t-oster
commented
11 years ago I thought about the very same problem many times. The main problem here is, that VisiCut's PLF format was intended to be portable, especially between many laser-cutters. So my idea was, if a user wants something to be cut, it's marked as cut, no matter if one lasercutter needs power X and speed Y and another lasercutter might need power Z and maybe distinct settings like ventilation.
Because of this, the laser-cutter-settings are not saved into plf files.
I think this feature belongs either into a spereate program (i created LibLaserCut as a base-library for VisiCut in a way that other "specialized" laser-software can be written easily), or at least in a special "create test-pattern" dialog.
A basic functionality I can think of is taking a shape (e.g. a circle or rectangle) and two scalar properties (e.g. power and speed) and create a matrix where the same shape is lasered with increasing (power and speed) values according to x and y axis, as you suggested.
Since such a feature would require some additional time and testing, I would appreciate pull-requests, since I am busy with studying right now.
peteruithoven
pbrier
This is not a request, more a brainstorm on possibilities. I would like an easy way to test a few settings on new materials. One of the people behind LAOSlaser created a simple luascript once to generate simplecode for a test pattern. It was a grid of boxes, in 2 dimensions one axis with laser power from 1% to 100% in 10% steps. You could now send this manually using TFTP.
I'd like a way to integrate a test pattern in Visicut. But before simply writing a test design button we know that people will always want different tests. So I'm trying to come up with a more general solution. At the moment one person could design a colored grid and save it as a .svg. He could then generate a mapping that maps all the colors to power and speed settings and export his preferences. If someone else wants to use this test he could load the design, import (replacing his own settings) the settings, select the mapping and run the test. But this is to much work.
Is there any way to combine a design files with lasercut settings like speed and power? Because then it would be a matter of opening up a file and running the test. If someone could easily export his design combined with his mapping and laser settings that would be even greater because then everybody can easily share these test files.
I wouldn't give this much priority at the moment btw.