So our FRC team has been slowly getting up to speed on the Shapeoko over the past few months, and I’ve been keeping a list of the UI pain points we ran into. There are a lot of tiny tweaks that IMHO (as someone who’s been building software for 40+ years) would provide a lot of QoL bang for the buck.
These are in no particular order of priority. I hope they provide useful feedback.
Carbide Create
-
Can’t draw objects from corner to corner; suggest using SHIFT as a modifier when selecting object creation.
-
Can’t specify diameter instead of radius. Suggest popup in the dialog that lets you toggle this, and which remembers setting between uses.
-
Radius of polygons is defined as center to vertex. Unfortunately, a large fraction of the time, center to face midpoint is a lot more useful – for example, a hole that slides over hex shaft. And defining by face length would also be handy.
-
Can’t have multiple windows open at the same time (Mac). Can apparently do this on Windows.
-
When selecting an object/group that does not have a node at its geometric center, it would be nice if a temporary one was created. Same goes with nodes in the corners and middle of the edges.
-
Grouping objects that are in different layers moves them all into the same layer.
-
When mousing around, it would be very handy if it showed the current snapped coordinates as well as the exact mouse X,Y cursor position. Display as “From Left, From Bottom, From Right, From Top” to make it easier to click on locations that are symmetrical to other locations (ie: after we’ve put something at 2,1 from left, bottom, it will now be easier to put something at 2,1 from top, right). This will also make it easier to read the positions of objects by just snapping to the center.
-
Consider displaying bot/left/top/right/centerX,centerY values in the Info area – this would be very convenient, since right now, you have to select and Move to get this information.
-
Changing the radius of a circle and hitting TAB defocuses the radius field, leaves it showing whatever you entered, but does NOT change the value. Similarly, in rectangle creation, entering a new width and hitting tab correctly moves the focus to the height field, but does NOT change the width to the new value. Instead, you must hit RETURN/ENTER and then TAB. You can also hit TAB, enter a new value in height, and hit ENTER to accept both. As far as I know, this behavior is inconsistent with UI standards on both Mac and Windows. It appears to occur on every modeless dialog (one that doesn’t have an OK button to accept changes). Dialogs that have an OK button, like Pocket Toolpath, work properly with TAB (though you have to hit tab several times to get between value fields; TAB should skip UI entries that cannot be modified or clicked on).
-
Consider adding “Disable other toolpaths” / “Enable all toolpaths” options to popup. This will make it easier to hide things that are getting in the way when setting up a new toolpath. Ability to select multiple toolpaths and enable/disable would be nice too.
-
It would be nice to have a checkbox in the edit toolpath dialog that hides all the other toolpaths. This will make it easier to see and select the objects to be included in the toolpath.
-
Suggest defaulting the .nc filename to same as previous save of gcode for the file being currently edited; if first save since .c2d has been loaded, default to the filename of the .c2d (with suffix changed to .nc)
-
Consider defaulting the anchor to whatever the last anchor was (in Move, for example). 95% of the time, this will be what the user wants. For me, it’s almost always center, so I have to change the selection every time I do a move. The same goes for Align to Stock / Align to Last Selection in Align menu.
-
Offsets of simple objects (like circles and rectangles) can no longer be edited as objects (ie: have their size changed). Consider a special case for these kinds of offsets where they are created as duplicates of the underlying object(s) with size adjusted. Alternately, an option to convert objects in a selection to fully editable form if possible.
-
It would be really handy to be able to mirror with respect to a reference line.
-
When editing a toolpath, if simulation is being displayed, option to hide it should be available.
-
Ability to enter offsets in addition to absolute positions when using the Move tool would be very helpful. Alternatively, the ability to do simple math in numeric fields (ie: “1.00-.25”) would provide equivalent functionality and be generalizable to other tools.
Carbide Motion
-
Zero dialog has same TAB/ENTER issue as in Carbide Create. You can enter a new current position in X and Y, but if you hit TAB to move to the next field, this position is not saved; only ENTER updates the value. The result is that the dialog and the position status display now disagree.
-
Having a feature in the Zero dialog where you can enter the diameter/radius of a tool and then jog the currently focused X/Y/Z input field by this amount (by hitting the arrow keys, for example) would be a nice QoL touch. Alternately, maybe make the coarse movement amount be settable as a preference instead of 0.100; then we could set it to half the cutter diameter.
-
Ability to use BitZero on other corners would be very convenient.
-
Rapid Motion doesn’t need the DONE button. It should let you click on Jog to exit back to the Jog page (or get you to any of the other tabs). Ditto on some of the other suboptions.
-
If possible, a failure to probe (esp a probe Z that doesn’t detect a top) should not require a machine reinitialization.
-
In some circumstances, XYZ locations can be displayed as -0.000. 1’s-complement arithmetic?
-
Note how the ability to do simple math in numeric fields (as mentioned in the Carbide Create notes) would make several common operations much easier. Often when doing tests I was offsetting the X or Y zero to before doing a test cut; currently this requires either external math or moving to 0,0 before entering the offset. Alternately, an easy way to offset the current xyz zero would be very helpful.
-
Move to 0,0 option in Set Zero would be nice since often you just want to offset it. Of course, if we could do math in the fields it wouldn’t be needed.