Thread: Guide Template Software

Here is a very quick knock up of what it might look like... obviously it is short on a lot of other information, but this is just a rough idea.

What a great idea !!!!

Just for my own amusement I started writing up a bit of code last night behind the quick Graphical User Interface (GUI) I threw together.

Looking at some guides they seem to follow a similar 3 dimension pattern, an A, B, & C (ID, OD, & Height) measurement and a Part No.
<O</O
For quicker recall of the desired template guide, I might want to create a small database to store that data in, and perhaps another table for the router bits as that will be a factor in the final measurement.
<O</O
I think it will be many years before I can offer any real wood working advice so I will do what I can in other areas.

Knocking the rough edges off the user interface...
Would need to work out exactly what needs to be measured, so it can be shown on the screen.
But the idea is to have the graphic on the right hand side of screen represent the guide and the cutter in some sort of scale, so you could try various guides and router bits to mix and match and it spit out the dimensions of everything.

It's looking very interesting HS, I would like to see the final version when ready.

Top idea HS!

Keep it up.

Progress is coming along nicely... Now have a good portion of the Guide side of things sorted. Still need to work on save, edit, new etc.

Before I do that I will now focus on adding the Router Bit section of the code, and add that to the graphic to get a sneak peak of the finished program.

By now it should be reasonably obvious where I am going with the idea... Are there any suggestions or anything major I have over looked?

All going well I should have the first release version ready in a couple of week for everyone to try out.

Edit:
<O</O
I should probably mention that I added a second way to choose a guide... On load it puts all the part numbers in the Part # combo box and you can just flick quickly through each of the guide you have stored in the database, or if you want more info on the guide you can choose File >> Select Guide and do it that way.<O</O

What an excellent idea.

Tops

SB

Hit a slight snag... the drawing method I used for the template guide isn’t going to work very well for drawing the router bit, so I am in the process of learning another drawing method. Just going to take a little longer than expected, but shouldn’t delay things too long.

Thanks HS for your efforts ,look forward to seeing more of your application to template routing.

Tom O'donnell here on the forum is a tremendous advocate of template routing (look up Template Tom) and has in years past also made really good strides in effecting the application of templates with the use of routers.

Thanks

Cheers

Hi John, it was Tom who inspired me to write it

He responded to one of my early posts, and from his videos I could see his passion for templates was quite clear. So I thought to myself… templates seem like a good idea I wonder if the uptake of template use wasn’t greater because it’s too much hassle for most to do the math.

Figuring I needed to make a few calculations for my current speaker project, I might as well see if I can write something that benefits the whole community. Considerably quicker to do them on paper, but that doesn’t help everyone.

Was playing with the new drawing method last night and it doesn’t seem too hard (famous last words). I looked up router bit types (remembering I don’t even own a router yet) and Wiki said there were some 10 standard types of router bits (see attached).

So what I was thinking was have a “router bit family” as one of the parameters, and depending on what type it belongs to i.e. Chamfer etc would depend on how many points I make available to plot.

Obviously things with curves are going to be more complicated to draw so I will split each of the family members into their own code section.

I was also thinking of creating a “custom” family member for real weird stuff that doesn’t fall into any of the other groups, but that would require the user to be savvier in what they need.

At the point where i'm ready to start on the router bit section, I now have the guide section working with the new paint method.

Not sure how tricky it will be to do a top view of the router bit, so might only wind up with a top view of the guide and a side view of the router bit.

See how enthusiastic I feel when I get there...

Originally Posted by HeadScratcher

At the point where i'm ready to start on the router bit section, I now have the guide section working with the new paint method.

Not sure how tricky it will be to do a top view of the router bit, so might only wind up with a top view of the guide and a side view of the router bit.

See how enthusiastic I feel when I get there...

You certainly have a task on your hands and I look forward to the final results. I do not have the same problem as I do all my drawing of each process on the computer using the Cad program, but not everyone has access to such programs, so my suggestion meanwhile while this is being sorted out is to take up graph paper 2mm square. It is quite good $2.00 per book from your local newsagents.
Samples enclosed
Tom