A couple of beginner questions... Profile sizes and cutting area size.

[Neale]

Frankly, what you call the axes doesn't really matter that much but you must obey the convention that the axes of the machine in front of you match the way that the axies fo conventional drawing work. As the last post said, imagine a sheet of graph paper in front of you. X coordinates then run from left to right and Y increases as the tool moves away from you. Z coordinates must then increase as the tool rises. For convenience, a lot of people put X=0 and Y=0 in the bottom (i.e. nearest you) LH corner, and Z=0 at the top of travel (so when working, Z coordinates are negative). However, as long as the axes have these relationships, whether X goes across or front to back rather depends on where you stand and what you consider the front of the machine to be!

When I built my machine, I anticipated standing at one of the long sides and so configured it so that X ran along the long axis and Y along the gantry. In practice, I always stand at the short side of the machine. Think of your usual bit of graph paper in front of you on the desk, label X and Y accordingly, and then turn it through 90 degrees anticlockwise. Means that the reference point (0,0) is now at the bottom RH corner. However, as long as you remember which axis is which and which way they go (which I do almost all the time...) then it still works fine because the important thing is the relation of the axes to each other that matters. The reason that this is so important is that any CAD/CAM package is going to assume this relationship between the axes and if you configure the machine differently then you are really, really, going to struggle.

But if you like to think of your gantry as being X and the long axis Y, or the other way around, then as long as the coordinates run the right way with respect to each other, it's your choice. I get confused by people talking about "front" and "side", and who assume that everyone has the same layout of X and Y. It ain't necessarily so!

[Kitwn]

Frankly, what you call the axes doesn't really matter...

Quite right, but one thing to consider is the common layout for drawing packages on computers is with X horizontal and Y vertical on the screen. This makes the visible drawing area 'landscape' rather than 'portrait' and it makes sense to match this to your machine for those times when you are drawing layouts that are the full size of the machine bed.

[Neale]

Quite right, but one thing to consider is the common layout for drawing packages on computers is with X horizontal and Y vertical on the screen. This makes the visible drawing area 'landscape' rather than 'portrait' and it makes sense to match this to your machine for those times when you are drawing layouts that are the full size of the machine bed.

Interesting point. If I'm using something like Vectric Vcarve (which I do from time to time - great for text/signboard type applications) then it makes sense to align the landscape screen and the landscape machine orientation. However, using Fusion 360 (which I do a lot these days) then I'm often building up an assembly as part of the 3D model on screen, but picking out individual components for CAM/toolpath generation. It might well be that the alignment of an individual component is not naturally laid out appropriately. For example, the base of the component which would sit on the bed of the machine might not even be in the XY plane in the model. F360 allows you to easily select axes for CAM independently of the original model axes so you can just, in effect, rotate the component in 3D to best fit the machine.

If I knew then what I know now, I might well have configured my own machine to have X running left to right in front of me - the conventional XY layout - even though the machine would then be portrait rather than landscape. Main thing is to understand what you are doing!

[JAZZCNC]

If I knew then what I know now, I might well have configured my own machine to have X running left to right in front of me - the conventional XY layout - even though the machine would then be portrait rather than landscape. Main thing is to understand what you are doing!

It's always better to have it setup up in the direction you view the machine. It doesn't really matter whether X runs across gantry or down machines length but it should always run left to right as you view machine and in a positive direction like the cartesian coordinate system does. Y should always run away and towards you, again positive direction moving away from you. Otherwise, it gets confusing quickly.

[Voicecoil]

Quite right, but one thing to consider is the common layout for drawing packages on computers is with X horizontal and Y vertical on the screen. This makes the visible drawing area 'landscape' rather than 'portrait' and it makes sense to match this to your machine for those times when you are drawing layouts that are the full size of the machine bed.

Or you can always buy a portrait monitor if the visualization gets too hard!

[Kitwn]

Or you can always buy a portrait monitor if the visualization gets too hard!

You can do that for sure!
What I actually did a few months back was buy a monster 32 inch 2560 x 1440 monitor which provides so much drawing area it's amazing. Soooo much less scrolling about and zooming in and out than I had on the weeny little 21 inch 1920 x 1080 monitor before. The difference is more than I expected and was well worth the not-as-much-money-as-I-thought-it-would-be.