00:13
welcome to another lightblade learning
00:16
lab. Today we’re going to tackle one or
00:18
two more slightly advanced tools. On the
00:22
last session we dealt with the standard
00:24
drawing tools and today we’re going to
00:26
probably use some of those tools as a
00:29
basis for some of the stuff that we’re
00:31
going to manipulate and deal with. We did
00:33
actually do a little bit with horizontal
00:34
mirrors and vertical mirrors because we
00:37
did that if you remember when we put
00:38
some text on the screen, we were able to
00:41
show that we can easily just flip that
00:43
text with this tool which is a horizontal
00:46
mirror and flip it again and it turns
00:48
the text back again and we can do the
00:50
same vertically we could check it
00:53
click it. The last time we use this I’m sure
00:56
that we moved that from there to the top
00:59
right-hand corner so now I’ve got my
01:02
centre position my handle if you like
01:04
for this piece of text is now sitting up
01:07
here with the Green Square so any
Transcript For RDWorks Advanced Tools (Cont…)
01:11
location that I now make should be
01:14
based around this corner here and not
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the center of the object. Now you can see
01:20
clearly that this piece of text is not
01:23
set into the center of the screen and
01:27
over here we’ve got a function which
01:29
basically says centre data so if you’ve
01:34
got bits and pieces that you want to
01:36
accurately set on your table you should
01:38
be able to press this button and it’s a
01:41
600 wide table and 300 millimeters which
01:45
is here
01:47
and 200 millimeters which is here it’s
01:52
put the center handle, so it actually
01:55
located the piece of text on the central
01:59
point of the object not on its location
02:03
handle which is up here if you remember
02:05
look we’ve um we set the location handle
02:08
for precision positioning up there so
02:12
there’s yet another thing that’s going
02:14
on here with positioning which is
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overriding everything that we’ve already
02:19
set but it’s a useful function now i’m
Transcript For RDWorks Advanced Tools (Cont…)
02:22
going to draw a circle
02:24
I’m going to put a handle around it and now
02:27
we’re going to size the circle and we’ll
02:29
make it 20 millimeters diameter we’ve
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got the lock on so we only need to
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change one of these dimensions up here
02:35
and i’ll change it to 20 millimeters and
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what I’m going to try and do now is a
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matrix copy now basically what I get
02:45
the opportunity to do here it’s an array
02:47
copy but the question is how many copies
02:51
do I want in X let’s say we want 10
02:55
copies now the normal array system that
03:01
you would get in a CAD system and
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probably most drawing systems will be
03:05
from Centre to Centre in other words
03:08
when you say you want these spaced 50
03:10
mm it means 50 mm centers now in this
03:14
case the x space is the space between
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the parts so if you want 50 mm centres
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and we have got a 20 mm diameter that
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means we’ve got 10 10
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we’ve got a 30 mm gap so I’m going to
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have to put 30 mm in there for the
Transcript For RDWorks Advanced Tools (Cont…)
03:32
spacing
03:33
and in Y (axis) well lets have five and we’ll
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have those at ten millimeter spacing so
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that’s one way that we can use this
03:47
system we’ve got an opportunity here
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to build the array from the bottom
03:52
corner up from this bottom corner up
03:57
from this top corner down or from that
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top corner down so this little handle
04:05
here if you look carefully at it you’ll
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see that there is a little indicator to
04:09
show you which were your array is going
04:10
to be built now because we’ve put our first
04:12
one up here it makes sense for me to
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have the datum up in that top left-hand
04:17
corner so let’s just see what happens
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sure enough it does exactly what we
04:22
thought it would do and hopefully we
04:26
should find that these are 50 mm
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centres between here now how can i do
04:33
that i wonder how can I measure that
04:35
yes I suppose I could accurately move
04:38
that to a position which will be
Transcript For RDWorks Advanced Tools (Cont…)
04:40
position here 10 10
04:49
and there we go look it moved that
04:50
position to 10 millimeters by 10
04:53
millimeters okay so now that we’ve
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accurately position that corner we can
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can see that every one of these
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intersects here is coinciding with the
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centre of a circle and of course we can
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just count these because i know that i
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made these 10 millimeter pitch so that’s
05:08
1 2 3 4 5 yes we’re so we’ve got our 50
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millimeters, but is there another way of
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doing it? Well the only way that I can
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check two of them now is to say well
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thats 50-millimeter centers + 10 + 10 so
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that 70 millimeters the length of that
05:25
side and sure enough look it says 70
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millimeters that’s what an array system
05:30
does it gets slightly clever than that
05:33
because if we just box this lot off and
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there’s our sample we click on there
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and basically that if I want ten and I
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want twenty my expectation was that when
05:49
i do bestrew and i specify that the width
Transcript For RDWorks Advanced Tools (Cont…)
05:54
is for example as I said 300 and the
05:59
height is 200 it would automatically
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produce a spacing between them to suit
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10 in X and 20 in Y hasn’t done that
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so it’s not that clever it needs me to
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tell it so if i put 20 millimeter
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spacing there and twenty
06:29
millimeter spacing here let’s just see
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what it says now Bestrew so we make the
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width 300 and will make the depth 200
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and we say okay
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your demand means you can only have
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seven circles by five circles
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ok well i suppose it might have some use
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it just seems like very very hard work to
06:58
get there anyway you’ve seen it working
Transcript For RDWorks Advanced Tools (Cont…)
07:00
ok so we’ve now covered every one of the
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tools down the side here we’ve got all the
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standard filing systems at the top here
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with the import/export um do and undo
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so let’s stick a square on there and
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we’ve got all these little array of
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magnifying glasses across the top here
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what do they do
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well the first one is basically a hand
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which means something is going to move
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but remember this is a magnifying glass
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view on the table is not a view on the
07:40
object itself so when i press my left
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hand mouse button
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the object stays in the right place on
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the table and what I’m doing I’m viewing a
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different part of the table now you might
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say that’s not very useful but we’ll come
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back to that in a minute
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the next one is a positive zoom so if i
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click on here just that corner for
Transcript For RDWorks Advanced Tools (Cont…)
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example look
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the corner stay still but i’m getting
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bigger and bigger and bigger so always
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the middle magnifying glass in there
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we’ll get you back to normal if we now
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do this one which is zoom out i can put
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that on a corner it was zooming out
08:35
around where I place it
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back to the middle one
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now that view all is view all of
08:48
the drawing not view all of the table so
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this middle one here
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there is show the page which is
08:59
basically show the table but if I draw a
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circle on here as well we should be able
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to demonstrate what I mean
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so if we do the show all which is that
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one view all it just puts all of the
09:16
objects that are there onto the screen
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the middle one sets it back to normal
Transcript For RDWorks Advanced Tools (Cont…)
09:23
and then what we have the opportunities
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show selected data so that means that i
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can presumably do something like this
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ok so
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there’s not really any difficult
09:40
functions along the top there with those
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magnifying glasses the most useful one
09:46
is the one that puts it back to show
09:48
page that one but then again if you’ve
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got a mouse with the scroll wheel on it
09:54
and a switch on the scroll wheel
09:57
let me show you something let’s just
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turn this back to normal pointer with a
10:04
normal pointer i can scroll out and i
10:08
can scroll in where the pointer is so if
10:12
i put that right on the corner of that
10:13
square look it will scroll in and out on
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the corner of that square
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and then if I want to do a move which
10:25
remember was one of these glasses if I
10:29
hold down my mouse scroll wheel switch
Transcript For RDWorks Advanced Tools (Cont…)
10:36
I can move objects around anyway
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and so why would I want to go and select
10:45
that area when I can just put my scroll
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wheel on it and go straight into it it’s
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so much easier with the scroll wheel
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than it is with fiddling around with these
10:57
functions up here with one exception
10:59
which is the number the middle one click
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which you always want to get it back to
11:03
something
11:04
normal now I don’t think there’s a great
11:08
deal that we can do after we finish
11:10
these magnifying glasses
11:12
most of these other little functions
11:13
along here are all to do with cutting and
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programming and as we haven’t done any
11:18
of that yet we can’t really benefit from
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checking those out, well we shall tackle
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those a few at a time when we get to the
11:24
appropriate point in the programming so
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what we now need to do is take a quick
11:29
look at these functions along here now
11:32
these are all basically alignment and
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position functions so silly example
11:38
we’ve got we’ve got an object here if we
Transcript For RDWorks Advanced Tools (Cont…)
11:42
wanted to go into the top left-hand
11:43
corner about table we can send it there
11:46
we wanted to go into the top right or
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into the center of the table
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that’s all those do so it sends the
11:54
drawing to an appropriate place on the
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worktable well that was nice and easy
11:58
wasn’t it
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and sadly we have to keep going back and
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picking up every square every time
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just remember the last one that was
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drawn which is this very small one so
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if I now put these all together in a
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single block marquee and we’ll take a
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look at what happens when we start
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moving along these alignment
12:30
first of all align left that should be
12:32
pretty straightforward it should align
12:33
everything to the left hand side of what
12:36
well the answer should be that it will
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align everything down here because this
12:43
is the last object drawn let’s just
12:45
check that out
12:47
there we go so we’ll do a Control-Z to
Transcript For RDWorks Advanced Tools (Cont…)
12:50
back that off again
12:54
we’ll put them all into a group and now
12:58
we’ve got align right so we have to
13:02
assume that they will now all align down
13:04
here
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fine control-Z to put them all back
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and now we’ve got a line top which should
13:16
be pretty straightforward
13:18
I think we’ll find out we’re going to
13:19
align more along here they won’t
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actually all box around here they will
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just sit in a line across the page here
13:26
like that so that one should drop down
13:28
the page and align up here so let’s just
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verify that
13:36
there we go control-Z and this one
13:41
should align at the bottom
13:49
so that was pretty straightforward ok
13:53
now we want them aligned on center
13:55
horizontal so they should all basically
13:58
line up along this line here which they
Transcript For RDWorks Advanced Tools (Cont…)
14:00
do and then finally we can line them up
14:05
in the other direction as a set of
14:09
individual alignments it’s probably rare
14:12
that you want to use them as individuals
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but bear in mind we’ve just done a
14:17
central alignment in one plane and
14:19
there’s no reason why we can’t press the
14:21
next one back and do a central
14:23
horizontal and there we go we’ve got all
14:26
those squares nice and concentrically
14:28
lined up if you can call concentric to
14:30
do with the square that was a nice easy
14:32
block to look at let’s now do control-Z
14:36
to get them undone and back into that
14:39
random position if i delete those it’ll
14:44
be much easier to see what’s going on
14:46
control copy control V control V control V
14:52
ctrl-v control v ctrl v the last 1i
15:00
copied was that one on your marquee the
15:02
whole set will do this and now you can
15:06
see and i will line them up in the other
Transcript For RDWorks Advanced Tools (Cont…)
15:11
plane and you can see what happened
15:14
we’ve got them all nicely spaced between
15:16
the first and the last one and they’re all
15:18
nicely lined up the combination of some
15:21
of these controls at the top here so
15:24
I’ve now got those two like that if I
15:26
box this whole lot in
15:31
and I ask for width
15:37
it’s changed those two so that they’re
15:39
the same width as the master one which
15:42
is this one of the top here
15:44
if i press the next one ever got to be
15:48
boxed
15:53
this is the last one that we had so what
15:56
I should do actually let me change this
15:57
last one so that is just slightly taller
16:00
than all the others and this one’s far
16:04
too tall
16:07
so box them in and we now change height
16:12
and we would expect the height of all of
16:14
those to copy the top one and there it is
16:19
and if we change this one
Transcript For RDWorks Advanced Tools (Cont…)
16:24
to that shape
16:27
this is the master remember
16:30
if i press size
16:35
they all become the same size okay well
16:37
I think we’ve dealt with all of these
16:39
alignment tools except this last little
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block the end here now this has been a
16:44
bit of a mystery but the official word
16:48
from Ruida is they don’t do anything at
16:51
the moment and they’re put there for some
16:53
future functionality i think is the
16:55
official words so don’t get too stressed
16:59
about these at the moment
17:00
one day we’ll find out what they do
17:02
we’re now going to go back and we’re
17:04
going to revisit something we touch
17:06
before which is text now when I drag a
17:08
piece of text onto the page and click
17:11
the first thing that opens is the text
17:14
box and if we had the opportunity to put
17:17
just standard text in here and then we went
17:18
through the justification process etc
17:20
etc but there is another what looks like
17:24
a potentially very clever and powerful
17:26
feature built into this text window and
Transcript For RDWorks Advanced Tools (Cont…)
17:30
if you tick the enable variable text box
17:32
just here all of a sudden we get some
17:36
extra features coming and we can do
17:39
a clock we can do it down to seconds
17:44
apply
17:46
it tells me here live on the screen well
17:49
it’s not live but if i click apply again
17:51
you’ll see that it changes from 45 to 54 to
17:57
56 so undoubtedly it’s getting its time
18:01
information from the pc itself
18:03
let’s just say you’re marking the
18:05
package on some food product which has
18:07
got a sell-by date or you need to know
18:09
when it was actually processed this
18:12
looks potentially very handy because it
18:14
could be sell-by dates it could be
18:16
manufacturing times this pc at the
18:19
moment is not connected to the machine
18:21
if i do apply ok and there we have 10
18:25
51 9 i can save that to ufile onto a
18:30
memory stick and take it out to the
18:32
Machine and my expectation when I first
18:36
use this software was that the machine
18:38
is clever enough to know that it’s going
Transcript For RDWorks Advanced Tools (Cont…)
18:40
to store that data has some sort of time
18:43
variable that the machine can look for i
18:46
would guess that somewhere built into
18:47
the controller is a time clock because
18:50
it monitors hours of use of the Machine
18:53
and various other things so my
18:55
expectation was that when i took this
18:57
out to the Machine and plugged in when I
19:00
etched my first program it would say 10
19:03
5927 what did it say what you see on the
19:08
screen here it’s frozen in time so
19:11
that’s not good so my next reaction was
19:14
ahh it’s because i haven’t connected up
19:17
to the machine via a USB connection so
19:21
just to prove that my assumption was
19:23
correct and that downloading a program
19:25
by the USB cable connected directly to a
19:29
laptop would update this time variable
19:32
constantly because it was connected to a
19:34
pc
19:35
sadly it didn’t work that way the only
19:40
way to keep your time
19:41
updated is if you’ve got your program
19:44
live on the screen you can keep pressing
19:47
the download button and it will upload a
Transcript For RDWorks Advanced Tools (Cont…)
19:50
new version of the program with the time
19:53
frozen at the point that you downloaded
19:55
it is that useful maybe somebody else
19:59
can find out how this system works
20:02
I’ve never been able to find a live time
20:05
update that keeps pace with real-time
20:08
once you start running a program so much
20:11
for the date and time there is a
20:14
slightly more useful feature and I say
20:17
slightly more because I’m as you’ve
20:19
probably gathered a bit of a cynic and
20:21
that’s serial number. Time promised so
20:25
much
20:27
perhaps we’ll find better success with
20:29
serial numbers now i’m going to draw a
20:32
rectangle of a specified size and that
20:35
size is going to be let’s just make it
20:39
40 x 20
20:43
now we’re going to revisit something
20:45
that we did earlier which is the matrix
20:48
and we’re going to select five in X, 5 in Y
20:55
I want you to note carefully the words here
20:59
X-space and Y-space, by default you would
Transcript For RDWorks Advanced Tools (Cont…)
21:04
think they mean millimeters so that’s
21:07
what we choose and space between is
21:12
going to be 5 millimeters and five
21:15
millimeters
21:18
there we go very neat now i’m going to
21:21
go back to the text tool and click in
21:23
here because what we’re going to do is
21:27
we’re going to use this serial number
21:30
tool to try and fill those with serial
21:33
numbers now let’s quickly just read down
21:35
this list prefix we don’t want to put
21:38
err a prefix on our serial
21:41
number suffix we don’t want a suffix
21:43
start 0 number so if i choose to put
21:47
the start number at for example just one
21:50
because that’s where I want to start i
21:53
don’t want to start at zero then what will
21:56
happen is it will only go to nine and
21:59
then it will roll over to zero and back to
22:01
nine again i will only get one digit
22:03
therefore I must make sure that i use as
22:07
many digits in here as I need for my
Transcript For RDWorks Advanced Tools (Cont…)
22:10
maximum serial number so let’s go 001
22:14
that will allow me to got to 999 now the
22:18
current serial number
22:20
well the current serial number we’ll start
22:22
that at 001 as well
22:27
now make sure you don’t fall into the
22:29
trap of making that one for your current
22:32
serial number because that will force
22:34
the same situation where will only go to
22:36
nine and roll over
22:37
001, serial number increment well yeah we have
22:43
to leave that at one and then we’ll go into
22:47
to the extend. Now here we get the
22:51
opportunity to enable a reset which we
22:53
don’t need now if we put this ticked
22:56
enable prefix 0 because i’m going up 2
23:00
999 the first number that would appear
23:03
up here would be 001 then 002 I don’t want
23:08
that i would prefer to just have one two
23:10
three four five so we remove the leading
23:13
zeros and then we go to enable the
23:15
serial number array and I’ve already
23:18
populated this with five across in X and 5
Transcript For RDWorks Advanced Tools (Cont…)
23:22
across in Y. We just take a look here again
23:25
if you remember I made these 40 millimeters
23:28
by 20 millimeters with a five millimeter
23:31
gap so if i put a serial number in that
23:35
corner there the next zero number needs
23:37
to start here which is 45 millimeters
23:40
away now the reason why i emphasized
23:43
millimeters because they’re actually
23:45
just got the word space here now space
23:48
could mean anything but believe me it
23:52
actually means millimeters so we’ve put
23:55
this one at 45 millimeters and this one at 25
23:58
millimeters pitch
24:00
and now we’ve got these two strange
24:04
little icons here and we have a choice
24:09
of two when we flip on this one this one
24:12
looks as though it reads left-to-right
24:14
in other words the serial number runs
24:16
across the page like that and then we’ve
24:19
got this other little icon here which
24:21
tells us we either going to have the
24:22
serial numbers running backwards and
24:24
forwards 123456789 10 11 12 13 etcetera
24:29
like a snake or we want more than one
Transcript For RDWorks Advanced Tools (Cont…)
24:31
direction which is what I’ve chosen to
24:33
use so we should get what we want
24:37
ok apply ok
24:48
there just seems to be a problem with this
24:49
software every time i use it i get the
24:53
same result. It tells me where my serial
24:58
numbers going to be you just saw me go
25:01
ok apply ok let’s just click this again
25:05
and I will do apply ok
25:13
why did it work the second time and not
25:15
the first time?
25:17
ok software bug now the other software
25:20
bug that i can see that annoys me is it
25:23
didn’t tell me that i was going to work
25:25
up the page that it is going to start from
25:28
the bottom left-hand corner so I’ve got
25:31
to physically now move this block into
25:33
the right place but there we go
25:35
so I’ve got a matrix of serial numbers
25:37
that matches a matrix of parts for some
Transcript For RDWorks Advanced Tools (Cont…)
25:41
people this is a real world solution for
25:43
others it’s not! okay now look, here is a
25:46
practical example several people i know
25:49
use these laser machines for producing kits
25:52
of wood for models maybe it’s in sheets
25:54
of balsa wood or possibly sheets of
25:56
cardboard they’re making buildings for
25:59
for instance model villages or to go
26:02
with railway systems they like to have
26:05
the parts numbered up so here’s a classic
26:07
example of when you would want to use
26:09
serial numbers so let’s just see how do
26:12
how would we go about doing that because
26:14
this is not an array problem so we’ve
26:17
got serial numbers here and let’s just
26:19
say this is one of many sheets so we put
26:21
a prefix on we’ll put prefix “A” possibly
26:24
with a dash after it
26:25
ok then we’ve got a serial number which
26:28
could be just two digits because we want
26:30
to go up to 99 so we could just do 00 the
26:34
current zero number starts off at zero
26:36
well that silly because we start the
26:38
current serial number off at one and
26:40
then we want to serial increment and then
26:42
we want an increment of 1 now what’s the
26:46
point of having extend on here other
26:48
than the fact that we don’t want the
Transcript For RDWorks Advanced Tools (Cont…)
26:50
zero so we can remove the zeros we
26:52
certainly don’t want a serial number
26:54
array or do we
26:56
it’s not that bad a thing to use the
26:58
serial number array in this particular
27:01
application even though we are not going
27:04
to use the array itself on the sheet of
27:07
balsa wood or card, i think there are
27:08
nine pieces so let’s just have
27:11
five in an array across and two in our
27:16
array downwards which is total of ten ok
27:19
so we got the a1 why didn’t we get the array
27:23
right apply ok well there’s our serial
27:26
numbers we don’t have to at least
27:27
generate the serial numbers and of
27:30
course now all we’ve got to do is to pick
27:33
that serial number up, ahh he said we can’t
27:36
pick that serial number up
27:37
that’s because they’re all in a group so
27:41
we’ve got to come up here and we’ve got
27:42
to ungroup them and now we should be
27:46
able to pick up A1 and move it to
27:50
there, A2 and move it to there
27:56
so I think you can see I’m not going to
27:59
complete that example but you can see
Transcript For RDWorks Advanced Tools (Cont…)
28:01
here is a potentially useful way in
28:04
which you could use the array it’s not
28:06
the way in which I envisage to make it
28:08
simple but in a practical real-world you
28:11
can use the array to generate a series
28:13
of numbers and then you can move them
28:15
around where you want on your sheet
28:18
well if you’re as frustrated as I am, I
28:20
think this would be a convenient place
28:21
to stop take a deep breath and I shall
28:25
see you next time
