More on V6 and the Interface with Machines

So we had been introduced to Phil from SoftTech through Chip Steel at Emmegi. When we were in Italy, we had looked at a product called FPPro from EmmegiSoft (http://www.emmegisoft.com). The Italian’s were not feeling too keen on the idea of trying to support their software in America. Chip had done some research and had worked out a deal to partner with SoftTech to support their equipment from the software side. So after we had purchased the software and began working with it we were anxious to see how the software would integrate with the Planet Machining Center.SoftTech uses a separate piece of software called link XML that actually connects their software to different CNC machines. The concept is that you can create the same information inside V6 then export it through the Link XML program to multiple pieces of machinery. The software uses a SQL file to connect V6 to a text file format output that can then be imported the software supplied by the machine manufacturer.On the surface, this seems like a good idea. Just make a new SQL file and you can now connect all of your existing data to your new machine. The problem is, as you can imagine, you are now trying to connect a complex machine to your software through SQL. Not a very forgiving or flexible language.

We BJ Wilson and Geoff from SoftTech out for three days where we ground out the basic code. We then had BJ back out to try and work out the compound miters. Zach at our office was a huge help creating the code for the compound miters and I think we are close. The biggest issue right now is working out a way to translate the cutting angles when the part is rotated on the machine. We are launching into that next week. So if you have a vertical mullion that is sloped meeting a Horizontal mullion that is sloped, you will end up with a compound miter. The V6 software will pass the angles to the Link XML based on the positions of the mullions when they are in the opening. When you put the part on the Planet, you usually want to rotate the part so you limit the amount of work you need to do to the bottom of the part. But, since you rotated the part, you now need to re-calculate all of the angles and cutting information. Some information in the Emmegi software will automatically adjust, but not the flying blade information for some reason.

We’re still debating weather it would be simpler to just write the code to create the text files in VB. SQL is crazy when you get this complex. It’s hard to debug and pretty linear. You can write helper functions, but not really branching functions. You can write “if, then, else” type functions, but they are all in line and you end up nesting them which gets crazy to read later. I’ll let you know what we end up doing.

This is just some of the fun you run into when you try to integrate software into your process and why you need to allow a lot of time to get things set up.