Found an Old Bug

September 21, 2009 · Filed Under MeshCAM Development 

I had a case today, one one of the few times I get to use MeshCAM for a real project, where I had a metric STL file and I was using my normal Mach 3-Inch post processor.  The intention all along had been that MeshCAM would have done the mm-to-inch conversion work without user intervention when saving the gcode.  I was surprised when my mill tried to jog the X axis 185 inches to the right- this was obviously broken.

I ended up finding a bug that eliminated the units read from the post processor config file and just set them to match the geometry.  I think this has probably been broken for a while and I’m surprised that nobody noticed this when it occurred.  I assumed that more people would be working in a mixed-unit workflow but I guess I assumed wrong.  Maybe they found it to be broken but just assumed this was the intended behavior.  I’m always shocked when a fundamental bug goes unnoticed- especially when it means I may have spent time building a feature that nobody appears to be using. 

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One Response to “Found an Old Bug”

  1. Jeff Demand on September 22nd, 2009 6:32 am

    Robert,

    I work in mm, any time I goof up and accidentally try a mixed mm and inch mode the numbers all come out really wrong. I just go back and find the error in my ways. MC is very good at catching errors but I am a little better at making them :-)

    I never mentioned a possible bug because I assumed that I was in error.

    jeffD