Mach3 Screen

[FartAttack]

I was wondering if there is a way to get an updated look to my Mach3. It is a Lonestar setup. I watched a YouTube video about it. I do not have the option to set it to the dark theme from the video. They told me not to connect anything to the internet for fear of updating. I am a welding instructor at a High School. Nobody really knows how it operates.

[acourtjester]

Not sure if this is what you are looking for, I had used similar software to rearrange Mach 3 in the past.
http://www.thecncwoodworker.com/2010.html

[tcaudle]

The screens in MACH3 are a specific file separate from the XML configuration files. The screen set you are using is listed in the XML but its not the actual screen . The set files are in the same directory as the XML files. There is a screen builder application that will let you build or edit existing screen sets. You need to be careful because the VBA macros are tied tot he screen set so an external screen set may or may not work for a specific application. I dug though my old backups and found the MachScreenV1.59.exe . You also need to be aware that the Bitmaps (things like buttons and screen images are in a separate folder under Mach3 folder named "bitmaps" SO you have to have BOTH to have a different look. There maybe some bitmap sets out there but things like 3D look buttons and readouts are bitmaps.

Building a whole new screen set can be a daunting task. That is why most of the screen sets out there are copies of other sets and bitmaps.

If you do get the MachScreen app always work on a copy of your running screens and to see them actual in MACH I would setup a different MACH Profile and assign the new screen sets to that profile . it will have its own XML file and you wont mess up your running Profile

You need a good bitmap editing and creation tool. One of the more sophisticated apps that let you do color sweeps and import different file types. You can use a vector drawing tool like Inkscape to get the shapes and the color with sweeps and to get 3D looks then EXPORT as a PNG . Youwill have to use a picture/bitmap editor to convert the PNG to JPG whick I think is what the MachScreen needs.

[tcaudle]

What can be tricky is bitmaps are a specific resolution meaning they will be some DPI like 100X100 That means its 100 pixels by 100 pixels . A screen resolution (the entire screen) has a resolution. So older windows could be 800X 600 so the 100 X 100 would be large on that screen. The later screens like 1024 X 768 and 1280 X 1024 would show that same 100X 100 much smaller and the whole screen file would be scrunched up in a corner. You have to build the whole screen to the resolution of the monitor you are using. I don't remember if you can go bigger than the old VGA screen size though. I looked at my bitmaps we built and most are in the 2004 date range . A lot of what you see now are copies of those buttons and head out frames.

[tcaudle]

So the MachScreen builder app uses "Objects" (like the Toolpath display window) and bitmaps including a background . You cant modify the Objects except to size them and place them some place on the screen canvas. You can put code behind a button that runs when the button is activated.. Those are different than Macros that are in yet another folder under MACH3 folder . You can call a Macro with a button or it can hove local code behind it .