From playing in the Script Shell, it would appear that regenerate is the operation called anyway, and if no entities are supplied it gets a stored list of entities. I don't see much overhead difference there. The EntityId's on the Layer are already in memory, so I can't see it slowing things down.
True to a certain extent, but I am having to use "select all entities on layer", so it's all going to be added, irrespective of whether I do it automatically or by hand. The preview and paths are good for confirming nothing odd will happen. Or if I just use a lasso to select blocks of entities, I'm going to have issues either way if there's stacked lines etc doing it manually.CVH wrote: ↑Sat Dec 02, 2023 2:15 pmWhile manually selecting entities may be prone to error.
Auto selecting everything can be a mess too depending on what is in the drawing besides geometry to cut.
Blind trust in that it will always be the intended selections, and only those, may lead to dangerous situations.
Then you would blame QCAD/CAM when an accident happens.
At some point, a list of selected EntityId's is passed to the "Add Toolpath" function. That's where I'm suggesting the entry point is. Allow us to specify a layer and use all Entities on it instead of a manual selection of Entities.
Now, the debate is whether:
a) additions to the layer are added automatically on regenerate
b) additions/removals to the layer are manually updates (for example using a similar operation to "Update Toolpath from Selection", such as "Update Toolpath from Layer", or it gets renamed to "Update Toolpath" and just figures out what to update using.)
I can't see any point to b).
I don't see a scenario where you would change entities, and then want to regenerate a tool path, using the previously cached entities anyway? Surely when you make a change and regenerate, it should regenerate the new entities, and not require an update. And that is the current behaviour of regenerate. So, surely if you add more elements to a layer or remove elements, you want that immediately reflected as well? You don't want to click regenerate and see just the original entities that you've changed are updated!?
You draw a square, and create a tool path. I then want to add an inset to one side of the square.
The desired outcome, is that you change the entities, click regenerate and now see CAM for the newly tweaked design.
The outcome by not automatically updating a layer, is that you now see CAM for 3 sides of the square. I have just tried this out, and have not deleted the 4th side. I split the entity using "Remove Segment", so it has now removed and replaced the entity with two new entities, and neither are in the CAM Toolpath. It 100% makes sense that if a Layer is used as a source of entities, then that list is updated on every regenerate.
As an aside, if I'm doing CAM, I would never put something not to be cut on the same layer as something to be actively cut. I would put it into its own layer, and I group based upon what process is being run. Not only do you get the benefit of visually identifying the differences (colourising lines) but it even makes it easier to select what might an outside compensation, inside compensation and then different tools/depths/passes.
If you make a mistake, and an object is on the wrong layer, you'll see very quickly when it regenerates the paths. However, with the manual selection process, which could be taking entities from *anywhere* on any layer, you can have weird things happen and have no idea why. I spent ages debugging some CAM today, to find that some entities has been selected in the wrong Toolpath. I isolated layers, flipped back and forth, but couldn't figure out why. I deleted the Toolpaths, to find one had somehow picked up some other entities. If the Toolpaths used layers as sources, then I wouldn't have had the wrong entities in the wrong Toolpaths whatsoever.