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We’re excited to announce a new Easel feature: Workpieces.
This feature allows you to plan out a multi-part project within one Easel file, instead of having the project workpieces split into multiple Easel projects. Each workpiece gets its own canvas for design elements, as well as its own bit, material, and cut settings.
You can copy/paste across workpieces, duplicate workpieces, and rename and delete workpieces.
Workpieces are useful for a number of different use cases, including inlays or projects where you want to cut the same design out of different types of material:
We’ve been testing this feature internally and with a small group of early access testers for a couple months, and we think you’re really going to enjoy it. Here are a couple of nice quotes I like about this feature from our early testing group:
I am using it on almost every project. Sometimes it is just to have multiple pages to fit all the parts to a similar work area (my vacuum table in particular) or to put scribe lines with one bit on one page and cut-outs on another. It’s one of the best additions we have had.
– @JDM
It’s a major improvement that people are going to love!
– @PhilJohnson
I’d like to thank all the early testers for their help and feedback.
This is a really cool feature that will make my workflow much better. I just read through the whole tutorial and cannot find any instructions on how to view the Workpieces together to make sure that everything matches up. Did I just miss that part?
Awwww yeah! When I fired up Easel yesterday evening, I was so stoked to find this new feature! I can’t wait to adjust a couple of projects and try this new workflow!!
The only way to combine projects right now is to copy/paste the objects from the old canvas to the new one. You might want to set the material, bit and cut settings prior to copying so that your cut depths move over without issue.
We have considered tools like drag and drop or “send to…” from the workpiece context menu, but we haven’t added anything yet.
Nope, you didn’t miss anything. There is currently no feature to overlay the workpieces to get a combined view. Definitely something we are considering, though.
What I’ve done so far is dumped all my shapes into the first workpiece and then copy and paste the shapes I need into an additional workpiece as needed. That way my project thumbnail shows everything together but I also have quick access to all my different layouts. Still working on the workflow but that’s where I’m at so far.
Easel Team… Thank you for yet again another great feature add!
One additional add if possible (someone mentioned it already) would be a “View” or some button that when pushed shows you the layers (selectable would be awesome) overlaid so you can see how the layers line up together. I did the copy/paste from a previous split file project and the only way now for me to verify that the alignment is correct is to carve the entire project out (not ideal). If I could click both layers and see them on the overview I could confirm/tweak as needed. If its something you can add later it would be awesome!!
Bug report:
When deleting a workpiece from the small drop-down menu, it doesn’t disappear from the list of workpieces. Reloading the page will make it go away. (Chrome 57 on OSX)
Also seconding the request to “view all” workpieces overlaid on top of each other. I’m using this feature to cut things in multiple passes, and to keep track of places I’ve already cut things out of a large piece of material, so it’s very helpful to see all the layers at once to check alignment between them. Animation software calls this kind of view “onion skinning”.
Outstanding Jeff ! Really Great stuff. Now if only I could type a few notes about a project/workpiece in some sort of “footnotes” area. I think people would go crazy happy for this because so often we do a project and want to place a few reminders or footnotes so if we come back at a later date we are “up to speed”. Things like best place for hold downs, or assembly notes, etc. Just a quick drop down with free form text.
Thank you Phil & JDM for the great “work around” ideas! That’s kind of what I have been doing and it works for me. (Will work better now with work pieces). Still think it could be made a bit more simple to actually have it as it’s own feature, eliminating jumping screens,views, adjusting text size, etc.
(fist bump)