gS 1.5.0 Just ran a 3 hr cut. The visualiser shows grey for completed and blue for “to be cut”. OK.
The yellow SOMETIMES shows what HAS BEEN cut (about 15-20 lines), sometimes what IS being cut (single line) and sometimes what is ABOUT TO BE cut. Would really like to understand what the Yellow is supposed to show. Thanks
Hitting the pause button will pause the movement immediately, even if gSender has plans to move in the buffer (memory). If you are using a macro or Program Events like program pause, this will pause movement more slowly, as the planned moves in the buffer will finish before actually pausing. This is something that can’t be avoided on the firmware side and this is a compromise to be able to execute code at all.
In the default visualizer you’ll see that cutting movements that plan to be made are coloured blue, then when the job is running the current movements show as yellow and past movements are grey.
The second quote is what yellow means but it’s the first that explains why it isn’t always accurate. In order for the mill to not slow down and stop at the end of every move it has to know what the next move will be. The control board has a buffer where it can hold some commands so grbl can plan ahead. Pretty sure it’s called the planning buffer.
Yellow is most likely to be current if the move from one command takes a relatively long time. It’s like gSender on one end of the phone and grbl on the other. gSender is chewing grbl’s ear off and once in awhile grbl mutters yup… hmm… do tell.
This is based on what I learned coding a toy G-code sender. I never got anywhere near done but learned a lot just figuring out some of the basics.
Yellow showing “current” is agreed. The inconsistency of “current” is the question. As per Michael, seems to depend on the number of commands which can be stored in the buffer. Other than looking pretty, the only practical use I can see is to see a long movement with an elevated Z. This allows a Pause/Stop with cutter not engaged, but only if one catches it just right. Any other purpose that I am missing? Thanks
FWIW. Set up a test pocket cut, about 9”x3”, Raster. When hit Start, the Yellow was about 20 raster cuts into the future. Short future as opposed to current, which I consider to be now/actual, real-time.
It does say movements, plural, which explains the “Short future as opposed to current”.
As far as a practical use, I don’t have a use for the visualizer other than making sure the code looks right before I start the program. It could disappear on job start as far as I’m concerned so I definitely don’t have a use for the yellow part.