Re: EMC modal parameter display

Ray Henry wrote:

>
> Yea and that arbitrary time in the future is usually the last line in
> the
> part program. I've been working on that some in connection with my
> new
> gui. Since I have to parse the currently running line to color a
> backplot,
> and read certain lines in order to run subroutines, I thought I'd go
> ahead
> and create a modal machine model in tcl that updates near the start of
> the
> run of the next line. Such a thing would be okay for viewing a
> running
> program.
>
> BUT such a thing would be a hazard if we included a pause, do
> something,
> then restart because the values displayed may not be the real values
> that
> will be used by the emc interpreter to formulate the next batch of
> commands.

Right, I don't think this is the way to do it. I think the right way
would be to revise the data structures so that mode data is carried
along with the move commands, and when the move is actually
picked up by the real-time motion routines, then a mode status
block is updated with any modal parameter changes.

Now, you can see why this hasn't been done! If you were going to
go so far, it might be worth it to make the interpreter either
reversible
(which would be really neat, but I don't know how difficult that would
be) or provide some easier way to allow it to be backed up to a
previous program block.

I can live with what it does now, but it is a clear deficiency, and
after
seeing how well AB did it in 1978, I can see why some sophisticated
users think EMC is just not right.

Jon