Hey folks,
New gSender release with a number of feature improvements and fixes.
Two big ones we’d like to highlight:
Surfacing Tool Changes
The surfacing tool has been slightly redesigned and comes with some new features.
Some feature improvement highlights include:
- The cutting tool now ramps into position on all generated toolpaths instead of plunging in
- Can now start from center
- Easy to flip direction of cutting
- Easy copy-to-clipboard to save generated toolpaths for later
- Number of generative issues that could leave unfinished passes
Visualizer improvements
We’ve rewritten how the visualizer generates and displays toolpaths to result in lower memory usage after parsing. This should be particularly noticeable with larger files – gSender is using less memory by a relatively large factor when visualization is enabled.
As an example, for a 28 megabyte gcode file (~1.5 million lines), these are some comparisons of what the memory values were previously and what they are now:
You should also notice slightly faster visualization due to these changes.
Our benchmarking and profiling has also identified some issues with the library we’re using to parse the toolpaths themselves using excessive amounts of memory. This will be addressed in an upcoming release. We have a relatively long list of performance improvements we plan to address over the next few builds to make sure gSender runs well on lower-hardware spec devices, and this is the first part of that.
Release Notes:
- Improved surfacing tool – pattern now ramps in to support more surfacing bit types, cut direction is reversible, able to start from center, can copy gcode to clipboard for saving.
- Major improvements to visualizer memory usage and parsing speed
- Start from line should account for maximum file Z height when moving into position to account for situations where Z0 is set at the spoilboard.
- Probe code should always return to exact starting location instead of approximating it.
- Improvements to firmware flashing UX – can now select profile and port inside tool.
- Fix for auto-probe code movements being too small when “$13 report as inches” EEPROM value enabled
- Go To buttons only use safe height if below that position when limit switches enabled to avoid moving downwards.
- Fixed values in some machine profiles.
- Added machine state guards to some keyboard shortcuts.
- UI Modals now more difficult to close accidentally.
- Bracket Comments on M0/M1 now emitted to UI.
- Laser offsets preferences allow negative values again
- Bounding Box variables once again available to macros
- Mac version now exits completely on close.
- Higher UI clarity when connecting to board with invalid/unrecognizable firmware
- Styling changes in Firmware Tool
- Fixed overflow when OS had screen zoom above 100%.
(Pi build coming in the morning)