Grooving grief!

I've made some progress getting Andy Pugh's conversational macros implemented in the Probe Basic Lathe (PBL) GUI for LinuxCNC. PBL is one of several GUIs that have been developed for the LinuxCNC control system and in my view it actually looks like a reasonably user friendly and almsot attractive user interface. Previously, I was using the gmoccapy GUI but although functional, it looked pretty clunky.

PBL looks similar to the Pathpilot GUI used by Tormach for their machines - this is actually based on LinuxCNC but has been developed and tested by their own professional software engineers. While it's possible to fiddle with Pathpilot and create a customised version for non-Tormach applications, it's not a well-trodden path and comes with challenges of its own. In contrast, PBL is actively supported, although on the downside it has very limited resources dedicated to its development.

As mentioned previously, I'm planning to use PBL with the conversational macros ("lathe cycles"), which I saw as one of its attractions. However, I discovered that this would require me to do the work to get it up and running, as the cycles haven't actually been implemented yet, beyond being imported as a placeholder. 

One aspect of this is the graphics that are shown in the "Lathe Cycles" panels. Ideally they would be simply imported into PBL - but nothing is that simple, as gmoccapy was created using the Glade environment, while PBL was developed and implemented in Qt. I know almost nothing about either. Claude Code to the rescue? As previously described, it's managed to get my PBL system up and running, so hopefully he/it can also assist with getting these macros running.

He/it made a good start but we hit a good old roadblock when it came to the "groove" operation. The (relatively few) parameters required to set it up comprise the groove diameter (at the root of the groove), the position of the groove on the Z axis and the feed rate (mm per revolution).

The source graphics are vector-based, rather than bitmap, so you might think this would make manipulation relatively straightforward - but you'd be wrong there. Here's the hilarious series of (failed) attempts at placing the dimensions (leader lines and dimension arrowheads). Sounds like a reasonably simple task?

In Linux, there's a graphics editor called Pinta that in some ways is similar to Microsoft Paint. This allows fairly simple edits to be made. So here, I'm trying to show Claude where the leaders (red) and arrowheads (blue) need to go.

Er, no. 

Er, no.

Getting there?

FFS, now it's 90 degrees off. That hardly constitutes progress.

God.

Slightly better?

Claude suggested I choose one of these 3 lines

Woohoo. Getting there - but the arrowheads need to be clear of the body for clarity.

Dear god. Now the leaders are too short.

That's ALMOST there. But the LH leader is off to the side by several pixels.

Now if only those leaders ended at the surface of the body...

Losing the will to live here - but it's almost acceptable now.

And here's what it looks like when you flash up PBL and select the groove operation.

F*ck me, that took hours off my life. I can safely conclude that graphics manipulation isn't Claude's strong point. Or even Claude's weak point.

Hopefully now I can do some actual reviewing, testing and finessing.