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Hello, everyone! My name is Mo, and I’m a newbie on the Inventables Customer Success team. I’ve been working on improving our Support Center, specifically the content for Easel.
Thank you to those users who responded to Zach’s thread about our Support Center (you can still add your input)! I’m following-up on some requests for Easel tutorials. We’ve considered doing tutorials for Easel, but we don’t have a great understanding of what content is relevant to users.
It would be really helpful if you could provide responses to these questions:
When you first started using Easel, what did you wish you knew how to do? What did you struggle doing?
What resources did you find useful for learning Easel? If you can share links to specific forum posts, videos, projects, or other resources, it would be really helpful!
How do you like learning? Some examples: videos; step-by-step instructions for projects; walkthrough guide pop-ups within Easel for new users; other?
What Easel tutorials would you like to see? In other words, what tutorials should we build?
Any other comments, suggestions, and concerns related to Easel tutorials is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance for your feedback!
Thanks for the response! I agree: it is frustrating, especially for new users.
What do you think is the best format for this guide? Written steps with photos? A video? A project that walks you through different tools? Maybe a walkthrough tutorial?
We’re interested in specifics so we can produce the best guides possible.
I would say written steps, photos and videos. Especially when trying to use any of the Apps. If new users can see a video of it working and then go to the shop and reproduce it, that is a great sense of satisfaction.
I did not found Easel frustrating from the first time, it was just like I expected. I had lots of questions being my first introduction to CNC world but that initial Carve wizard solved everything cleanly.
However the bit thickness added issues with the first carve, and I still don’t understand how to force Easel to use a wider bit in small cuts. I understand the reason, but it is probably the only thing I didn’t catch at first glance.
as a foreign to the English language, get used to discover new terms was difficult to learn to use easel.
at work when we start using a new 3D program we try to make some square and cube…with holes inside…
but here you need to draw un 2D (2.5D) to mill 3D (woot)
the most frustrating for me was that easel as not “magnet” for the drawing, if you want to “add” some shape to an existing square or triangle, you cant “magnet” it to them
you have to put manualy the good coordinates
easel is very powerfull to carve form svg or other code
but for drawing new things and then modifiy it it’s a bit complicated
maybe i’m not using it right, so well a tutorial of how make a drawing in easel will be great.
like we have the “test carve” after the first setup but it will be fun to make it like a tutorial now try tu put your name here try to modify the shape of this
and obvious skip this tuto you know how to do…
i hope i was clear, english is still like sience for me (i’ve no idea what i an wrinting right now xD)
A complete walkthrough of all of Easel features would be great. I know that the program can do more than I ask it to do. How best to utilize the alignment tools, and some of the items in the edit menu “bring forward” ect.
You can trick Easel into using a larger bit, if you prefer to do so. Let’s say you’re using a 1/8" bit in your machine, but Easel says there are parts you can’t carve out correctly (red errors in the 3D preview pane). Simply change your Easel settings to smaller bit, say, 1/16" bit, but still make the carve with the 1/8" bit in your spindle. Easel will think it is using a smaller bit but you can still use the larger bit in the actual carve.
I hope this helps…let me know if you need further explanation. Thanks!
A popup that says something like " The selected bit is too large to carve certain areas of your design. Would you like to carve anyway. Y/N Proceeding with the bit selected may result in a distorted carve" would be a nice option. Most of the time the larger bit only results in a carve with larger corner radiuses
This is a good suggestion, and one we’ve considered. That said, Easel has a lot of features for people in different stages of carving. We’re worried about how overwhelming something like this may be to beginners.
If you had access to walkthrough with all of Easel’s features, how much time do you think you would spend in it? (Five minutes? Thirty minutes? etc.)
If the walkthrough was done in a video, or a series of videos, would this be something you would take the time to watch? If so, how much time would you spend watching the video(s)?
I know i am a few years short and hopefully you still read these. A “add a Edit dot” would be nice. If I use the square function I have 4 edit dots on each corner. But if I could add a edit point wherever I wanted, I could drag the point to make, lets say a house outline. Sorry if I am not 100% clear.
