So, I have a dedicated laptop out in the shop to run my Shapeoko, buy my main production machine is a desktop here in my office. Since I’m trying to setup good consistent tooling information, I was frustrated that the hard work I put into setting up correct/comprehensive tool libraries on the laptop wouldn’t allow me to do all of my toolpath designing here on the desktop.
If you haven’t discovered it yet, you can edit the CSV files (just plain “comma-separated values”) in Excel to take better control of your tool libraries. Don’t do any formatting/merging, etc. in these files, as the CSV format doesn’t support that.
I’ve used the solution below to sync things like game data between machines for years, and it works great for this (just tested it). The one caveat I would give is that you’re probably best off to not have the application running on both machines at once, if you plan on changing any of the tooling data.
One other quick disclaimer - you could also just run a free RealVNC server on the “shop” machine and remote into it from the “office” machine (which I do, but let’s just make it difficult for ourselves, ok?). If it’s helpful for me to make a post on how to setup/configure RealVNC, please let me know, and I will.
Also, this solution will only work on Windows - Mac users, I’m sure you can do something similar with SymLinks.
TL;DR
- On your “donor” machine, move your “tools” folder (in AppData\Local\Carbide 3D\Carbide Create) somewhere within your DropBox/OneDrive/GDrive folder structure
- Run Command Prompt with admin privileges
- Navigate in CMD to AppData\Local\Carbide 3D\Carbide Create
- Use mklink /d “tools” “c:\Your\Path\In\Cloud\Software”
- On your other machines, just delete “tools” and do steps 2-4
If you need more instruction
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Close Carbide Create on all machines that are running it
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Decide which machine is going to be the “donor” and contribute its tool libraries to the cause
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Navigate to AppData\Local\Carbide 3D\Carbide Create
a. Open Windows Explorer (the file browser, NOT Internet Explorer) - Pro-Tip: use Windows Key + E to open Windows Explorer
b. In the address bar (where it probably says something like “c:\Users\Jesse\Downloads”) put in %APPDATA% and hit enter.
c. Now it should say something like “C:\Users\jesse\AppData\Roaming”
d. Either click the “up arrow” next to the address bar, or Alt+Up on your keyboard to go up one directory
e. Now double-click on “Local”
f. Now double-click on “Carbide 3D”
g. Now double-click on “Carbide Create”
g. You should see “tools” “fonts” etc. -
Make a note of this exact folder location (recommend copy/paste it to a Notepad file)
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Cut your “tools” folder
a. Right-click and choose “Cut”
b. OR use Ctrl+X -
Navigate to wherever you’d like to store your “tools” folder in your cloud service.
a. I put mine in Dropbox/Documents/CNC/Carbide Create -
Paste “tools” there
a. Right-click and choose “Paste”
b. OR use Ctrl + V -
Double-click “tools” to enter the folder
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Make a note of this folder location (recommend copy/paste it to the Notepad file from step 4)
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Run Command Prompt with admin privileges
a. Click the start menu
b. Type “cmd” but do NOT click or hit enter
c. Right-click on “Command Prompt” and choose “Run as administrator”
d. Choose “Yes” in the safety popup (ONLY click yes for programs you trust!" -
Navigate to the folder you noted in step 4, by typing this command (including quotes)
a. cd “c:\Users\Jesse\AppData\Local\Carbide 3D\Carbide Create” ← Replace that directory with yours from Step 4 -
Run the following command (including quotes)
a. mklink \d “tools” “c:\Path\To\Your\New\Tools\Folder” ← Replace that with the folder from Step 9 -
Back in Windows Explorer, you should now have a folder called “tools” with a little arrow in the corner of it
Hope this helps, please ask me questions if you have any. I searched the forums, and didn’t see any other posts going over this process, so maybe it will help a few people.