Updates to the Easel interface

Hi there Easel users! You might have noticed that Easel looks a little different today. We’ve made some adjustments to the interface and I wanted to explain what’s new.

Along with a few visual tweaks, the main changes are to the toolbar at the top. Here’s what it looks like now:

With these changes, we wanted to:

  1. Make it easier to adjust important settings like material, bit size, and material dimensions.
  2. Lay the groundwork for more precise cut settings based on the combination of material and bit.

You’ll notice that we’ve added a second level toolbar, with design components on the left, and project-specific settings on the right. Material and bit size are the most important factors for any project, so it made sense to make these prominent and easy to change.

Material dimensions are also now set independently of the material, so if you set specific dimensions, then change the material type, the dimensions will stay the same.

Feed rate and depth per pass have been moved into this Cut Settings dropdown. You can use our recommended settings or set your own custom values.

Currently, the recommended settings for each material are general values that should work with a variety of bits. Over time, we’ll be making these values more precise, and have been testing a variety of bit/material combinations to determine the settings that work best.

Take a look and let us know what you think!

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This is very cool and very appreciated! You guys rock. I feel like every few days I go into Easel and notice a few small changes. I :heart: Inventables.

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Yes! This is great! Good work guys, Easel just keeps getting better and better!

One bug I just noticed, it looks like when you are inputting custom cut settings you can only input in inches even if you are set to metric. Typing 1 mm converts to 25.4mm.

I’m having the same problem, I work in mm and when I enter feed rate and depth it converts it to inches…

Yikes, good catch—we’re on it.

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Hi @Rusty & @DavidStinton, that’s working again—what’s input in millimeters stays in millimeters. Sorry for the problem, but thanks for spotting it & telling us about it.

Awesome! Thanks for your quick response!

Love the changes!

Love the changes as well - very nice. Moving the setting to the toolbar is a great move! Also, I like the separation of Cut Settings Recommend and Custom. And the Undo use recommended cut settings…

Question/Request: Why not have a link or access to the Projects on the site from within Easel?

Thanks for the kind words Greg! To answer your question, we’ve got some more changes coming soon. Stay tuned!

@GregBuckwalter we are trying to work iteratively. By this I mean rather than building for 6 months or a year and releasing a whole new design we are trying to break it down into the smallest group of changes that make sense and push them out as soon as we are done.

Sometimes this is easy and other times it is harder. In this case we had to do a little bit of work “under the hood” so to speak that will enable some other things to go faster. There is a lot more on deck that will build on this change.

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Maybe this is what is causing my problem. I just discovered an error in the measurements and conversions in my project that has caused me so much trouble. Here is a post I just made on that thread.
I believe I have figured out the problem. I downloaded the g code from
easel and used Universal G Code Sender to send it to the x carve. I
noticed that while my measurements were in inches the g code I
downloaded from easel was in mm. And they were WAY off. It had the width
at 250.03mm x 1313.63 mm which translates to 9.84 inches x 51.77
inches. My setup in easel was 11 inches X 54 inches.
Is there a problem in this new easel software?

@Zach_Kaplan Sounds like your on the Agile management cycle, I’m all too familiar with it and glad to know your embracing that type of development cycle. As you noted, you’ll be able to release features on shorter cycles. Excellent and looking forward to the future releases.

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@rodovich is the issue @DavidBrooke is having solved by your update?

Hi @DavidBrooke, I responded in the other thread but I don’t think it’s related to the unit bug mentioned above.

That interface is fantastic, I love it! Great update!

The new interface and tool bars are outstanding.

I know how hard team working for this, but image on right pane still looks rounded edges like cutting sheet of soft foam.
Wish to see sharp corners real cut image. Isn’t it possible.

Like this.

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Its working great, Super pleased with current version. The multipass cutting works so much better. Toolpaths generate much more quickly and the constant bit size errors are gone, love it.