECTS > PATTERN > GRID, BOLT CIRCLE or SPIRAL, if the initial point was defined with the ORIGIN selection off the POINT menu, the menu tree erroneously displayed TOOLING. 88) Fixed bug-> In MILL/TURN programming with the Advanced Turning Option, the "Maximum chatter mill step size" parameter was not appearing on the default milling "Face operations ("X_C_")" when creating a new operation. 89) The "Maximum chatter mill step size" parameter now defaults to .1 when initialized in operations utilizing the Advanced Turning Option or Advanced Milling Option. 90) Fixed bug (introduced in 1.7B)-> The active work view was being lost after a shadow pocketing operation or an XYPLOT using FPLOT. 91) Fixed bug-> In back turn roughing with positioning points, the tool may have positioned to the flip side of the "Z" axis when positioning into an undercut. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.7E (10/29/93) 92) Fixed bug-> After an UNDO of an IMPORT operation with the LAYERS MODE on, a subsequent attempt to RENAME a layer to the same name as any of the layers removed in the UNDO resulted in an erroneous "layername already used" condition. 93) Screen extents on redraws following the UNDO of an IMPORT, ELLIPSE, HATCH, TRANSFORM, ENGRAVE or PATTERN operation is now quicker and more accurate. 94) When checking the PATHS.SYS specifications on initialization, the existence of paths on floppy drives A or B are no longer checked thereby eliminating the need to have a floppy inserted at that point in time. 95) VEC files are now created with up to 15 digits of precision. 96) The Corner Cutting parameters screen will no longer appear on pocketing operations which do not include a finish pass. Previously, if the pocketing operation was specified with a finish pass using corner cutting, the corner cut screen still appeared if the finish pass was eliminated. 97) A blinking graphics cursor is now supported in GRAFX2. This may be enabled by specifying a timed blink using G2CONFIG dated after 10/6/93. 98) Fixed bug-> Introduced in 1.7B, GEOMETRY > EXAMINE > REPORT was listing REMOVED layer names with the first character of the name changed or missing. REMOVED layers are no longer listed in the report. 99) Fixed bug-> GEOMETRY > EXAMINE > BOUNDARY reported inaccurate boundary length statistics if the boundary contained arc elements. This sometimes caused a math error while computing an arc length. 100)*The interface for BLTC, GRID and SPIRAL patterns has been changed slightly. Now, after defining the initial point in the pattern, the POINT menu is immediately dismissed and the PATTERN menu restored. To define another pattern, the type of pattern must be reselected. This eliminates the error prone necessity of manually dismissing the POINT menu after defining a pattern not to be linked into a point set or if the pattern is cancelled while in the parameter screen. 101) Fixed bug-> Pressing the space bar while selecting boundaries in zigzag pocketing or hatching operations may have led to erroneous results. 102) DELETE > DUPLICATES now checks lines for redundancy whereby the start point of one matches the endpoint of the other. 103) After completion of a DELETE > DUPLICATES operation, a popup window now appears which reports the number of POINT, LINE and ARC entities removed. 104) Fixed bug-> When loading in old GEO files (prior to V1.05 of GEO file), on some rare instances, non solid line types may have been present in some layers. GRAFX2 now forces the line type to solid for those versions pre dating the introduction of line types in the GEO file. 105) Fixed bug-> Some erratic screen behavior which sometimes occurred following an F7 parameter screen print has been eliminated. 106)*The TOOLPATH.BAK backup file is now written to backup data path if specified in the configuration setup. Previously this file was always written to the same path as the .DMB toolpath file. 107)*The F4 key may now be used to drag and relocate many of the popup windows and pulldown menus displayed in GRAFX2. This feature is for temporarily dismissing or relocating these windows if they are obstructing the view of something which needs to be visible at a given moment. In the case of dialog boxes, the F4 key dismisses them temporarily but they cannot be relocated. Some windows, such as parameter screens, HELP screens and selection popups will retain their new positions over the duration of the GRAFX2 session. Others, such as popup and pulldown menus whose positions are dynamically determined will revert to their default positions on subsequent accesses. 108) Fixed bug-> While selecting a linetype from the popup window, the HELP screen displayed by the F1 key was for selecting the plotter pen numbers. This has been changed to linetype help. 109) Fixed bug-> When bringing up HELP for input of a parameter which used a popup menu prior to popping up the menu, the menu heading text may have been corrupted when the menu appeared. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.8A (12/ 3/93) UPDATE 1) Lines with non solid linetypes are now redrawn with their defined linetypes after an EXAMINE operation or if a boundary which included them was deleted. Previously these lines were drawn solid after the operation and could be drawn with their linetypes by executing a screen redraw. 2) The "Percent complete = n" process assurance message has been replaced with a graphics bar which increases in length in proportion to the percentage of the operation completed. 3) The display of coordinate position is now suppressed while dragging windows with F4 to eliminate the possible production of ghost lines from the window outline. 4) *While in the GRAFX2 line editor, [ALT C] may now be used to flip the case of all alphabetic characters from the cursor to the end of the line. 5) Fixed bug-> While in the GRAFX2 line editor, character deletions may have erased part of the lower border of a one line edit window. 6) Fixed bug-> An invalid numerical response while in a parameter query screen may have resulted in random erasures within the query window. 7) *When creating menus of files, layers, operations or attributes, the "+ and -" key selections previously used for next and previous lists has been replaced with the "Page Up" and "Page Down" keys. 8) *The following parameter has been added to the UNITS selection in the ACCESS pull down menu: Angle units for expressions: DEGREES RADIANS This parameter determines how input angles are interpreted by the expression analyzer in computing the SIN, COS, TAN, ASIN, ACOS and ATAN functions. The default value is DEGREES, consistent with the convention always used in previous versions of GRAFX2. 9) *MACHINE has been added to the ACCESS pulldown menu. This selection is for setting the default to the type of machine to be programmed as MILL, LATHE or WIRE. The selection will then be used as the menu default when starting up the toolpath creation and when selecting lists for file selection which is sorted by machine types (SEE NEXT ITEM). 10) *An expanded menu based file selection procedure has been incorporated. When loading some types of files from menus of candidates, expanded description menus may be used. Previously, when inputting a file name, the F5 or SHIFT/F5 key would bring up a menu of all files meeting the file type specification. This menu was built by searching the target path for all the file names meeting the specification. Now, when the F5 or SHIFT/F5 key is used, for certain file types a prebuilt menu file is looked for in the search path, and if found, the menu is built directly from that file. If the menu file is not found, it is then built from the directory of files as before. The advantage of using the prebuilt menu file is that each file name may also have a description which will appear in the menu. The file name plus description can be up to 78 characters long. The SHIFT/F5 filename filter works the same way on the expanded list as it does on the short form list. While in an expanded list of menu selections, the F10 key may be used to replace it with the short form list. Reasons for using the short form list is that it will list all files of the target extension when the expanded list may pertain to categories of files such as files separated into MILL, LATHE and WIRE usages. Also, the short form dynamically builds its list from files existing at the moment instead of prebuilt lists and can give a more accurate list of files. The following tables lists the file types supported by expanded file menu lists at the present time. EXTENSION FILE TYPE LIST FILENAME PREBUILD UTILITY --------------------------------------------------------------------- .TLL lathe tooling file LTOOLING.TXT TOOLIST.EXE .TLL mill tooling file MTOOLING.TXT TOOLIST.EXE .TLL wire tooling file WTOOLING.TXT TOOLIST.EXE .PMB lathe post processor TURN.SYS INSPOST.EXE .PMB mill post processor NTURN.SYS INSPOST.EXE .PMB wire post processor WIRE.SYS INSPOST.EXE .DMC toolpath operation DMCLIST.TXT DMCLIST.EXE .DMF part family template DMFLIST.TXT none .VEC engraving font VECLIST.TXT none As noted, the GRAFX II system contains utilities which will automatically create the menu list files. TOOLIST and INSPOST automatically sort the lists by their application (mill, turn or wire). Menu lists are simply text files where each record of the list starts with a filename followed by at least 1 space and then any text description which would appear in the menu line. Currently, the tooling files list menus will automatically be updated on a TOOLING > SAVE if the list menu exists prior to the SAVE and toolpath operations (.DMC) list menus will automatically be updated when an operation is cut to a file. When loading a tooling file (.TLL) in GRAFX2, the list file used is determined as follows. If toolpath file is open at the time, the tooling file list corresponding to the type of machining being done will be used. Otherwise, the machine type will be determined by the type currently defined in the ACCESS > MACHINE menu. When loading a Post Processor file (.PMB) for the purpose of backplotting, the machine type will be determined by the type as currently defined in the ACCESS > MACHINE menu. 11) TLL files are now created with up to 15 digits of precision. 12) "Point Mill" operations are now listed in the Operations Report. 13) On IGES IMPORT, if an error is encountered while searching a parameter line, the following message is now displayed: Error searching line #n (where n is the line number) 14) IGES IMPORT is now more forgiving on parameter lines which encroach past column 65. Previously, the strict IGES spec was enforced and the IMPORT aborted if parameters went past column 65. 15) Fixed bug-> IGES EXPORT may have output parameter section data past column 65. These long lines are now broken up into multiple lines so as not to go past column 65. 16) IGES export now specifies metric data in the Global section if GRAFX2 units are set to metric. 17) Fixed bug-> Multiple XYPLOT calls accessing the FPLOT emulator may have resulted in a "Too many open files" error abort from GRAFX2. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.8B (2/ 9/94) 18) Process assurance is now displayed during the point purge operation. 19) UNDO will now remove all the points created on a windowed POINT > CENTER operation and restore all geometry prior to a windowed FILLET operation. 20)*When selecting the first entity of a POINT > INTERSECT, the F9 key may now be pressed to create a window. Points will be created at the intersections of all line entities falling inside the window which cross each other. 21)*When the EXAMINE information screen is displayed, measurement data may now be highlighted and selected with the mouse after which a variable letter is entered and the selected data is stored in the variable letter. This enables geometric parameters to be easily fetched from defined geometry and input into other expressions. 22) After selecting ORIGIN from the POINT menu, the default is now restored to CURSOR or ENDPOINT (if OSNAP enabled). 23) The crosshairs is now returned to the last position prior to the CUT SIDE popup menu on milling and wire toolpath operations which load the CUT SIDE menu. 24)*When selection TRANSFORM > SHIFT, the shift distance is now immediately queried without having to move the cursor into the graphics area. 25) Fixed bug-> The depth of cut parameter was not being retained when reloading existing wire toolpath files. 26) Hatch lines are now maintained as hatch line entities during EXPORT and IMPORT of VEC files. 27)*ENGRAVE > CREATE font creation now asks for the description of the font before proceeding. The user may enter a font description up to 79 characters or simply input the [Enter] key only. If the [Esc] key is pressed, the font creation will not proceed. 28) Process assurance is now displayed during the font creation operation. 29) Expanded menu lists from veclist.txt are now brought up for ENGRAVE operations only, not for VEC IMPORTS. 30) Fixed bug-> On DIMENSION > ANGLE, when selecting the location point, if the point menu is dismissed, an erroneous angle dimension may have immediately been drawn upon re-executing the angular dimension operation. 31) Highlighted selections in the BOUNDARY menu are now dehighlighted after selecting CONNECTED. 32)*MERGE has been added to the BOUNDARY menu for merging two boundaries into one. This provides an easy method of appending approach and retract segments, including positioning points, to an already existing boundary. When selected, you are asked to pick a starting boundary followed by an ending boundary. The endpoint of the starting boundary must match the startpoint of the ending boundary, otherwise the merge will not proceed. All retract elements on the starting boundary and approach elements on the ending boundary will automatically be untagged. One of the greatest potential time savers of this feature is that all element attributes are retained when boundaries are merged as well as the global attributes associated with the starting boundary. Previously, if you wished to combine boundaries, you would need to delete them first and relink. All attributes would be lost when the boundaries were deleted. 33) The FOCUS point when creating arcs is now set to the finish point of the arc. Previously it was set to the center point. 34) Fixed bug-> Wire toolpath output may have resulted in mispositioning with some Post Processors. 35) Fixed bug-> Wire toolpath output may have resulted in redundant wire comp codes in some Post Processors. 36) The FOCUS point now move backwards on a boundary or set REVERSE. 37)*"Tool number" has been added to the mill and turning tooling parameters. When a value is stored in a tooling file for this parameter, this tool number will be used as the default when loading the tooling file, otherwise no default will be assumed. 38)*The feed and speed parameter queries have been move to the second screen in NON-TURNING operations. 39)*Rotary axis parameter queries associated with the Advanced 4 Axis and Mill/Turn options have been moved to separate parameter screens. 40)*When inputting file names, the prompt in the enter window has been made more specific. 41)*Tooling libraries have been added. This allows the storing of tooling files into specific libraries which may, for example, be specific to individual machines. To create a tooling library, the LIBRARY selection has been added to the NC > TOOLING menu. This selection installs a tooling file into a specified tooling library. First you are queried for the name of the tooling file to be installed after which you are queried for the name of a library file in which the tooling file is to be included. If the library file already exists, you may use the LEFT mouse button or F5 key to pick it off a menu. The tooling library files will have .TLB extensions and are of the same format as the (L)(M)(W)TOOLING.TXT files. Access to the tooling libraries are accomplished by the addition of the "Tool library name" parameter which has been added to the initial parameter screens when creating toolpath files. If a tooling library file name is entered to this parameter, subsequent loading of tooling files in the job will use the specified library to create the tooling file menus. If a library name is not specified, the (L)(M)(W)TOOLING.TXT files will be used if they exist, as before. 42) Fixed bug-> When updating an expanded file menu list, if an existing file was saved with a description of different length from the original, the new menu file was corrupted. If this occurred, menu files may have been repaired by rebuilding them with G2CONFIG. 43) When updating an expanded file menu list, the new entry is now placed either in the same position as the same file name it replaces or directly in front of the first file name which is alphabetically greater. This will maintain a sorted list. 44) "Tool Point Angle", if specified, has been added to the informative text comments in the turning toolpath file. These comments are output by the Post Processor into the .DA file and then stripped out by NCTALK. 45)*CSCALE has been added to the SCREEN pulldown menu. This selection inputs a display scale factor but unlike the SCALE selection, the current part reference point is maintained instead of centering the part on the redraw or XYPLOT. 46) When menu selecting input files, whereby the number of files exceeds one screen of selections, the default select is now on the MORE FILES position which is maintained on all screens unless PREVIOUS LIST is selected which correspondingly changes the default. If only a single screen of files exist, the default is on the first name on the list. This new feature helps speed up the file selection process. 47) GRAFX2 may now be called from DOS with the -su option to ignore the entity size numbers stored in a .GEO file when loading it. This methodology should not be needed but is made available for situations where one might want to control the entity sizes using the G2SIZE.SYS file and not the internals of the .GEO file. 48) While reading .GEO files whereby the number of entities in the file exceeds the expected number as stored in the head of the file, the reading of the file now continues without storing the entities past the overflow. Previously the reading of the file immediately terminated upon detecting the overflow condition. 49) When automatic entity resizing occurs while in the process of linking a boundary or point set, the GEOMETRY.BAK file produced now provides for an extra boundary/set entity to provide for the ending element added in the backup. 50) When a 0 depth per pass has been specified to lathe ROUGH and metric units is active, the following message is now displayed. WARNING...zero depth/pass programmed, 3mm is used Previously the message reported ".1" which pertains to inch units. 51)*"Initial Approach" GLOBAL attributes are now output in the Lathe Roughing operation. Note however, that "Final Retract" GLOBAL attributes are still ignored in Lathe Roughing. 52) Fixed bug-> Defining a material boundary for lathe roughing in the wrong direction may have resulted in fatal errors such as math or memory errors. Now, the roughing module automatically detects and corrects inverted material boundaries. 53) If selecting the cutting of both "roughing passes" and "undercut passes" in the same operation and the selected direction of the undercut is different than the roughing passes, the direction of the roughing passes will be forced for the undercut. Previously, the undercut was always cut in the same direction but the displayed parameter might have shown the opposite direction. 54) Fixed bug-> Undercuts in material boundaries when doing PARX roughing may have resulted in math errors. The condition is now detected and the following message displayed: Material boundary undercut in PARX cutting...material boundary is ignored 55) If AUTOSAVE is enabled when executing an UNDO > CONVERT of a toolpath operation, it will now be temporarily disabled during the operation. 56) More memory is now freed up to execute the OS or VIEW commands from the FILE pulldown menu minimizing the occurrence of the "Not enough memory to run COMMAND.COM" error. 57) Fixed bug-> Global attributes were being reported twice in ATTRIBUTE > REPORT files. 58) When entering a feed attribute, the default value is no longer set to 5 if appending the attribute or modifying an existing value of 0. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.8C (2/28/94) 59)*UNDO has been expanded to accomplish the following: Restore the entities from the last windowed delete Restore the last deleted hatch lines Restore the entities from the last Delete All Restore the last boundary deleted Restore the last point set deleted 60)*The F8 REPEAT Hot key may now be used following a SCREEN > SCALE or CSCALE. 61) Fixed bug-> Introduced in 1.8B, the operation parameter screen may have been corrupted following "on the fly" POINT definition of the toolchange position. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.8D (4/15/94) 62) Fixed bug-> UNDOing CONNECTED GEOMETRY or CONNECTED BOUNDARY past the initial element still displayed the message that UNDO would delete the last element when moving the cursor to the UNDO button even though no more elements remained. 63) Fixed bug-> UNDOing CONNECTED POINT SET was not displaying the proper message when moving the cursor to the UNDO button. 64) Fixed bug-> When UNDOing CONNECTED GEOMETRY past the starting point, a subsequent creation of a new first element would be erroneous. Now, when this is done, the CONNECTED sequence is reinitiated thereby eliminating this condition. 65)*MERGE has been added to the SET menu for merging two point sets into one. This works similarly to the BOUNDARY MERGE except that element matching and approach/retract elements do not apply. 66)*MODES has been added to the ENGRAVE menu. When selected, a pulldown menu appears which currently has one selection. By disabling BOUNDARY on the pulldown menu, only geometry will be created on engraving operations instead of machinable boundaries. This option will probably only be used when ENGRAVE is used for certain text operations instead of engraving. 67) DELETE > ALL now clears the screen rather than individually erasing all displayed entities thereby speeding up the operation. 68) The GRAFX2.DGN diagnostic file is now closed after each time it is written to. This prevents the "lost clusters" which occurred if GRAFX2 ended without a QUIT due to GRAFX2.DGN not being closed. Also, the GRAFX2.DGN file may now be VIEWed from GRAFX2 since it is now always updated. 69)*UNDO has been expanded to accomplish the following: Restore the entities from the TRANSFORM with OLD DELETE. 70) Critical error trapping has been added to GRAFX2. This is most commonly used when attempting to access a floppy drive which is either not ready or doesn't exist. Previously the dreaded DOS message would appear: Not ready reading drive x Abort, Retry, Fail? If you couldn't remedy the problem, you were blown back to DOS. Now GRAFX2 tells you the following: A hardware error occurred, such as a drive not ready Correct the problem, then hit any key to continue If you cannot correct it, (e.g. your computer doesn't have that drive), you might have to cycle through the message twice before you recover. 71) While building lists to pick files off menus, the following message now appears in the talk window: Building file list 73)*EDITOR has been added to the ROOT menu for creating or editing text files directly from GRAFX2. When selected, the user is queried for the name of the file to be edited. If menu selecting the file, no extension is assumed but *.(ext) followed by Shift/F5 may be entered to sort on specific file types. The editor programmed called will be what was specified when configuring GRAFX II with G2CONFIG. PE2 is the default for the system. The program DCSHELL.EXE as well as the editor program must be on the system in order for this feature to operate. 74) Fixed bug-> Introduced in 1.8B, the selection of Tooling Libraries in a toolpath file resulted in the erroneous output of the Tooling Library file name in the Post Processor output when using POST.EXE dated prior to 3/9/94. 75)*MACRO has been added to the drilling cycles menu in the NON-TURNING and TURNING toolpaths. When selected, the drilling parameters screen asks for a preexisting Macro file name which will be used to generate the sequences associated with the drilling cycle. The "R level" parameter is also input to be used as the "Z" starting point of the cycle and the "R level" and "Depth of cut" parameters may be referenced in macro commands. Path support "mac=path" and expanded file menu lists MACLIST.TXT are supported when fetching drilling macro files. The following commands are recognized by the macro interpreter: ASCII text - Output the "text" as is without a sequence number (N) CYCLE text - Output the "text" as is with a sequence number (N) Xxxx - Make an incremental move of "xxx" in X Yxxx - Make an incremental move of "yyy" in Y (moves X for lathes) Zzzz - Make an incremental move of "zzz" in Z DEPTH - Move in Z to the "Depth of cut" parameter RLEVEL - Move in Z to the "R level" parameter DWEL n - Program dwell for "n" seconds FEED n - Change the feedrate to "n", 0 results in rapid SPDL OFF - Turn the spindle off SPDL CW - Turn the spindle on in the clockwise direction SPDL CCW - Turn the spindle on in the counter clockwise direction COOL OFF - Turn the coolant off COOL FLOOD - Turn the flood coolant on (M8) COOL MIST - Turn the mist coolant on (M7) GOUT n - Output a GOUT control code block MOUT n - Output an MOUT machine code block X, Y & Z moves may be combined on a single line. Commands may be in lower case. Comments may be programmed with $ (dollar signs) causing the macro interpreter to ignore all text after the $ except if they appear on a line starting with the ASCII or CYCLE command. The @ (at sign) may be used to identify the macro file when installing the macro in the MACLIST.TXT menu file. Following is an example of a simple drill macro which might be used for a fine bore cycle where the "R" level=.1 and depth of cut=-1: MACRO COMMAND DESCRIPTION ------------- --------------------------------- @Fine bore cycle macro Macro identification comment FEED 2 change feedrate to 2 Z-.5 feed down from .1 to -.4 DWELL 1 dwell 1 second DEPTH feed down from -.4 to depth (-1) SPDL OFF turn the spindle off CYCLE M19 orient the spindle X.020 move off the wall .020 FEED 0 rapid feed RLEVEL bring tool back to "R" level (.1) SPDL CW turn spindle back on CW 76)*SETUP has been added to the FILE pulldown menu for reconfiguring GRAFX II directly from GRAFX2. The program DCSHELL.EXE as well as G2CONFIG.EXE and G2CONFIG.MNU must be on the system in order for this feature to operate. 77) Fixed bug-> Lathe roughing sometimes may have erroneously aborted the operation with a "material boundary overflow error". 78) A new memory allocation scheme has been incorporated for lathe roughing operations whereby memory is allocated according to it predicted need and if not enough is available, data is swapped in and out to make more available. 79) The "Enter file name to save" prompt has been changed to "Enter file name to write". 80)*While the toolpath file is open, the INFO screen will now display the OPERATION description if it exists for the current operation. This feature will usually be used while picking boundaries or sets as a reminder of what the current operation is. 81) The info line associated with dialog box menu selections is now cleared as soon as a selection is made. 82) The message "Loading name" is now displayed in the talk window whenever the system is reading in a geometry file. "name" is the name of the geometry file if established. 83) The redundancy check when creating point components has been eliminated. This will result in faster point creation which should be noticeable as the number of points in the database increase. 84)*GRAFX2 now uses a virtual memory scheme for storing point components utilizing a swap file on disk named PTSWAP.TMP. This results in the ability to create many more entities in a GRAFX2 job. There may be a performance sacrifice on some operations when the number of points exceeds 2500 due to memory/disk swapping. The POINT PURGE performance is especially affected when there are large number of point components and the automatic PURGE on a file SAVE has been eliminated if the file has more than 2500 points although a DELETE > PURGE may still be done in these cases. Some of the performance issues can be alleviated by setting a swap path to a RAM disk. To create a RAM disk, refer to your operating system manual. The largest swap file which can currently be created by GRAFX2 is 600000 bytes which is equivalent to 60000 bytes for each bank of 2500 points. You should then create a RAM disk of at least 600000 bytes unless you don't plan to create 25000 points in which case you can decrease the size accordingly. If RAM disk is also being used for the TMP path, its size should be calculated to accommodate all demands collectively. Most recent versions of DOS include the driver RAMDRIVE.SYS. Following is and example of an entry in the CONFIG.SYS file used to create a 1 MB RAM disk: DEVICE=C:\DOS\RAMDRIVE.SYS 1024 512 64 /E In this example RAMDRIVE.SYS is loaded from the \DOS directory creating a 1024 byte RAM disk with 512 byte sectors and a maximum of 64 directory entries. The /E creates the virtual disk in extended memory. The created RAM disk will be assigned the next available drive letter. For example, if you already have C: and D: partitions on your system, the RAM drive will be assigned drive E:. The swap path is created by the following line in the PATHS.SYS file: swp=e: where "e" is the drive letter of the RAM disk (or whatever the drive letter is). This entry may be done by creating a User Defined Data Path for Point Swap files using G2CONFIG dated after 3/21/94. 85) The temporary file INPUTFIL.TMP is now deleted when quitting GRAFX2. 86) F10 abort out of boundary linking has been made more reliable. 86)*Boundary linking may now report elements checked for a match. 87) Fixed bug-> The HELP screen for entering NREPS for TRANSFORM operations referred to expression entry. This is changed to integer entry. 88) After aborting out of a TRANSFORM > SHIFT with the F10 key, the shift direction prompt remained active. The active prompt now reverts to the geometry select. 89) Fixed bug-> A looping problem encountered in one example in zigzag pocket toolpath generation has been eliminated. 90)*A new process assurance feature has been added. Whenever an operation is being performed which can be cancelled with the F10 key, pressing any other key or mouse button will display the message "Working..." in the talk window and sound a tone on the PC speaker. 91) UNDO is now disabled following a point PURGE. 92) DELETE > DUPLICATES now pops up a menu with the following choices: POINTS - Remove redundant point components from database only GEOMETRY - Remove redundant point, line and arc entities from current layer only BOTH - Remove both POINTS and GEOMETRY 93) When loading a .GEO file, GRAFX2 now automatically repairs some erroneous "Z" values in points which may have been created with and older versions of GRAFX2.EXE . 94)*DELETE > PURGE now reports the progress of how many points have been removed from the database. 95) The talk message "Deleting...F10=Cancel" is now displayed during DELETE > WINDOW operations. 96) Fixed bug-> After loading a font file and the font file was rewritten, a subsequent engraving operation without reloading the font caused a disk read error. Now whenever a .VEC file is written, the current font is closed thereby forcing the font to be loaded before any further engraving operations can take place. 97) After an EXAMINE, the cursor/crosshairs is now returned to last graphics pick location even if moved inside the info popup screen. 98) When attempting to create a zero length linear dimension, the following message is now displayed: Zero length dimension ignored 99)*UNDO has been expanded to reverse the last LAYER COPY/MOVE operation where ALL or windowed entities are selected. 100)*DIMENSIONS has been added to the GEOMETRY > EXAMINE menu. This provides a convenient way of accessing linear, angular, radius and point dimensions. The values of the dimensions are displayed in an info popup screen which can be easily read or stored into variables. 101) Fixed bug-> The message associated with the GRAPH drawing mode with fine spacing was "....to fine to draw dots". "dots" is now changed to "graph". 102) Fixed bug-> Removed layer names (less the first character) were being stored in VEC files during VEC EXPORT or engraving font creation. 103) The cursor may now be moved with the arrow keys in addition to the mouse when highlighting measurement data following an EXAMINE. 104) Recovery from entity overflows during TRANSFORM operations has been improved. 105)*After EXAMINE > REPORT or ATTRIBUTES > REPORT, a dialog menu now appears asking what to do NEXT. The selections are: DONE - Nothing further, dismiss the menu VIEW - Display the report file on the screen PRINT - Print the report file on the printer 106)*DIAMETER has been added to the DIMENSION menu. This dimension type is similar to the RADIUS dimension except that the dimension measures the arc's diameter instead of radius. This dimension type may also be EXAMINEd. 107) During an XYPLOT, if the plotting device is the FPLOT emulator, the F10=Cancel talk message is changed to Ctrl/Break=Cancel when FPLOT is loaded. 108)*The following parameter has been added to the Drilling and Point to Point parameter screens: Direction to machine point set: FORWARD REVERSE QUERY Selecting FORWARD, drills or cuts the points in the direction they were defined. Selecting REVERSE, drills or cuts the points in the opposite direction they were defined. Selecting QUERY, causes a popup menu to select the direction after the point set is selected with the cursor. 109) Fixed bug-> If "Active Work View 0" is specified in machining parameters, whereby that work view had not been previously accessed, (could only happen if other work views exist), erroneous local origin data was being written to the .DMB file which may have crashed the Post Processor. The scenario for producing this problem was of low probability. 110)*TEXT has been added to the GEOMETRY > EXAMINE menu. This provides a convenient way of accessing text entities and identifying their parameters and layers where they reside. The parameter values are displayed in an info popup screen which can be easily read or stored into variables. 111)*UNDO now works for individual or windowed filleting of boundary elements. 112) Fixed bug-> POINT PURGE or DELETE DUPLICATES may have corrupted RADIUS dimension entities. 113)*EXAMINE > LINE now identifies HATCH LINES in the info screen. 114) When inputting tooling descriptions in the tooling parameter screen, a small cursor is now displayed next to the query if the contents are null. 115) If AUTOSAVE is enabled during a TRANSFORM > SHIFT operation, it will now be disabled during the operation. 116)*UNDO now applies to TRANSFORM > SHIFT operations. 117) Limited access SIMs now display the number of accesses left on the initial GRAFX II logo screen. 118) Talk window and Help screen instructions now address the F9 window feature for POINT > INTERSECT 119) Fixed bug-> UNDO may have been incorrect for operations following a TRANSFORM > LATHE. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.9A (6/20/94) UPDATE 1) The user interface for attaching Z depths to points inside of point sets has been changed. After selecting a point, if no current Z depth is associated with it, a blank will be displayed. Previously, a 0 was displayed which was undistinguishable from a real depth of 0. A depth is now removed from a point set element by entering a null for its Z depth, (a blank entry). Previously this was accomplished by entering the Esc key. 2) Fixed bug-> IGES imports may have corrupted some entity data on IGES entities which exceeded one line. 3) Fixed bug-> IGES imports may have prematurely terminated if a null line was at the end of the GLOBAL section. 4) The text found in the START section of IGES files are now written to the GRAFX2.DGN diagnostic file during an IGES import. 5) The date & time parameters in the GLOBAL section of files created with IGES export now have leading zeroes instead of leading spaces. 6) The time parameter in the GLOBAL section of files created with IGES export now output the seconds values of the clock instead of 00. 7) The maximum size of a row in the operations selection menu has been increased by 14 characters. 8) Small adjustments have been made to menu text placements for balance over a wide range of display resolutions. 9) If on the first menu item while menu selecting with the arrow keys, the backwards direction key (UP or LEFT) will now wrap to the last menu item. 10) When the cursor is in an inactive area of the screen, a cyan crosshairs are now displayed instead of the + and the screen coordinates are displayed in the lower right window. This allows a quick and convenient way of obtaining a coordinate point on the screen. 11) Fixed bug-> When defining a positioning point on a point set with PICK, whereby the PICKed point was already included in the set, the "Z" value of the positioning point was lost. This is now corrected. ENDPOINT could have been used instead of PICK to achieve the desired result. 12) When defining positioning points for sets or boundaries, using ENDPOINT now results in the automatic elimination of unnecessary point entities created in the process. 13) Fixed bug-> The "Direction to machine point set" query was not being displayed on non macro drill cycles. 14) GRAFX2 now responds to expanded SIM programming. 15) GRAFX2 is now setup to access GPOST and POST programs dated after 6/22/94. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.9B (9/19/94) 16) GRAFX2 now supports .DMB files structures for the GRAFX CAD/CAM Starter Kit. 17)*GRAFX2 now invokes a screen saver if a screen save time limit has been setup with G2CONFIG (7/18/94 or later). A graphic based screen saver is invoked if GRAFX2.SCS is present in the \GX2 directory, otherwise a text based screen saver is invoked. 18) When creating a circle with VALUES, the last radius is now retained as the default value. 19) A rapid feedrate plunge in a CONTOUR operation is now stepped down in Z in the same manner as a feedrate plunge. Prior to this, the tool would rapid to full zdepth even though z step down was specified in in the parameter screen using the "Z depth per pass" parameter. 20)*GRAFX2 now maintains a system event log in the file GRAFX2.LOG recording a cumulative log of the dates and times of all starting, ending and utility chaining events. The GRAFX2.LOG file should not be edited, otherwise events after editing may not show up in the file. 21) GRAFX2 now checks for the input of invalid file names such as names containing spaces or control characters. If an invalid name is entered, the message "Invalid name" is displayed and the operation is cancelled. 22) GRAFX2 graphics display mode now defaults to a VGA instead of an EGA when no mode has been explicitly specified. 23) A rapid feedrate plunge in a CONTOUR operation is now stepped down in Z in the same manner as a feedrate plunge. This worked correctly before on closed toolpath; it now works on open toolpath as well. 24) The expanded F10 check incorporated in boundary linking (see 1.8D #86) has been removed because these additional checks severely slowed down the boundary linking process when large numbers of entities were in the database. 25)*The box shaped marks denoting the starting point of boundaries and point sets is now associated with the ARROWS mode instead of the TICKS mode. 26)*The box shaped marks denoting the starting point of boundaries and point sets are now displayed and erased during the creation and modification of boundaries and sets. 27) The performance of DELETE DUPLICATES and PURGE has been improved through a more efficient F10 abort check. 28) Fixed bug-> Erroneous output may have occurred on some plotting devices when plotting zoomed in areas. 29) The "Working..." process assurance has been eliminated during screen redraws of toolpath when the step mode has been activated with the F2 key. 30) The following message now appears when entering the name of the toolpath file: Use LEFT mouse button or F5 key to display menu of existing part families This message is to clarify the function of the LEFT mouse button as opposed to using the RIGHT button to accept the default file name. 31) Undercut avoidance is now the default condition of all machining operations which work on part boundaries. If an operation is known to not require undercut avoidance the parameter may turned off to speed up the calculation if desired. 32) Fixed bug-> Unpredictable errors may have occurred while filleting entities inside of a boundary if the fillet operation was not completed due to either a fillet error or escaping out of the fillet flip toggle. 33) GRAFX2 automatically adjusts its UMB memory strategy when PE2M is the designated text editor. PE2M.EXE is now distributed which adjuncts PE2 to solve a "memory leak" problem experienced on a few computers. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.9C (12/23/94) 34) On TEXT > WRITE new text entities now will not be stored if no text is entered. On TEXT > EDIT existing text entities will be deleted if all the characters on the text line are deleted. 35)*While in the main menu area, the F7 key will now immediately move the cursor to the top menu area and while in the top menu area, the F6 key will now immediately move the cursor to the main menu area. 36) In XYPLOT, outputting HPGL WG instructions originating outside the plotting range may have caused program failure in FPLOT. These are now suppressed. 37) GRAFX2 now writes its revision level in addition to its version number in the .DMB toolpath files that it creates. 38)*The "Final depth of hole" parameter in drilling operations now accepts the null value. This is when the parameter is left blank without any number. In non turning, the null response is treated just like 0. In turning, however, the null response now means use the endpoint of the drill line and 0 means drill to the depth of "Z0". WARNING...THE VALUE OF 0 AS USED PREVIOUSLY OR FROM EXISTING TOOLPATH FILES IN TURNING JOBS MAY NOW HAVE A DIFFERENT RESULT. MAKE SURE THAT IF YOU ARE REDOING A TOOLPATH FROM AN EXISTING .DMB FILE AND YOU WISH TO USE THE GEOMETRY OF THE DRILL LINE, DELETE THE 0 IN THE PARAMETER. In order to help with the transition to the new convention, when a 0 is input as the "final depth.." parameter in a turning job the following dialog box automatically appears: ---------------------------- | Possible conflict in | | drilling depth. | | Do you want to drill to | | Z0? | | YES NO | ---------------------------- By selecting YES, the drilling will proceed to a final depth of Z0, by selecting NO the drilling depth will be determined by the endpoint of the drill line and the 0 parameter will automatically be changed to the null value. 39) Fixed bug-> When creating a line through a point tangent to an arc, the message: "Error...cannot create tangent line" would appear if the x or y coordinate of the point was the same as the x or y coordinate of the center of the arc. This has been fixed; the line is created as expected. 40) Fixed bug-> If multiple entity solutions are found during a cursor pick operation and the first solution was a point with a "Z" value, the "Z" value was not being displayed in the message window the first time that candidate was displayed. 41) When selecting a WORK VIEW from the selection menu, using the RIGHT mouse button or [Enter] key will now simply make the work view active. Using the LEFT mouse button or [<--] key will bring up the work views parameters as in the past. 42) Fixed bug-> If a work view name was 16 characters long, the display of the name in the menu of existing work view names may have had erroneous characters appended to it. 43) When CUT PART is selected, a warning dialog box is now popped up only if no boundaries or point sets exist in the entire file rather than in the displayed layers as before. 44) UNDO has been eliminated on a TEXT > EDIT operation. 45) The "Part surface clearance plane" parameter in Turning Operations now takes the absolute value of the input. 46) On TRANSFORM > MIRROR > POINT, if escaping out of the mirror direction popup menu, the TRANSFORM menu is now restored to prevent erroneous point creation. 47) Fixed bug-> If the status window on step mode was active when the screen saver kicked in, the window remained active during the screen saver display process. This has been eliminated. 48) Fixed bug-> (introduced in 1.8D) It was possible to create lines of zero length on the assumption of no duplicate points in the database. This may have caused math errors on other operations which worked on these lines. 49) Changing to a new active layer when all layers were previously on would not result in a screen redraw. This has now been changed. The screen will redraw to the new layers display parameters. 50) When BREAKing a line entity and selecting one of the endpoints of the line as the point of BREAK, the operation will not be performed and the following message now appears: Error...invalid break point 51) Fixed bug-> If specifying the name of a toolpath file for NC > CUT PART when a job name had yet to be specified and an extension was entered along with the file name, program failure may have occurred. This has been fixed and input extensions are now ignored all together (.DMB is always assumed). 52) Fixed bug-> Snapping the endpoint to an arc on a LINE > ANGLE creation may have resulted in the extension of the line in the wrong direction. 53) Fixed bug-> The menu tree was sometimes displaying incorrect information. 54) Fixed bug-> A memory leak may have occurred when using UMB's in conjunction with the loading of tooling files. The UMB strategy has been revised. 55) Fixed bug-> (introduced in 1.8D) It was possible to create arcs of zero radius on the assumption of no duplicate points in the database. 56) Fixed bug-> Some error returns from zigzag pocketing were reporting the wrong diagnostic error code. 57) When loading a .GEO file and answering NO or Escaping out of the "CLEAR ALL DATA" dialog box, the job name will no longer be set to the specified file. 58) The column number display in the line editor has been disabled during CONNECTED GEOMETRY creation. This window overlays the coordinate display window which is deemed more important in this operation. 59) Fixed bug-> VEC EXPORT by boundary may have omitted the last end of boundary marker in some instances. 60) VEC EXPORT now writes only the visible layers instead of all the data. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.10A (4/21/95) UPDATE 1) GRAFX2 now initializes layers with the default color (bright green - 10). Previously they were initialized as 0 which also represents black but would always draw the 0 color as bright green. This change provides a greater consistency when exporting files. For instance, in AutoCad Release 12, the 0 color exported by GRAFX2 would be drawn as black. If the background was also black, you would not see any of the geometry unless the layer color was changed to a visible color. 2) EXPORT > DXF now maps GRAFX2 colors to the AutoCad 8-Color palette. 3) Erroneous rubber banding entities may have been drawn on the screen if the screen saver kicked in while a rubber band (such as CIRCLE) was being displayed. 4) The column number display in the line editor has been disabled while entering the radius in CIRCLE creation. This window overlays the last dragged radius value which is deemed more important in this operation. 5) *DXF file import and export now supports 3 dimensional points. 3-D points may be those created by 3-D point imports, positioning points or point set elements assigned drilling depths. Previously DXF IMPORT created 3-D points only from POLYGON MESH data. 6) .DMF extensions are now automatically appended to the file names when menus selecting part family file from the DMFLIST.TXT extended name list file. Previously a DMFLIST.TXT file which did not have the file extension on the file names would not work. 7) When creating a menu list for .TLB tool library files and none are found, the message "No tlb files found in the .. path" instead of "No tll files..." now appears. 8) The DMCLIST.TXT file is now automatically created if it does not preexist when cutting a toolpath operation with the FILE selection in the EXECUTE dialog menu. 9) If the operation file cannot be created when cutting a toolpath operation with the FILE selection in the EXECUTE dialog menu, the EXECUTE dialog menu will now reappear allowing for corrective action by the user. Previously the operation would have been cut but not stored in a file. This may have occurred when entering a null response when inputting the name of the file. 10) Erroneous rubber banding entities may have been drawn on the screen if the screen saver kicked in while selecting the second corner of a windowing operation. 11) Fixed bug-> Negative "angle of text string" values in text entity sizes may have been stored with rounding errors, e.g. -90 -> -89.9. This is fixed. 12) Fixed bug-> When dragging text entities with negative text string angles, the drag box angle may have been displayed erroneously. 13) Fixed bug-> Z depths on drilling cycle operations in the Operation Report were not reflecting any local Z coordinate shifts from Work Views. 14) Fixed bug-> The operations report may have reported an incorrect feedrate on operations which were changed from spiral pocketing to something else. 15)*EXPORT > DXF now prompts for the precision of the output data written to the DXF file. The precision parameter specified is preserved in the GEO file when it is saved and a SAVE from the MODES pulldown menu will save the current precision parameter as the system default. 16)*Fixed bug-> GFX, APT or COMPACT EXPORT with BOUNDARY mode on resulted in all geometry labels having a 0 identifier such as P0, L0 or C0. They are now incremented starting with identifier 1. 17) When selecting BOUNDARY > STEP when no elements have yet to be linked into the boundary, the system now automatically activates PICK mode. 18)*Fixed bug-> (Introduced in 1.8D) When creating a boundary, after doing BOUNDARY > REVERSE operations, subsequent BOUNDARY > STEP operations may have resulted in the wrong elements being linked into the boundary. 19) The "Direction to machine point set:" parameter has been removed from Lathe Drilling operations; it is not needed. 20) Escaping out of the "Enter font description" when creating a font will no longer abort the font creation. 21)*The DMFLIST.TXT file is now automatically created if it does not preexist when creating a PART FAMILY template file. 22)*"On through tool" toggle selection has been added to the coolant parameter options in Milling and Turning operations. COOL THRU has also been added to the drilling macro commands for through the tool coolant. Post Processor support for this coolant option requires POST.EXE 2/15/95 or later and the insertion of the "M" code into the Post Processor using GPOST.EXE 2/15/95 or later. 23) Fixed bug-> GEOMETRY > EXAMINE > BOUNDARY sometimes reported an incorrect boundary length because of an error in computing the length of some arcs inside boundaries. 24) In Lathe Roughing, initial boundary elements which are vertical lines are now automatically dropped out. This allows the linking of the part faces into the boundary without affecting the roughing cycle. 25) Fixed bug-> (introduced in 1.9B) When calling NCTALK directly from GRAFX2.EXE, the file name passed to NCTALK was being replaced by the current date. 26) EXAMINE > REPORT or ATTRIBUTES > REPORT now outputs the radii of the ARC entities in the third data column. 27)*GEOMETRY > EXAMINE > BOUNDARY now reports the smallest arc radius on the inside and on the outside of the boundary. This information may be useful in selecting cutters as to prevent the oversizing of interior radii. In turning, OUT will usually prefer to the side of the profile which will be machined for both external and internal cuts. 28) On HPGL IMPORT special characters are now ignored when parsing LB label commands to prevent unwanted actions from text characters. Previously the suppression of some space characters in text may have occurred as one example. 29) On HPGL IMPORT an error tolerance has been incorporated to check the endpoints of imported lines so as not to attempt storing lines of essentially zero length. 30) HPGL EXPORT and XYPLOT now draw arrows using a series of lines rather than using the HPGL wedge (WG) instruction. This change has been made to accommodate file transfer compatibility with a greater number of other software products which do not support or handle correctly WG instructions. 31)*Several changes have been made on OBJECTS > SET > REMOVE: a) Points may now be removed from accepted sets in addition to the current set. b) The word "delete" has been changed to "remove" in the talk window prompt when picking a point. c) When ARROWS mode is on, the box graphic depicting the first point in a set now changes when the first point is removed. 32) After accepting a connected point set with the space bar, the cursor is now automatically returned to the menu area so that the Length of set display is not overwritten by the cursor coordinate location. 33) Fixed bug-> Values may have been corrupted when entering 4 digit integers in a parameter screen. 34)*The menu selections related to axis names in the TRANSLATE and MIRROR menus now dynamically change between X & Y and X & Z based on "X and Z data" parameter in ACCESS > LATHE. 35) Fixed bug-> On TRANSFORM > LATHE, connecting lines may have been attempted on profile segments ending on the horizontal axes (X0). The creation of these 0 length lines failed with an error message appearing. 36) Hatch lines are no longer extruded in the ISOMETRIC view. 37) The message "Memory exhausted...resizing entities" will now be suppressed when running inside the GRAFX CAD/CAM Starter Kit. 38) Initial automatic menu positioning to DRAW PART in the NC > CUT PART menu has been eliminated. This was done as a reminder to do DRAW PARTs prior to toolpath operations, however this strategy has now been dropped. 39) The toggling of boundary lead in/out elements has been improved. It is no longer possible to tag an entire boundary with lead in/out elements. This condition previously caused problems. Generating toolpath to such a boundary resulted in math errors and once the entire boundary was lead in/out elements, no elements could be toggled off without deleting the boundary first. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.10B (7/11/95) 40)*GRAFX2 now permits cursor operations in the Isometric view. When in the Isometric view, the crosshairs correspond to the current axes angles. Windowing operations however are screen rather than axes oriented and their crosshairs remain as a straight 2 axis display. Certain display features are disabled in the isometric view such as ellipse rubber banding. The user should make note that extruded geometry added in the isometric view does not exist and therefore cannot be referenced. By enabling TICKS, you may determine these added elements by their lack of tick marks. 41) Points within boundaries or point sets (including positioning points) may now be relocated with TRANSFORM without having to relink the boundary or set. 42)*When linking a boundary, you may now double click on the first element to automatically link all connected elements. This is the equivalent of pressing the space bar after selecting the first element. 43) Fixed bug-> When inputting a part FAMILY description, the help screen referenced "font" instead of "part family" description. 44) The input of file descriptions used in the building of extended menu list files now limits input to 65 characters so as not to overflow the displayable menu line. 45)*.GEO (geometry files) now support extended file lists. Once the file JOBLIST.DIR is present in the directory containing the .GEO files, any subsequent saving of a .GEO file will result in a prompt for the job description associated with the file. A job description, such as the part number and revision, of up to 65 characters may be entered. The file JOBLIST.DIR may be initially built by installing an extended file list for .GEO files through FILES > SETUP or G2CONFIG in DOS. 46)*Extended files lists are now built with a files date and time if no other description was entered to describe a file. This occurs in both FILES > SETUP or G2CONFIG in DOS or when a menu list is updated by a file save. 47)*Files may now be deleted from file display menus by pointing to them and pressing the Delete key. When a file is selected for deletion, a dialog box appears to confirm the operation. If the file deleted was a .GEO file, a .DMB file of the same name is searched for and if found, another dialog box appears to confirm the deletion of the associated .DMB file. This method of deleting files in GRAFX II is preferred to the DOS DELETE command because it also removes the file name from any extended file lists which may be associated with the file. 48) The menu description for IMPORT > ASCII has been changed from "Import an ASCII point file" to "Import an ASCII point or text file". 49) "unknown" is no longer automatically assigned to GEO files saved when no job name has yet to be specified. 50) Fixed bug-> Selecting files with matching input strings (Shift/F5) off an extended file list menu failed to make matches when the input string was 8 characters. 51)*A radius mode toggle selection has been added to the FILLET menu. This provides for three different methods of inputting the radius when creat- ing fillets. The first selection "MODAL", uses the stored modal radius. This is the default and was the only method in prior releases. The next selection "ENTER", queries for the radius prior to creating each fillet. The retained radius value is displayed and may be used by simple clicking or pressing the [Enter] key. The third selection "SELECT", prompts you to select an arc with the radius desired prior to creating each fillet. In response to the prompt you may press the [Esc] key to simply use the last radius value used. When specifying a fillet radius with any of these methods, the last radius specified automatically becomes the modal value. 52)*The connecting lines between the top and bottom profiles created with TRANSFORM > LATHE are now hatch entities. 53) Boundary IN/OUT elements are now restored to the tagged color following multiple picked element toggling. 54) A test is now made to filter out erroneous layer thickness data before accessing them. This eliminates the possibility of math errors occurring with .GEO files which may have origins prior to layer thickness parameters. 55) Several improvements have been made to HPGL Imports: a) The Input Window instruction (IW) is now recognized and data extending past the designated clipping window will be clipped. b) The Relative Text Size instruction (SR) is now recognized. c) The Initialize instruction (IN) is now recognized to reset parameters. 56) Some lines were not being clipped to the displayable area in the GRAFX2.PLT file produced when doing an XYPLOT. This was not however problematic since the IW command was being output to define the clipping region so therefore those lines encroaching the region would be clipped by the plotting device. 57) If the TMP environmental variable is set to a non existent path GRAFX2 will now write its temporary files to the current path instead. This will eliminate the "error writing screen slice" problem encountered when a RAM drive had been set to TMP and then subsequently removed without modifying the "SET TMP = " specification in the AUTOEXEC.BAT file. 58)*SCREEN > PRINT has been redesigned to produce a high quality vector plot of the display rather than a raster screen dump. 3 new files are required for this process; HPLOT.EXE, FONT.FPT and BD.PDT. It will be necessary to enter setup to install your printer before accessing the new screen plot using G2CONFIG dated after 6/12/95. It should be noted that the new printing procedure is by virtue of a translation of the current displayed entity data rather than a pixel dump of the screen, as before. As a result their may be some differences in the hardcopy and the screen display. These may include length of text strings due to differences in font configurations and linetypes. The printer parameters may be set up to output to PRN, LPT1, LPT2, LPT3 or a file. If a file is selected, it may then be printed later using the DOS command: copy /b (filename) lpt(n): IF YOU HAVE SET UP YOUR GRAPHICS CARD FOR "V.E.S.A. STANDARD 800x600 MODE", THE SCREEN WILL BE ERASED PRIOR TO EXECUTION OF SCREEN > PRINT AND THEN RESTORED AFTER THE OPERATION HAS BEEN COMPLETED. 59) Fixed bug-> An erroneous diagnostic may have been displayed on the screen during ROUGH turning with undercuts. 60) The length of the horizontal axis line has been reduced by 1% for creating plots to avoid an extra page feed on some printers when using a plotter emulator. 61) A provision has been made in DXF import to handle input files which are padded with control characters at the end. Such file may have previously caused the program to hang up. 62) GRAFX2 now provides for PART DRAW operations without extrusion at Z depths other than 0. For example ZTOP = ZBOTTOM = -4 will cause PLOT to draw the part boundary at Z-4. 63)*GRAFX2 now recognizes the following specification in the PATHS.SYS file to establish the default path for BACKPLOT input files. da=path.ext (where "path" is the name of a drive/directory and "ext" is up to 3 character extension) If ".ext" only is specified, the current directory is assumed. The ".ext" extension is optional and if included GRAFX2 will assume the specified extension instead of the default .DA extension. For example, if "da=d:\nc\gcode.nc" is in the PATHS.SYS file, BACKPLOT will assume its input is from the directory "D:\NC\GCODE\ and assume the default extensions ".NC" on the files. 64)*CL has been added to the IMPORT menu. This selection will import vector data from an APT-CL cutter line file. The LAYERS, BOUNDARY and FILTER IMPORT MODES all apply to CL IMPORT. The data will be layered to the layer names "TOOL n" where n is the corresponding tool number in the CL file. When importing CL files produced by the STRATA "ncoutput clfile" command, the file cl.sys should exist with the numeral 1 in it to instruct GRAFX2 how to handle arc data. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.10C (7/27/95) 65) MIRROR > X AXIS or Y AXIS now mirrors about the local axes of the active Work View. 66) Fixed bug-> IMPORT > ASCII > RT or TR was failing if a skip fields specification was made. 67) Fixed bug-> Inputting part family files (.DMF) may have caused program failure. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.10D (8/18/95) 68) EXPORT precision (used for DXF exports) is now internally defaulted to 6 places when initializing a modes parameter file. 69) Fixed bug-> Problems may have occurred if escaping out the precision query multiple times on DXF > EXPORT. 70) A new file output handling procedure has been incorporated whereby an overwritten output file name is restored if the output operation is aborted. This applies to the writing of DXF, IGES, HPGL, VEC, TLL, GFX, APT and C2 files. 71) Engraving lettering operations have been speeded up significantly. 72)*The following query has been added for GROOVING finish passes: Finish from both ends to the middle? A YES response (default condition) results in a 2 pass finish cycle as what occurred in previous versions. A NO response will now result in a single finish pass from one end of the groove to the other. In the case of the single pass option, if a full radius grooving tool is used, the toolpath direction will be the same as the boundary direction instead of always left to right or bottom to top. 73) Fixed bug-> The temporary file INPUTFIL.TMP was not being deleted if toolpath files were opened in a path other than the current path. 74) Fixed bug-> After aborting a grooving operation, subsequent grooving toolpaths may not have been generated unless GRAFX2 was reinitialized. 75) GRAFX2.LOG is no longer maintained when running inside the GRAFX CAD/CAM Starter Kit. 76) Improvements have been made to entity color restoration when picking dimension and text entities. 77) EXAMINE > DIMENSION now reports "leader" when picking linear or arc leader dimension entities. Previously these dimension types were ignored on EXAMINE. 78) A tweak has been incorporated to eliminate "Memory error restoring screen" on termination of the graphics screen saver when GRAFX2 is running in a low available memory situation. 79) Fixed bug-> Clicking the INFO button, when the text encompassing all the header information exceeded 128 characters caused the current Job Name to get clobbered. This problem only was possible following the introduction of Job Descriptions in 1.10B. 80)*JOB LIST has been added to the FILE menu. This rebuilds the extended job list (JOBLIST.DIR) in the GEO path without having to go into SETUP. This might be used after copying a GEO file into the path whereby the list would not be updated to reflect the new file. 81) An initial check that the printer is ready is now made before an XYPLOT to FPLOT or a PRINT. If the printer is not ready, a message is displayed and the operation is aborted. Previously, executing FPLOT when the printer was not ready caused program failure. 82) IW instructions executed in HPGL IMPORT may have erroneously prevented lines from being imported. 83) The message "Error...invalid line segment, endpoints are the same" is now suppressed on background line creation operations such as imports. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.11A (11/ 7/95) UPDATE 1) The initial printer ready check for PRINT introduced in 1.10D is no longer done if the printer has been set up to output to a file. 2) GRAFX2 now supports the DATACUT "U" type SIM. This SIM is physically identified by a black rather than green color. If GRAFX2 is run under Microsoft WINDOWS using the "U" SIM, some system setup is required. This is documented in the text file WINDOWS.TXT which is now distributed with GRAFX II Systems. 3) The SCREEN > PRINT command was wrapping the color selection for color printers based on the number of pens specified in the plotter setup. e.g. if 6 pens were selected and bright green (color #10) was to be output, red (color #4) was being output instead based on 10 minus 6 calculation. This could have been worked around by specifying 16 pens to the plotter setup. SCREEN > PRINT no longer utilizes any references to plotter pens. 4) The Printer select code no longer uses a default if no printer was selected. If a SCREEN > PRINT command is given, and no printer was selected, the message "No printer selected" appears after the GRAFX2.PLT file is created. The NO PRINTER selection is added to the G2CONFIG menu which will enable the creation of the GRAFX2.PLT file without proceeding directly with its printing. 5) Fixed bug-> Problems may have occurred in picking a point in the isometric view if a previously stored Z value was removed from the point. 6) When creating connected boundaries, the talk window which prompts the user to define the "next endpoint of tool center" now is only displayed if a tool diameter is active in the BOUNDARY > MODES, otherwise the prompt is for the "next endpoint of connected boundary". 7) Fixed bug-> Arcs with extremely large radii were sometimes displayed erroneously. These unusual arcs are now displayed as straight lines. 8) Fixed bug-> Attributes were lost when transforming boundaries with only Global Attributes in them. 9) Fixed bug-> The location of attributes may have been corrupted on a SET > REMOVE operation. This problem emerged when SET > REMOVE was extended to already accepted sets in revision 1.10A. 10) Fixed bug-> Global Attribute COPY or MOVE was unsuccessful if after selecting the source boundary, the cursor focus was moved outside the graphics window prior to selecting the target boundary. 11) If only 1 point entity exists, a SCREEN > EXTENTS or SCREEN > VIEW > will now redraw the screen at the current scale factor centered about the point. 12) Any UNDO operation will now cause a recalculation of the extents prior to a SCREEN > EXTENTS. 13) APT-CL Imports have been expanded to work on more different flavors of CL files. 14) Fixed bug-> With boundary mode on, some APT-CL imports were not finishing the last boundary or point set as indicated by the yellow color. 15) An extension may now be added to the CL path to change the ".CL" default extension for APT-CL Imports. i.e. cl=path.ext For example, if "cl=d:\apt\clfiles.cla" is in the PATHS.SYS file, IMPORT > CL will default its input to the directory "D:\APT\CLFILES\ and supply the default extensions ".CLA" to the files. if ".ext" only is specified, the current directory will be assumed. 16) Fixed bug-> Extrusions were being drawn during the creation of hatch lines while in the ISOMETRIC view. 17) The translation vector line drawn in XFORM > TRANSLATE is no longer extruded in the ISOMETRIC view. 18) Fixed bug-> Loading a geometry file which defaulted to the Isometric view with isometric axes angles different from the default angles, initially displayed the axes at the default instead of the file angles. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.11B (2/27/96) 1) GRAFX2 is no longer exited when calling EDITOR. Therefore it is no longer necessary to SAVE the current geometry file prior to an EDIT. If the editor happens to lock up, it can be broken out of by typing CTRL-ALT-INS without having to reboot the computer. 2) When shelling out to the operating system with FILE > OS, almost all the memory used by GRAFX2 is now freed and made available to the DOS command processor. If a program which is then called from DOS happens to lock up, it can be broken out of by typing CTRL-ALT-INS without having to reboot the computer. 3) DOS shell calls using FILE > OS are now allowed with an open toolpath file. 4) The file viewer utility now has more memory available to it when it executes. This is invoked in FILE > VIEW and after EXAMINE > REPORT. 5) Fixed bug-> After executing a SCREEN > PRINT, subsequent SCREEN > XYPLOT selections when FPLOT is the selected plotter would execute the PRINT task. 6) When the screen is blanked on a SCREEN > PRINT do to the V.E.S.A. graphics mode being active, a message is now displayed on the screen which explains why the screen was blanked. 7) A new multiple file screen save scheme has been implemented which permits multiple copies of GRAFX II to be open simultaneously. 8) *GRAFX2 now has provision for a user defined application menu which enables other application programs to be run from within GRAFX2 without exiting. If an application launched from GRAFX2 happens to lock up, it can be broken out of by typing CTRL-ALT-INS without having to reboot the computer. This feature is enabled by creating a file called USER.MNU in the directory in which GRAFX II is installed. When this file exists, then menu entry USER will appear in the ROOT menu which will invoke the menu defined in the USER.MNU file. The format for the USER.MNU file is as follows: #menu number title item 1*item 1 description@item 1 program item 2*item 2 description@item 2 program ........ item n*item n description@item n program The menu must start with a menu number followed by a title. The number of the first menu must be 0. The title will be displayed at the top of the menu in yellow. It is suggested that the title be capitalized to be consistent with the other GRAFX2 menu titles and that leading spaces be used to center it. The first text in each item is what will appear in the menu, therefore this text should be no more than 10 characters in length. The first capital letter of these entries will be used as the hot key when selecting menu items with the keyboard. The second text which must start with the * is the menu item description which will be displayed in the info window when the item is pointed to in the menu. The third text which must start with the @ is the program which will be run when the item is selected. These may be .exe, .com or .bat files. If programs of the same name with different extensions exist, it is best to specify the extension also. If the program call requires any parameters it should be in included in this text the same way you would run the program from the DOS prompt. If you need to run a program from within the directory it resides, you can use a batch file to first change the current directory with a "cd" and then call the program. It is not necessary to change the directory back when done because GRAFX2 will do this automatically. You may specify a maximum of 12 entries in a menu. If you need to include more than 12 application programs you can create more menus by making your menu look something like this: #0 title1 ........ item n*menu 1 item n description@item n program More*Next menu of programs@+1 #1 title2 item 1*menu 2 item 1 description@item 1 program item 2*menu 2 item 2 description@item 2 program ........ Here a second menu has been created by including an entry which starts with a + followed by the menu number to load in its program field. The second menu starts with the #1 and title2 entries. This procedure may be used to create as many menus as you wish up to a limit of 32 menus. Note that it is very important to follow the rules exactly when creating the USER.MNU file. If a key character or sequence is not done correctly, unpredictable results may occur. 9) Environmental timing parameters required for using the DATACUT "U" type SIM with very fast computers are now set inside the software and no longer require setting the parameters with a "SET" command in AUTOEXEC.BAT. 10) CTRL-F may now be typed to save the current geometry file. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.11C (3/27/96) 11) Fixed bug-> GRAFX2 may have hung up while popping up the operations menu on lathe programs when the tool number plus the offset number exceeded 6 digits. The menu display for overflowed TOOL/OFFSET field is now handled. 12) The "Spindle gear range code" toolpath operation parameter now defaults to null in each operation. Previously, after specifying a value, it was carried through to subsequent operations. 13) A time delay after a button depress has been added to the digitizing routine to prevent multiple digitized points at the same location. The default delay parameter can be changed by setting the DELAY parameter in the DIGITIZE.CPL file using NCTALK. 14) GRAFX2 plotting to the FPLOT Plotter emulator now supports output to targets other than the PRN device. The output target is picked up from the file FPLOT.SYS if it exists. The output target specification may be a file name which can later be copied to a device with the DOS "copy /b" command. FPLOT.SYS may be automatically created in G2CONFIG.EXE versions after 3/14/96 by specifying the output device after selecting FPLOT as the plotter. 15) More memory has been made available to FPLOT when running from GRAFX2. This however may result in difficulty in aborting out of FPLOT with Ctrl/Break. 16) After making a selection form the Machine Type dialog box, the cursor is now returned to the prior position rather than the menus area. 17) Fixed bug-> (Introduced in 1.11B) The title bar on some pop up windows may have displayed "Saving screen.." erroneously. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.12A (6/20/96) UPDATE 1) An automatic vertical placement adjustment for system fonts has been added to accommodate fonts which may descend too low in single line windows. 2) A new scheme for displaying secondary pulldown menus has been incorporated. The primary menu will now remain visible while the secondary menu hangs next to the active selection on the primary menu. This is currently utilized by SCREEN > VIEWS and MODES > TOOLPATH. 3) *The entering of drilling depths in the toolpath parameter screens has been enhanced. The parameter `Final "Z" depth of hole' has been changed to `Final "Z" depth of drill stroke' which is a more accurate description. When entering this value you may now press the F5 key or LEFT mouse button to bring up another parameter screen which will derive the value. The new parameters are as follows: Mode - Select "Depth", "Thru hole" or "Chamfer". "Depth" will calculate the depth from the "Z increment". "Thru hole" will calculate the depth required to clear the "Thru hole depth" based on the Drill point angle of the drill and the "Thru clearance". "Chamfer will calculate the depth required to produce the specified "Chamfer diameter" along with the "Drill point angle". "Z" level for drill plane - Drilling depth will be calculated relative to this value. "Z" increment from drill plane - ("Depth" mode only). The final "Z" distance relative to the drill plane surface. Always assumed to be into the work. Drill point angle - The angle of the drill point. This may be auto- matically loaded from the tool parameters if a tooling file is used. Otherwise a default value of 118 degrees is supplied on new operations. This value must be between 0 and 180 degrees for Thru holes and between 1 and 179 degrees for Chamfers. Thru hole depth - ("Thru hole" mode only). The depth of material to be cleared on thru holes. Always assumed to be into the work. Thru clearance - ("Thru hole" mode only). The extra clearance amount added to the "Z" stroke on thru holes. Always assumed to be into the work. Chamfer diameter - ("Chamfer" mode only). The diameter of the chamfer to be created. The drill depth will be calculated based on the Drill point angle of the drill. If the specified diameter exceeds the shank diameter of the tool, a warning message will be displayed. This parameter also appears in "Depth" mode for display purposes only. i.e. the value cannot be changed and is displayed in gray. When plotting tool circles in GRAFX2 and PLOT, the chamfer diameter will be plotted instead of the tool diameter. After the `Final "Z" depth' value is entered, either by calculation or manually, the "Chamfer diameter" is recalculated based on the value of the `Final "Z" depth' parameter. This means that after using the calculator to determine a depth required to achieve a chamfer value the depth is then changed, GRAFX2 will then recalculate the chamfer value. You can always check the chamfer value which will be plotted by bringing up the depth calculator and reading the "Chamfer diameter" value. 4) *The order of spindle speed parameter queries in turning have been rearranged to accommodate the speed/feed calculator. The new order is: Maximum spindle speed (RPM): Constant surface speed (FPM/MPM): Spindle speed (RPM): 5) *A SPEED & FEED calculator has been incorporated for computing RPM and IPM/MPM values from cutting speed and chip load data in milling and turning. The calculator which brings up a secondary parameter screen may be invoked with the F5 key or LEFT mouse button when inputting the primary RPM value in the toolpath parameters. The new parameters are: Cutting speed (FPM/MPM) - The cutting speed from which the RPM value is derived. In turning this value will default to the "Constant surface speed" parameter. Speed calculation OD - (Turning operations except drilling only). The tool "X" position which will be used to calculate the RPM. When inputting this value, the F5 key or LEFT mouse button may be used to invoke the point menu in order to define the value. Feed per flute - (milling operations only). The distance the cutter moves while a flute or tooth makes one pass through the material. Number of flutes - (milling operations only). The number of flutes or teeth on the cutter. Feedrate (IPR/MMPR) (drilling operations except tapping only). The distance the cutter moves for each revolution of the tool. Threads per inch/Thread lead - (tapping only). Thread parameter for the tapped hole. After entering the parameter(s), GRAFX2 will return to the prior parameter screen and automatically enter the calculated RPM and IPM/MMPM. The RPM calculation will not be made and instead an error message will be displayed if there is a 0 tool diameter in milling/drilling operations or a 0 OD entered in turning operations. The IPM/MPM calculation will not be made if there are 0 flutes entered in milling operations or a 0 threads per inch or a 0 thread lead entered in tapping operations. Exiting the calculator screen with the Esc key will prevent the calculation. The calculated parameters may be changed manually by overriding the calculated parameters. In milling, after changing the calculated RPM, a new IPM/MMPM may be calculated based on the manually entered RPM by pressing the F5 key or LEFT mouse button while in the IPM/MPM parameter. In turning, the calculated RPM will be limited by the "Maximum spindle speed" parameter. 6) Several changes have been made to the Operations Report. The SPEED column has been replaced with CS and RPM. CS is the cutting speed which will be the constant surface speed if programmed in turning operations or else the cutting speed entered in the SPEED calculator and RPM is the spindle speed in revolutions per minute. Decimal values are now output in fixed length formats with predetermined decimal places of accuracy to create a more aligned look to the reports. 7) The dynamic entity memory allocation strategy has been changed when doing a FILE > RESET. Previously, this action may have caused GRAFX2 to quit in low memory situations even though it was able to initially start up. 8) The message displayed when GRAFX2 does an internal entity resizing in low memory situations has been made less alarming. 9) When pressing F5 or the LEFT mouse button while entering the toolpath file name in CUT PART, a dialog box now appears asking for confirmation on displaying the menu of existing PART FAMILY files. If YES is selected, the menu will appear. If NO is selected, the displayed toolpath file name will be used instead. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.12B (11/19/96) 10) Radial and Diameter dimension values are now drawn as R xxx and D xxx to be more consistent with accepted conventions. 11) The text file viewer which may be invoked after EXAMINE > REPORT or ATTRIBUTES > REPORT now has more memory available to it when loaded. This improvement was erroneously noted for EXAMINE > REPORT in Version 1.11B. 12) "X Gauge Length" and "Z Gauge Length" have been added to the turning tools parameters. These parameters allow the automatic loading of default gauge lengths when calling tooling files from the toolpath parameters in turning jobs. 13) Fixed bug-> Radial dimensions may have been deleted when the arcs associated with them were MOVED to new layers. 14) "SHIFT/F5" wildcard construction may now be used when listing tooling file menus created from tooling library files in toolpath parameters. 15)*When entering TEXT entities, Ctrl/Enter may now be used to end a line which will provide for the creation of another TEXT entity lined up directly below the line entered. 16)*While entering text in GRAFX2 using the line editor, ALT/C will now copy the text from the cursor to the end of the line to the clipboard and ALT/V will replace the current line with the contents of the clipboard. The key command for flipping the character case has been changed from ALT/C to ALT/F. 17)*When null values are entered for the depth of hole parameter in non turning drilling operations, the previous depth is now used. This depth would be set by attaching depths to points in the POINT SET object. This allows modal drill depths to be set and changed easily within a single drilling operation. 18)*When a point with an associated DEPTH is REMOVED from a point set and a next point which does not have an associated DEPTH exists, a dialog box appears which will allow the DEPTH of the REMOVED point to be automatically transferred to the next point in the set. This is done in accommodation of modal drill depths as described in the above item. 19) "Z" depths attached to points inside point sets are now preserved when relocating sets from the TRANSFORM menu. 20)*When displaying boundaries and point sets with DRAW mode off, elements with "Z" values attached are now displayed in brown rather than bright red. 21) When selecting points to enter "Z" depths, the selected point is now displayed in bright cyan and then restored to the appropriate color after the "Z" depth is entered or removed. 25)*While entering a "Z" DEPTH value, the F5 key or left MOUSE button may now be pressed to bring up the Drilling Depth Calculator. Note however that when chamfering with a drill point angle using attached "Z" depths, the chamfer diameter will not be plotted as it is from the drilling parameters. 26)*GRAFX2 may now execute a POINT PURGE automatically prior to invoking the Screen Saver after the timeout period is reached. This option can be set with the G2CONFIG versions dated after 11/4/96. 27) Printer ready checking done before plotting to a printer device has been improved. In prior versions, LPT1 was always checked even when output from FPLOT or HPLOT was sent to LPT2 or LPT3. Now the port doing the plotting is always checked. Checking the readiness to a shared printer in some network configurations (such as Windows 3.11) is however unreliable and a shared printer which is not started can hang up FPLOT. 28) The current data is now automatically backed up before calling FPLOT. If FPLOT ever fails requiring a restart of GRAFX2, RESTORE can be used to restore the data. 29)*Copy Turning has been added to the Lathe Toolpath generators. With this turning cycle, the finish profile is shifted off the final part dimension and progressively moved back into the part with each cut. This cycle is particularly useful for machining oversized parts which have been roughed out or parts from castings or forgings. Copy Turning brings up a parameter screen with the following parameters: OD or ID cutting - Select OD or ID (for internal bores) "X" depth per pass - The amount shifted toward the spindle axis on each pass. This value may be 0. "Z" depth per pass - The amount shifted toward the part face on each pass. This value may be 0. No. of roughing passes - The number of times The pattern is repeated. each pass will take of an equal amount in each axis direction. Stock left on "X" axis surface - This value may be 0. Stock left on "Z" axis surface - This value may be 0. Back turn part? No or Yes 30) Fixed bug-> After a Drill cycle, the effective tool diameter parameter was retained in the toolpath file which may have caused the plotting of the last drill tool diameter instead of the current tool diameter. 31)*When importing GFX-DMB files, the path to GFX geometry files (.PT) in the PATHS.SYS file is now used as the default path. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.13A (1/29/97) UPDATE 1) Automatic Force Mode in boundary linking has been revamped. When seeking the closest non matching element to trim to, only elements within .1 inch or 2.5 millimeters are now considered. This makes more useful automatic linking when no ending element is picked. When a match has been forced in this mode, the linking no longer pauses and waits for LINK to be re-selected. 2) Fixed bug-> "X" Positioning after a tapered threading pass may have been incorrect on internal back lathe threads or external front lathe threads. 3) Fixed bug-> In Lathe Finish operations, after a feedrate was changed by a "one-shot" feedrate attribute, the feed was restored to rapid traverse. 4) Fixed bug-> Roughing passes may have been skipped on certain undercut boundaries in Lathe Rough operations. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.13B (2/ 7/97) 5) Geometry Engraving on a vertical line now goes top to bottom instead of bottom to top. 6)* VERTICAL is added to the ENGRAVING > MODES menu. When this mode is active LETTER engraving or GEOMETRY engraving on a vertical line will create the characters in a vertical orientation with each character centered on its directional vector. This mode will be automatically turned off when GEOMETRY engraving on an arc or non vertical line. 7) Fixed bug-> When GRAFX2 opened with an illegal path in the paths.sys file, subsequent invoking of the screen saver may have caused program failure. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.13C (5/30/97) 8) CUT PART > REPORT > PRINT now outputs the job description even when the toolpath is not currently open. 9) The toolpath File name and Program Number (if exists) are now reported on CUT PART > REPORT > PRINT. 10) On CUT PART > REPORT > PRINT, after displaying the information to the screen, the talk window message "press any key" has been expanded to "press any key to begin printing". 11) EXAMINE screens now first check data to prevent overflows on exceptionally large numbers. 12) When executing a graphics PRINT from the SCREEN menu, the confirming dialog box now displays the following choices: YES - Proceed with the printing of the graphics window PREVIEW - Preview the printing operation on the screen CANCEL - Cancel the operation The PREVIEW choice requires that HPLOT.EXE dated after 4-28-97 be present. 13) The coding for PRINT SCREENs from the display bitmap has been removed from GRAFX2.EXE. If PRINT is now done without setting up the graphics printer type the following message is now displayed: Printer not configured...go to SETUP 14) Workviews may now be deleted by highlighting a workview on the workview selection menu and pressing the Delete key. UNDO may then be used to restore the deleted workview. 15) UNDO is now functional after a BREAK or UNBREAK of boundary elements. 16) UNDO operations which backup the .GEO file before the operation now backup to the file UNDO.BAK instead of GEOMETRY.BAK to reduce conflicts with other backup operations. 17) All utility programs called from GRAFX2.EXE with the exception of SETUP are now called without exiting GRAFX2 thereby restoring the exact state of GRAFX2 when the utility program has completed. 18) Fixed bug-> On rare occasions when GEO files are loaded in with no available space for arc or line entities, some modify geometry operations corrupted geometry if a RESIZE was not previously executed. 19) After a toolpath file is closed, UNDO information no longer displays the toolpath UNDO message. 20) Some utilities such as EDIT and PRINT would not load when running under a WINDOWS 95 DOS boot because of a memory scheme conflict. This has now been addressed. 21) The TMP temporary file environment may have caused program errors when running in some environments such as WINDOWS 95. The buffer has been increased to prevent the problem. 22) UNDO has been made less restrictive in low available entity situations. 23)*VALUES has been added to the GEOMETRY > MODIFY menu. This selection allows for the editing of the values defining a point, line or arc. The following data values are editable for the entity: POINT - X,Y(*Z) & Z (if 3-D point) LINE - X,Y(*Z) of endpoint selected ARC - X,Y(*Z) of center, radius, angle of endpoint selected *Z - pertains to Z instead of Y when lathe data is XZ Lines and arcs may not be edited if they are part of a boundary. UNDO may be used to reverse the modification. 24) Positioning point Z values are now retained when TRANSLATEd with OLD DELETE active. 25) Fixed bug-> UNDO after a boundary TRANSFORM with OLD DELETE active may not have restored the original boundary. 26) DRAG has been added to the TRANSLATE menu. When selected geometry may be picked with the cursor and dragged to a new position. If a line or arc inside a boundary is picked, the entire boundary is dragged. However, if a point within a point set is picked, only the point will be dragged. 27) Fixed bug-> The menu tree may have displayed wrong menu items after selecting some choices after a modal operation was selected. 28) Retained XZ values on TRANSLATE > XZ using lathe type XZ coordinate and X diameter data are now handled. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.13D (8/11/97) 29) A new ATTRIBUTES APPEND popup menu has been added. This menu is for applying certain commonly used machine control attributes to geometry. The new attributes are: R LEVEL - Change the current R-Level PART RT - Retract drill to R-Level FULL RT - Retract drill to initial Z level LEFT - Cutter Comp. Left RIGHT - Cutter Comp. Right CANCEL - Cutter Comp. Cancel The ATTRIBUTES menu is now accessible on GRAFX II/LE systems. When ATTRIBUTES > APPEND is selected on LE systems, this menu is automatically invoked. On full GRAFX II systems, this menu may be invoked by selecting MACRO off the initial APPEND popup menu. 30) Fixed bug-> When a null value R-level was entered in drilling parameters, incorrect Z values were being stored in the .DMB file on drill cycle blocks. This problem only affected Z views in PLOT and did not affect Post Processor output. 31) Fixed bug-> The drill depth calculator in CHAMFER mode sometimes aborted calculations when the chamfer diameter and the drill shank diameter were the same value. This was due to math rounding inconsistencies. 32) Fixed bug-> Removing a point from a point set may have caused errors in attributes for all boundary/set elements with boundary indexes greater than the removed point. 33) Fixed bug-> After a GEOMETRY > MODIFY > UNBREAK of 2 boundary elements whereby one of them had an attribute, a subsequent ATTRIBUTE > SHOW may not have displayed the new single element as having attributes even though it did. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.14A (10/23/97) UPDATE 1) Info line descriptions for the RESET operation have been modified. 2) The following parameter has been added to the NON TURNING and TURNING parameter screens: Tool display orientation: angle (mirror) This parameter allows the transformation of the displayed tool geometry from a tooling file in some views of GRAFX2 and PLOT. When the SPACE bar or LEFT MOUSE button is pressed, a popup menu appears to select an incremental angle to rotate the tool geometry. The choices are 0 CW, 90 CW, 180 CW or 270 CW. After selecting the rotation angle, a second popup menu selects NO MIRROR or MIRROR the geometry. One of the benefits of this feature is to allow common tooling files to be used for both milling and turning jobs (such as drills, taps and reamers). Common tooling files may also be used for front and rear lathes whereas before separate tooling files for the same tool but displayed at the different orientations were required. 3) The "Drilling depth" parameter is now active for Turning Center Drills when creating tooling files with NC > TOOLING > PARAMETERS. 4) When creating tooling files with NC > TOOLING > PARAMETERS, the new "Tooling type" parameter "TURNING AND NON TURNING" has been added. When this type is specified, turning and milling tool parameters can be entered and the tool will be installed in both the turning and milling tool lists. 5) The following parameters have been added when creating "TURNING AND NON TURNING" tooling file types: Non Turning Tool display orientation: angle (mirror) Turning Tool display orientation: angle (mirror) These parameters describe the transformation of the defined tool geometry for utilization of the tool in a non turning or turning operation. When the tooling file is specified for a machining operation, the "Tool display orientation" parameter will default to one of these two parameters depending on which type of machine is active at the time. 6) Fixed bug-> "Post Processor Option M-code" parameters were resulting in "M0" Post processor output when null values were entered and no M-code output when 0's were entered. This is now reversed. 7) Fixed bug-> (Introduced in 1.14B) In ENGRAVING, the spacing between some characters may have been insufficient, especially on simplex type fonts. 8) The "Tool diameter" parameter has been changed to "Drill diameter" in the parameter screens for creating drilling type tooling files. 9) The "Tool length" parameter has been moved ahead of the "Tool diameter" or "drill diameter" or "Tool nose radius" parameter in the tool file parameter screens. 10) The following parameters have been added when creating Center Drill tooling files: Body diameter - The diameter of the tool shank Flute length - The length of the "drill diameter" section Chamfer angle - The inclusive angle of the chamfer between the "drill diameter" section and "body diameter" section 11) The drill depth calculator has been expanded for center drills. When bringing up the calculator for center drill tooling files or when no tooling file has been loaded for a drilling operation, the following new parameters appear: Body diameter - The diameter of the tool shank Flute length - The length of the "drill diameter" section Chamfer angle - The inclusive angle of the chamfer between the "drill diameter" section and "body diameter" section The calculator will accommodate chamfer diameters between 0 and the body diameter of the center drill and when calculating depths will automatically shift to the chamfer angle section of the center drill when the chamfer diameter exceeds the "drill diameter". 12) The "Drilling depth" parameter for center drills will now be loaded as the default "Z" increment from drill plane" parameter in the drill depth calculator when loading the tooling file. 13) When loading a center drill tooling file which has a non zero "Drilling depth" parameter, DEPTH mode will be forced as the default for the drill depth calculator. 14) The following parameter has been added to the speed and feed calculator for all non-turning operations and turning drilling operations: Effective tool diameter at "Depth of cut": This parameter defines the diameter of the tool at the surface of the part material which is usually equal to the tool or drill diameter but may be another value when countersinking or using taper cutters. In the case of countersinking, this parameter will usually equal the chamfer diameter parameter in the drill depth calculator. In corner cutting it will usually equal that operation's "Effective tool diameter" parameter. When first creating a new chamfering or corner cutting operation, you can define or calculate those parameters and then go back to the speed and feed calculator and the "Effective tool diameter" parameter will be carried over as the default value. Previously, the "Tool diameter" parameter was always used to calculate the speed. 15) TRANSLATE > SET now skips positioning points in the target point set. 16) The "Z" retraction at the end of each "Z" step down passes in milling may now be directed to retract to the last "Z" position prior to the "Z" approach move instead of the "Z" approach clearance plane parameter if the toolpath does not form a closed loop. This done by storing a "FULL RT" attribute anywhere on the part boundary, including a GLOBAL attribute. 17) Data stored in the G2BETA.SYS file is now written to the DMB file. 18) If a lathe roughing operation is not the first operation after a tool change and there are no positioning points approaching or departing the boundary, a safe retract to the tool change position is now automatically inserted into the toolpath file. 19) Lathe roughing now detects certain boundary configurations which may have resulted in program failure and rejects the boundary with the following error message. Illegal boundary in Roughing operation...Roughing aborted This condition may have resulted when attempting to OD rough an ID boundary. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.14B (3/17/98) 1) GEOMETRY ENGRAVING on an arc now utilizes a new algorithm which more accurately orients each character. Previously as the relative curvature of the arc compared to the character increased (larger character size - smaller arc radius), the accuracy of the orientations of the characters deteriorated. 2) The hot key for READ on the COMMUNICAT menu has been changed from R to E so as not to conflict with ROOT. 3) Pressing the ESC key while in the confirming dialog box for a graphics PRINT is now the same as selecting CANCEL from the menu. 4) VERTICAL ENGRAVING is now permitted on non vertical lines. When lettering on a line with VERTICAL mode enables, the characters flow along the line but are always oriented vertically rather than perpendicular to the line. 5) Fixed bug-> Positioning point Z values may have been lost when defining a boundary or point set and referencing positioning points whose geometry was previously defined in a different layer. 6) The timing factor for the Activator (green) SIM may now be modified by creating the file TIMING.SYS in the GRAFX2 directory and storing the factor in the file. The default timing factor is predetermined by timing your computer. If there is a problem accessing the SIM due to timing problems, it is suggested that larger values be edited into the TIMING.SYS file up to a maximum of 65,000. Timing problems may occur with faster computers and slower parallel ports. 7) Fixed bug-> In LAYERS > MOVE > WINDOW, if moving a boundary to a layer which was ON, the user was then erroneously queried whether to delete the new geometry formed. 8) "MCUTR" type DMB blocks generated by GRAFX2 in tool changes now output data class 1000 instead of 400 to be consistent with GFX. It is suggested that DMB files created with this version of GRAFX2 use a version of POST.EXE dated after 3/16/98. 9) Fixed bug-> IGES EXPORT may have created improper output files when an entity parameter line exceeded a single line of output. 10)*PRECIS=n has been added to the EXPORT menu. This sets the number of digits output in DXF, IGES, VEC, GFX, APT & COMPACT export operations. If PRECIS=0, 6 places is output by default. DXF export no longer queries for precision but instead uses the PRECIS value. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.14C (8/20/98) 11) The "Work offset number" parameters may now be output to the toolpath file without defining them in a workview. 12) Fixed bug-> On DXF EXPORT, all layers were being exported (including removed layers) instead of just the visible layers. 13) On DXF EXPORT, GRAFX2 now converts characters in layer names which are illegal in AutoCad to $ characters. 14)*A tool change may now be forced by entering an asterisk (*) before the tool number in the machining parameters screen. This is done if a new machining operation is programmed with the same tool number as the prior operation but a tool change sequence is desired in the post processor output. 15) When doing an EXPORT > GEO, the new GEO filename now is automatically inserted into the JOBLIST directory menu with "Exported File" as the job description. 16) Support for "F" type SIM has been added. 17) The opening logo screen now displays the license no. if available. 18) The menu description message for PRECIS=n in the EXPORT menu has been changed. 19) In the graphics screen saver of GRAFX2, the placement of the patterns are now less biased to the lower left of the screen. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.14D (11/6/98) 20) Global attributes may now be attached to the final retract of a CUTOFF operation. 21) The current date and time are now output in the printed operations report. 22) Fixed bug-> If a constant surface speed is programmed and then set to 0 in a later operation, the operations report showed the CS still in effect. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.15A (2/25/99) 1) BACKPLOT now defaults to the "DA" path in the tape filename entry box. 2) All tasks in the COMMUNIC menu now default to the "DA" path when passing on the name of the tape file to NCTALK. 3) *When entering the file name to load GEO files, CTRL/F5 may now be pressed to display a menu of recent GEO files accessed. This menu will display up to 25 file names in the order they were last accessed. Appearing next to the file name is the date and time the file was last accessed. The history list may be modified by editing the file HISTORY.SYS. 4) The report created for geometry and attributes were sometimes not printing RETURNS in some printing environments. This has been corrected. 5) *The NC > REPORT operations report has been redesigned. A file of the form jobname.OPS is now created which can be viewed and printed. For each operation, the following information is reported: Tool #, Tool Offset #, Tool Radius, Feed rate, Cutting Speed, RPM X Gauge Length, Z Gauge Length -> Turning Only Tool File, Tool Description, Operation Description The report also prints a blanks where tool compensation values can be filled in by the operator during set up. When DELETING a job from the joblist menu, the jobname.OPS file is now searched for and queried to be deleted. 6) VEC files which are written and read with this version of GRAFX2 forward now have the ability to ignore entity types which may be introduced in future versions. VEC files are now written as version 1.02. 7) *Attributes are now supported in the writing and reading of VEC files. This is useful in controlling the machining of fonts and creating machining methods which can be embedded in template boundaries. 8) Text entities are now written to the VEC file when EXPORT > MODE > BOUNDARY is enabled. Previously text entities were only output when this mode was disabled. 9) *SETUP has been added to the NC menu. This selection calls the text editor to enter or modify the part setup information which is stored in the file jobname.SUP. When this file exists, the operations REPORT will include the text in the .SUP file. 10) Fixed bug-> When specifying a Z retract feedrate in GROOVE roughing, the specified feedrate was being multiplied by the roughing feedrate usually resulting in an out of range small F ipr value. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.15B (6/ 9/99) 11) Output of the date in some log files and reports has been modified to output a maximum of two digits in the year for consistency. 12) Fixed bug-> Eliminated "left over" data in toolpath file which in some instances may have resulted in incorrect display of cutter diameter in GRAFX2 & PLOT. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.15C (12/ 1/99) 13)*Engraving fonts may now be scaled in height and width independently. When the height and width scale factors are not equal, the resultant characters are stretched whereby arcs are transformed into elliptical data. The aspect ratio of the axes scales are maintained through resizing done when ALIGN justification is done. Character spacing is automatically adjusted by the width scale factor. Both height and width scaling factors are entered through the SCALE menu selection in the ENGRAVE menu. 14)*Engraving fonts may now be slanted. When a slant angle is specified, the resultant characters are slanted and arc elements are transformed into elliptical data. The slant angle is entered as the third parameter of the SCALE menu selection in the ENGRAVE menu. 15) "Rubberbanding" is now drawn when sketching the third arc point of ARC > 3 POINTS or ARC > CONNECTED. 16) When SAVING a job to a new name if a setup file (.SUP) exists for the job, the user is now queried to duplicate the setup file for the new job. 17) The menu selection description for GEOMETRY > EXAMINE > TEXT was incorrect. 18) Fixed bug-> EXAMINE of arcs with extremely large radii may have reported incorrect segment lengths and radius values. Lengths of boundaries which contained such arcs may also have been reported incorrectly. EXAMINE now limits an arc radius to a value of 1000. 19) Extraneous data in Z-surface DMB blocks is now eliminated from the .DMB file. 20) Fixed bug-> When a Z-surface projection was done on a machining operation, that projection was made active for the next operation using the same tool when reloading the toolpath file even when no projection was programmed. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.15D (8/ 8/00) 21) Fixed bug-> When engraving on an arc, characters with 0 width, (e.g. a single vertical line), may have been created incorrectly. 22) Fixed bug-> Machining parameter screens now use the current INPUT units as the criteria for displaying queries in metric or English units instead of the current OUTPUT units as set in the ACCESS menu. 23) Fixed bug-> When computing speed & feed using the speed and feed calculator on a threading operation, any previously entered "Pull out angle" parameter may have been corrupted. 24) In GEOMETRY > FILLET it is no longer necessary to reselect the radius when in select mode if the cursor was moved out of the graphics area after the radius was selected. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.15E ( 1/09/02) 25) The tentative toolpath file has now been placed in the local path instead of the GEO/DMB path allowing simultaneous access to a common GEO/DMB path by 2 or more computers running under a network. 26)*The attribute ABSC ON/OFF has been added to the GFX command list of attributes. This enables control of absolute or incremental programming within an operation. 27) If an operation was deleted on a multi operation tool, the remaining operation(s) had no spindle or coolant on commands. The spindle and coolant on condition is now passed on to the operation following the one deleted. 28) The absolute/incremental coordinate tool change parameter is now preserved if subsequently changed by an attribute prior to cutting. 29) Fixed bug->If a tool on a turning job had SPINDLE OFF entered as a tool change parameter, TOOL OFF M-codes (M5) accumulated in the toolpath file every time the operation was processed. This has been eliminated. Existing toolpath files can be cleaned of the excess codes by reprocessing the operation before the SPINDLE OFF as well as the operation with the SPINDLE OFF. 30)*The following query has been added to the Thread Cutting Parameters: Direction of thread cutting passes: FORWARD REVERSE The default FORWARD direction cuts towards the headstock or towards the spindle axis on face threads while REVERSE cuts away from the headstock or away from the spindle axis on face threads. 31) Fixed bug->The compound feed in and pull out angles were being cut incorrectly on face threads. 32) Expanded directory lists for menu picking of files has been revamped in order to greatly reduce the chance of memory exhaustion when creating these menus. 33) Pasting text into a text entry box with Alt/v has been embellished. The text is now pasted from the current cursor position instead of overwriting the entire line. If in overstrike mode, the pasted text replaces all of the text to the right of the cursor. If in insert mode, all the text following the cursor is moved to make room for the pasted text. 34) Fixed bug->When digitizing the origin in the SCREEN menu, incorrect text was being displayed in the talk window. 35) The ATTRIBUTES > GFX menu has been reordered alphabetically. 36)*User menu capabilities have been expanded to allow for symbolic references within the program call - @program. In the text that follows the @, a command of the form %symbol may now be included. The symbols that are supported are: jobfile - The current job file specification including path jobname - The current job name only da - The extension for post processor output files (da is the default) cl - The extension for APT cutter line input files (cl is the default) In the example that follows, the menu entry DOWNLOAD in the user.mnu file calls the communications program COMMOUT.EXE to output the current post processed file: Download*Download G-code file@\ncout\commout %jobfile .%da 37) Fixed bug-> Vertical mode was no longer engraving vertically on ENGRAVE > LETTER. 38) Fixed bug-> With BOUNDARY mode off, some segments were being stored as boundaries when adding a slant to engraving. 39) Fixed bug-> Vertical engraving on a non vertical line attempted to engrave vertically. It now will turn vertical mode off and engrave non-vertically. 40) Fixed bug-> Slanted engraving where xscale = yscale created extraneous segments on arc elements. 41) The current job file is now always recalled when returning from SETUP. 42) NC > REPORT now provides for viewing and printing the operations report without overwriting an existing file. If the jobname.OPS file already exists and NO is selected at the OVERWRITE dialog box, the existing report file will be displayed. If the escape key is pressed at the dialog box, the REPORT operation will be cancelled. If YES is selected, the jobname.OPS file will be recreated before being displayed. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.15F (6/ 5/03) 43)*The following queries have been added to the Turning Parameters: Post Processor Option M-code #1 Post Processor Option M-code #2 Post Processor Option M-code #3 These codes are for inserting custom control codes associated with machine Post Processors used on the part program. 44) Fixed bug-> The SCREEN > PRINT command may have always caused "Printer error" when the PRN device (Default Printer Port) was set up as the printer. 45) When creating a FONT, the font description now defaults to the Job description of the .GEO file. 46) Fixed bug-> Some 3-D points were losing their Z values when TRANSFORMED or moved to a new layer. 47) VEC files may now be imported to placement points. 48)*The following query has been added to the Initial Parameters for all machine types: Part load/unload time (mins): This parameter represents the time it takes for loading and unloading the workpiece in the machine for the purpose of the Time Report in POST for post.exe versions dated 6/27/02 or later. 49)*When creating PATTERN > GRID, if either the number of columns or numbers of rows are 0, an error message appears and the parameter screen is redisplayed. 50) On all parameter screens other than those associated with toolpath generation, inputting the "Page Up" key while in the first screen exited the parameter session. Now the first parameter screen will redisplay and the parameter session will continue. 51) When inputting data in the parameter screens, an "up cursor" command while on the first parameter of a screen will now bring up the last parameter of the previous screen except if in the first screen. This feature now allows continuous parameter screen scrolling both forwards and backwards. 52) Fixed bug-> Erroneous program behavior may have occurred when selecting files from presumed menu files which do not exist. When such a menu file does not exist, the system now defaults the short form file listing. 53)*Symbolic references have been added to the output of text entities. The following symbols when inserted in a text string will be output as described in the table below: Symbol Output ------ -------------------- &[job] The current job name &[file] The current job file and path &[descr] The current job description &[layer] The current active layer &[date] The current date &[time] The current time &[scale] The current drawing scale 53) Fixed bug-> An incorrect default G-code input file may have been displayed in the file selection window on a BACKPLOT operation when the "DA" path was setup with a drive specification. 54)*Text references to "tape file" or "NC program file" have been changed to "G-code file" in the software. 55) Internal routines have been added for the removal and prevention of "orphaned" boundaries. These are boundaries in the database with no geometric elements included. Now when loading a GEO file, orphaned boundaries are automatically removed. If this is done, the number of orphaned boundary entities removed will be reported in the GRAFX2.DGN file. 56) The internals for layer removal has been changed. In prior versions, removed layers remained internally as empty layers which could be reactivated when a new layer was subsequently created. Now when a layer is removed, the layers array is immediately compressed. 57) The internals for work view removal has been changed. In prior versions, removed work views remained internally as empty work views which could be reactivated when a new work view was subsequently created. Now when a work view is removed, the work views array is immediately compressed. 58) Fixed bug-> After some types of UNDO functions, attributes were being duplicated. 59) Fixed bug-> After some types of UNDO functions, memory leaks were occurring on GEO files containing text entities. 60) Fixed bug-> The GRAFX2.DGN diagnostic file displayed an extraneous value after the correct number of "text entities read" when importing VEC files. 61) Implemented beta flag 36 to suppress the output of arcs when drawing leader arrows for PLOT files. 62) Multiple listings in Operations Report for windowed grooving operations is eliminated. 63)*The attribute COOL ON/OFF has been added to the GFX command list of attributes. This enables control of the coolant within an operation. 64)*The attribute SPDL ON/OFF has been added to the GFX command list of attributes. This enables control of the spindle within an operation. 65)*Dimension text sizing may now be set for individual layers. When the text size of a dimension is set, the size will now apply to all dimensions in that layer while previously sized dimensions in other layers will retain their defined text sizes. Prior to this release, when a new dimension text size was defined, all previous dimension entities took on the new sizing. 66) Fixed bug-> Z axis in feedrate was not being output in point-to-point milling if different from the machining feedrate. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRAFX2.EXE Version 1.15G (12/11/03) 66) *Support for Post Processor specific "G-code file" paths has been added. This feature is active in POST.EXE releases after October 9, 2003. It enables the user to specify the paths where each Post Processor stores it's output file and where NCTALK finds it using the specifications in the PATHS.SYS file. The form of the parameter entry is: dap=path.ext ppname where path refers to the path where the output file will go and ppname is the name of the specific Post Processor. If .ext is specified on the path, a user defined default extension will be used for the output file. See POST.REV for more detailed information. If an NCTALK operation is called from POST, NCTALK automatically picks up the path where the G-code file was stored. However if an NCTALK operation is called from GRAFX2 using the COMMUNIC menu for a G-code file previously created, it does not know where it resides if "dap" path specifications are in effect. If this is the case, GRAFX2 will display a menu of Post Processors which have directed path output specified in the PATHS.SYS file. The user may then select the name of the Post Processor to extract its path for the subseqent communications operation. The first entry of the menu is "DEFAULT" which passes the common "G-code" path as specified by "da=path" in the POST.SYS file or the current path if that specication does not exist. 67) BACKPLOT now queries for the Post Processor specification before the "G-code" file specification in order to pickup Post Processor specific paths to locate the file. 68) Fixed bug-> Arrows on "Leader" and "Arc Leader" dimension types were not being displayed with the layer specific dimension text sizes introduced in 1.15F. 69) Fixed bug-> The "Drill Point Angle" parameter for computing drilling depths was not being retained in Turning programs. 70) When selecting machining operations off of an "Operations" menu which is more than one page long, the menu page last displayed will now display first on the subsequent operation selection. 71) Fixed bug-> Eliminated some erroneous cuts in GROOVE when groove width is less than the tool width plus the tool radius. 72) Fixed bug-> When moving dimensions, the drag box may have been sized wrong based on the last active dimension size.