My MiniGcode creator software

[routercnc]

After hand coding some gcode operations recently I wondered if it was possible to create a GUI and create them interactively. Since I have Excel on my machine and have written various bits of code in the past, including VBA, I decided to start there. The initial result / proof of concept is shown in the video.

It seems to work very well and I plan to develop it further as I see what it can do. It is much quicker for those small jobs than going back to CAD/CAM to create full gcode files, and offers the opportunity to work interactively such as creeping up on a final dimension.

I've posted this thread here as the others did not seem appropriate, plus it works well with UCCNC (so far). I say this because there are small details such as the coordinates are generated without the decimal point for whole numbers e.g. G1 X4.0 posts as G1 X4 and although UCCNC controller has no problem with this I have read that some controllers shoot off to another location with 4 in it. I have tried to get the VBA code to format these numbers but not been successful. It works for me so have left it for now.

Now as mentioned in the video there are commercial offerings (I since discovered!) which do all this and it is often called conversational programming. However, they started at $70 upwards so I will probably develop this to a point for my own use, but obviously it does not make sense to go too far.

Anyway, that is the introduction, here is the proof of concept: