Homing switches & 'methods of working' (Mach3)

[HankMcSpank]

Just fitted home switches to my machine & I’m now trying to figure out the best ‘methods of working’ with these in place!

When knocking up something in CAD/CAM, I base all my designs around the origin – eg if drawing a circle, the centre would be the ‘origin’ ….therefore before home switches, I’d simply jog my machine’s table to the centre of its axis travel then zero the coordinates….then I’d simply start the cycle.

But now, in Mach3 with home switches present, when I click ‘ref all home’ (btw: not sure if it relevant – but my table homes to the negative extremity of both X & Y axis), it then zeros all the axis…therefore if I load my Gcode, the lower part of the aforerementioned circle will not be ‘reachable’ by the machine.

One immediate solution is to establish the central point of my table, then offset my work at the end of the CAD/CAM process to reflect this for my GCode ...but is this how it's normally done?

If not,what should I be doing to ensuring that my machine works in the middle of it’s axis travel, yet still have the possibility of ‘homing’ should the steppers stall if I’ve pushed them too hard!