Documentation for UGS Designer

[pendletonrc]

Where can I find up to date documentation for Designer? The only thing I have found is a very old and out of date video. Is there any other documentation for designer?

[breiler]

The one that exists is on the wiki and a few videos that I've made. I don't think that things has changed that much.

Is there some specific documentation that you are looking for?

[pendletonrc]

How to set the name of the project without doing a save as? What is the 3x3 grid of circles in cutting settings when I first open it? What do they do and what are they for? Also, why do all the setting options go away as soon as I pick a anything to draw? How do I get back to them? I did figure out that the oval with a verticle stroke connects the contents of two entry items. I assume this is a common idiom, but in my more than 50 years of working with computers I have never seen it. I know what it does but what is it?

I would have saved a lot of time if I had something to tell me that when I open a design two new tabs get added to the right of the toolbox tab and the controller state tab. Not knowing about them cost me a lot of time. And, having the include in export check box at the bottom below the fold of the design control made it hard to figure out why exported gcode was a nearly empty file. If you do not know a check box exists it is hard to realize that it needs to be checked. Also having UGS create a weirdly named directory in /tmp for saving designs really threw me. In other places UGS puts up a file selector starting at my home directory. Why not do the same thing everywhere in UGS?

[atrabit]

"What is the 3x3 grid of circles in cutting settings when I first open it? What do they do and what are they for"

• those are the location of reference points of your object's coordinates you may want to change. Very useful feature as it allows you to control the size, location and rotation in reference to your object's particular corner or center.

"Also, why do all the setting options go away as soon as I pick a anything to draw?" - basically, because the settings are connected to your currently selected object. If you deselect it by clicking anywhere in designer canvas what settings would you expect to show? If you have more objects, you can select all of them and change settings globally for selected objects.

"How do I get back to them?" - select your object in "Design objects" window and you'll have all settings available back.

"Include in export" check box is very useful, for instance if you want to skip certain objects in your cnc job at this time but don't want to delete them because next time/run/tool etc. it is ready to export into gcode or run directly from designer when needed.

[pendletonrc]

OK, I understand the circles refer to center, top, top left... and so on. What are they in reference to? Are the positions based on the bounding box of the object? If so, then if I rotate the object does the bounding box rotate with the object or does the bounding box change shape as the object rotates?

When you first open a new document and open the design tab and the cut setting tab the design box is empty as you have not created any objects. But, the cutting setting shows a number of settings that you can not set because they are not associated with any object. That makes sense. So, that is a bug. You should not show settings, even grayed out settings, for a non existent object. OK, that answers that question.

The next question is the mill surface cutting setting. It has settings for lead in and lead out that are given as percentages. Percentages of what?

BTW, what are points good for? Are they used to indicate where to drill? Can you connect them to form lines?

In a couple of videos I have seen people run the gcode from the design in the visualizer. How do you do that. They just say something like "now I'm going to run it in the visualizer" then there hand move quickly and it runs. If they tell you how to do it it got past me. So, how do you do it? I haven't figured that out yet.

Normally I try to work with Design on my PC in my home office and not on the one connected to my CNC. Is there an assumption that you are connected to a CNC while using Design?

I'm an old programmer. Worked in compilers until that went away and then moved to low level graphics code, eventually to research, and then to teaching. Worked in 4 start ups along the way. Now that I am retired I am learning CNC. Which seems like a perfect match for my technical background and my love of building physical things. Putting the designer inside UGS seems like an ideal combination and I expect someone will eventually put a complete cad/cam system inside UGS. I am really liking what I see of this project.

[pendletonrc]

Hope one of you folks read this: I asked hobbycnc on Reddit for help finding documentation for UGS Designer. I got two replies, links to the same two videos you folks posted. Reddit just told me that I got over 1,700 views in just 2 days. There are a lot of people out there that want to use your project but need documentation to be able to do that. Just saying.

[atrabit]

It is open source project done by people in their spare time offered for free. Mostly by two developers, but recently maybe just one major contributor if you look in github history. I believe there are no resources for keeping documentation full and up-to date. My approach is to try and find myself what particular functions do or how they works.

[khturnings]

@atrabit - I totally agree with you - The developers are working very hard developing the program - the designer features are still very much in development - If a lack of documentation is an issue maybe volunteer some of your time @pendletonrc - offer to take some developer notes and write them up into proper documentation.
Just an idea if you have the time.

[pendletonrc]

Many years ago I set up the first wiki for SDL and wrote, or rewrote, much of their documentation. I also made contributions of code, which I do not think survived, and concepts which have mostly been included.

The trouble with doing what you are suggesting is that I would have to pepper the developers with questions like I have been doing. And, everything I do can be undermined on the whim of the developers. You are asking me to write the public facing design document for the whole project. I am not willing to try to reverse engineer the whole project.

[breiler]

Writing technical documentation is really hard and time consuming. That is time that I personally simply don't have at the moment. Unfortunately it is also my experience that people don't read it. =(

I made the designer as an free alternative to really nice and easy to use softwares like Easel and Lightburn. But since it had to be shoe-horned into a software which primary focus is to send existing gcode, there had to be some compromises which may not make sense from a "user experience"-perspective. Or simply because that is what I had the time or skill for.

There are plenty of areas that can still be improved and I am of course interested in hearing them. Some may be things that I have overlooked, others can be plain bugs.

Also having UGS create a weirdly named directory in /tmp for saving designs really threw me.

This one interests me, for me it will show a save dialog relative to my home directory. What operating system are you using?

OK, I understand the circles refer to center, top, top left... and so on. What are they in reference to? Are the positions based on the bounding box of the object? If so, then if I rotate the object does the bounding box rotate with the object or does the bounding box change shape as the object rotates?

The position is determined by the corners of the bounding box:

The next question is the mill surface cutting setting. It has settings for lead in and lead out that are given as percentages. Percentages of what?

Yeah, I can agree that it isn't that clear, it is the percentage of the tool diameter.

BTW, what are points good for? Are they used to indicate where to drill? Can you connect them to form lines?

Points were added a while back to support drilling, like holes on a circuit board. The cut types should actually be restricted to just that on points. The designer does not currently support drawing new lines or other vector graphics at the moment.

In a couple of videos I have seen people run the gcode from the design in the visualizer. How do you do that. They just say something like "now I'm going to run it in the visualizer" then there hand move quickly and it runs. If they tell you how to do it it got past me. So, how do you do it? I haven't figured that out yet.

Save the design and press "play"

Normally I try to work with Design on my PC in my home office and not on the one connected to my CNC. Is there an assumption that you are connected to a CNC while using Design?

No, you can design/layout your work in your office, save to an .ugsd-file and copy it over to the computer that controls your CNC and just run it by pressing play.

[pendletonrc]

Thank you very very much. I appreciate it.

I currently using Ubuntu 25.10. I have been a Unix user since the early 1980s. I will happily use windows if you pay me too. Otherwise it is just too annoying on the desktop. Or at least it was. OTOH, I really liked windows server.