Easel now supports custom work area sizes! You can change the size of the work area by going to the Machine menu.
The work area you set is saved and future new projects will inherit this work area. If you are shared on a project that is made with a different work area, it will open with your preferred work area (since that is the size of the machine you have available). Feel free to enter your work area in any units you want – it will be converted into your preferred unit system (which you can set using the dropdown at the bottom right of the editor.
Now if you have a larger machine, you can use the full size of it. For example, this chair project would not fit on a 12x12 work area. This is what it would have looked like:
Now you can increase the work area to the size of a larger machine (like the 1000mm x-carve, or a custom Shapeoko). With a larger work area that fits the project, it looks like this:
This was a highly requested feature – we really hope that it makes Easel more useful and accessible for more people. Let us know if you have any feedback about using it. We are committed to using your feedback to constantly improve Easel. Also, we love seeing photos of peoples machines and projects, so let’s see those giant machines you have all wanted expanded work area for!
6 Likes
How is this different than setting the size of the material?
The material was always constrained to the size of the work area. Now you can make the grid itself larger. The material setting just sets the size of the 3D material on the right side.
1 Like
I edited the original post to add some clarifying photos. ^
Looks good!
Great work @paulkaplan and team. You guys continue to impress.
You guys rock! I set my workspace to 48" X by 18" Y with no problem! Size really does matter!!!
I seem to be having this issue now? Doesn’t effect app in terms of functionality however i think it may be a bug…
Woah that is a strange looking issue. Might be a browser thing? What OS / browser are you on? I don’t see it on my computer. Try refreshing the page, and also try quitting the browser and starting it again and let me know if either of those help.
wow…the conundrum gets even more complicated- I have a Dewalt 611 and was holding out to see when the DW611 extrusion becomes an option on the order page. I don’t have the space or need to ever go up to 1000mm x 1000mm so it becomes a +'s and -'s as to the x-carve and shapeoko3. In some ways the ability use Easel with he slightly larger work surface makes choosing more difficulty. Everything about Invetables website and customer service trumps SO3’s site in my book. But oh, for the 16"x16" vs 12"x12"…such a tough decision.
1 Like
I had to go with the 1000mm rails, myself. The increase of ~20% in the price, for 400% the working area was just too good of a price / capability equation to pass up!
2 Likes
so what happens when you try to use 12x48 material in a 1000x1000 machine. Does it know to end and pickup to continue the price?
Hello @paulkaplan,
I was using Easel last night to just do a quick pocket operation to level a piece of stock. So I drew a square set the depth of cut to .02 then realized I needed to put some circles in the corners to give the bit some room, so I drew one circle and then cut and pasted it. But the pasted circle did not show up on my workspace, I thought I hit the wrong key pasted again and got them all drawn. Then I started the carve and it did exactly what I wanted.
But after it finished the pocket instead of ending and returning to home the spindle lifted and started a rapid traverse in the plus X direction. It hit the right rail before I hit the stop.
When I started looking at Easel to figure out what happened, I found that the first circle I thought did not copy was way to the right (outside of my work area) and Easel had tried to move outside of the work area to cut it.
So first - my mistake I guess I should have zoomed way out and looked for objects outside of the work area.
But it sure would have been nice if Easel had respected the work area size and realized it cannot cut outside of that region.
Here is an example of what I am talking about
Here are the first few lines of the gcode it created (sends the spindle off 15 inches to the right on my 11 inch workspace)
G20
G90
G1 Z0.15000 F9.0
G0 X15.36301 Y4.87567
G1 Z-0.02800 F9.0
G1 X15.36301 Y4.87567 F30.0
G1 X15.28757 Y4.87567 F30.0
G1 X15.28757 Y4.80023 F30.0
G1 X15.36301 Y4.80023 F30.0
G1 X15.36301 Y4.87567 F30.0
G1 X15.41299 Y4.92566 F30.0
G1 X15.41299 Y4.92566 F30.0
G1 X15.23758 Y4.92566 F30.0
G1 X15.23758 Y4.75024 F30.0
G1 X15.41299 Y4.75024 F30.0
G1 X15.41299 Y4.92566 F30.0
G1 X15.46298 Y4.97565 F30.0
G1
1 Like
I agree this seems like an issue and it should probably at least alert you to objects outside your work area, or maybe do a final sanity check on the produced gcode to make sure it doesn’t run out of bounds.
From time to time I place vectors outside of the given work area on purpose. Especially if I want the work zero to be in the middle of the design for double sided carving. Given that, I wouldn’t mind an alert telling me that something is outside of the work area, but I wouldn’t want it to not try and cut it all together.
I have found when copy and paste I have to look at the dialog box and see the coordinates and often no matter where it ends up I will change it to 1,1 just so I know it is there and can put it where it needs to go from there.
I would be happy with just a warning. Then I would know that something odd is about to happen.
