04 – RDWorks Advanced Tools (28:27)

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

01:17

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

02:17

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

02:32

got the lock on so we only need to

02:33

change one of these dimensions up here

02:35

and i’ll change it to 20 millimeters and

02:38

what I’m going to try and do now is a

02:41

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

03:03

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

03:18

the parts so if you want 50 mm centres

03:21

and we have got a 20 mm diameter that

03:25

means we’ve got 10 10

03:27

we’ve got a 30 mm gap so I’m going to

03:29

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

03:39

have those at ten millimeter spacing so

03:45

that’s one way that we can use this

03:47

system we’ve got an opportunity here

03:50

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

04:02

top corner down so this little handle

04:05

here if you look carefully at it you’ll

04:07

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

04:14

have the datum up in that top left-hand

04:17

corner so let’s just see what happens

04:19

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

04:29

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

04:55

accurately position that corner we can

04:57

can see that every one of these

04:59

intersects here is coinciding with the

05:02

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

05:12

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

05:23

that 70 millimeters the length of that

05:25

side and sure enough look it says 70

05:27

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

05:36

there’s our sample we click on there

05:42

and basically that if I want ten and I

05:47

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

06:09

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

06:37

width 300 and will make the depth 200

06:40

and we say okay

06:45

your demand means you can only have

06:47

seven circles by five circles

06:51

ok well i suppose it might have some use

06:55

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

07:05

tools down the side here we’ve got all the

07:08

standard filing systems at the top here

07:10

with the import/export um do and undo

07:16

so let’s stick a square on there and

07:21

we’ve got all these little array of

07:22

magnifying glasses across the top here

07:24

what do they do

07:26

well the first one is basically a hand

07:29

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

07:44

hand mouse button

07:48

the object stays in the right place on

07:50

the table and what I’m doing I’m viewing a

07:52

different part of the table now you might

07:55

say that’s not very useful but we’ll come

07:59

back to that in a minute

08:00

the next one is a positive zoom so if i

08:08

click on here just that corner for

Transcript For RDWorks Advanced Tools (Cont…)

08:13

example look

08:16

the corner stay still but i’m getting

08:19

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

08:33

that on a corner it was zooming out

08:35

around where I place it

08:40

back to the middle one

08:45

now that view all is view all of

08:48

the drawing not view all of the table so

08:52

this middle one here

08:56

there is show the page which is

08:59

basically show the table but if I draw a

09:02

circle on here as well we should be able

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to demonstrate what I mean

09:07

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

09:36

ok so

09:38

there’s not really any difficult

09:40

functions along the top there with those

09:42

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

09:52

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

10:01

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

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i put that right on the corner of that

10:13

square look it will scroll in and out on

10:18

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

10:42

and so why would I want to go and select

10:45

that area when I can just put my scroll

10:48

wheel on it and go straight into it it’s

10:53

so much easier with the scroll wheel

10:55

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

11:01

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

11:16

programming and as we haven’t done any

11:18

of that yet we can’t really benefit from

11:21

checking those out, well we shall tackle

11:23

those a few at a time when we get to the

11:24

appropriate point in the programming so

11:28

what we now need to do is take a quick

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look at these functions along here now

11:32

these are all basically alignment and

11:34

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

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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

11:56

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

12:01

picking up every square every time

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just remember the last one that was

12:16

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

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well the answer should be that it will

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align everything down here because this

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is the last object drawn let’s just

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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

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assume that they will now all align down

13:04

here

13:09

fine control-Z to put them all back

13:12

and now we’ve got a line top which should

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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

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like that so that one should drop down

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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

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horizontal so they should all basically

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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

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horizontal and there we go we’ve got all

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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

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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

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copied was that one on your marquee the

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whole set will do this and now you can

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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

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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

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I’ve now got those two like that if I

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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

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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

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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

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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