Ncplot free version download

NCPlot is an editor and backplotter for 4 axis mill and 2 axis lathe G-Code programs. This software combines editing, formatting and translation tools that are useful for CNC programmers with a backplotter for instant G-Code verification. You may download and try NCPlot free for 15 days.

After this trial period has expired, the software will stop functioning and you must purchase a license key to continue using it. Disclaimer: We accept no liability for damage caused by the use or misuse of NCPlot.

Of course NCPlot can help you verify G-Code, but it is only as good as the person interpreting the tool path display. NCPlot features:. Full featured text editor. Multiple document interface allows you to open and edit multiple programs at the same time. Font and color settings may be applied to any part of the program. File comparison tool helps you keep your programs up to date. Program formatting tools. Remove block numbers, blank lines, comments or spaces. Program renumbering with automatic updating of:.

Fix invalid end of line characters. Add or remove comment or block skip characters. Program translation tools. MultiStep Translate makes multiple copies of part features while applying translations, eliminating tedious copy and pasting.

When breaking a helical arc command that did not include a Y axis endpoint the tool would incorrectly insert two "X" values. The print black and white setting now works for the print program tool. Tool list enhancements Remembers the visible state of the tools when refreshing the plot if the tool list does not change Added menu item 'Show Only This Tool' which hides all but the tool that was clicked Added menu item 'Select This Tool' which selects the region of the program for the tool that was clicked Added menu item 'Highlight This Tool' selects all the entities on the viewport for the tool that was clicked The keyboard shortcuts can now be exported and imported via the 'Setup' menus 'Export Settings' and 'Import Settings' The viewport print preview now allows the preview image to be saved as a bitmap file.

NCPMsgClose When a message window is displayed without a timeout value, this function will close the window. A new message may be displayed without first closing the previous message. The message will close when the script execution ends. Improvements Viewport set as reference will now use only the visible viewport entities.

The viewport rotation icon now draws on top of the backplot, keeping it visible. The break arcs tool now give a default value when prompting for the 'Maximum Path Deviation Distance'. The print program and print viewport tool will now remember the orientation and print black and white settings between uses. These settings are remembered separately for program and viewport printing.

Changed the data entry for the work offsets and extended work offsets on the machine configuration so that pressing 'Enter' is not required. Added a setting to the license manager settings, you can now specify the hostname where the license manager is located. The scripting engine is now re-initialized before a script is executed. This will clear all previous variable declarations.

Fixed a display problem when rotation G68 and scaling G51 were applied at the same time. Fixed a display problem that occurs when multiple files are open and maximized then one is closed. Fixed several problems with DXF importing for lathe. Fixed a problem that was preventing NCPlot from being registered on machines that had Asian language packs installed.

New Features Added feed override and rapid override controls to the run time estimation page. These controls may be adjusted to see the effect that they have on machine run times.

Added new functionality to the tool list toolbar. The tool list can now control the visibility of its corresponding tool path on the viewport, allowing individual paths to be turned off or on. The plot controls then will skip over any hidden parts of the backplot graphic.

Added two new buttons to the plot toolbar, these buttons are "Plot backward to previous tool" and "Plot forward to next tool". As their names imply these two buttons allow jumping the plot forward or backward one toolchange at a time. Added a modal value display to the viewport marker. Additional modal information can now be displayed along with the location display next to the marker.

The information to display is selectable and is defined on the Machine Configuration under the "Viewport Settings" page.

There is a new setting called "Modal values to display", simply enter the letter addresses to be displayed next to the viewport marker. Added a new option to the rotary 4th axis configuration. The new option allows selecting one of two rotary command types.

The two types are "Take shortest path to endpoint" and "Sign indicates direction". When the shortest path option is selected the rotary axis chooses a direction that results in less than degrees of movement.

When set to 'Sign indicates direction' the rotary axis will move to the designated endpoint in the direction indicated by the sign of the endpoint value. There is a new preferences setting labeled "Pause animation at tool changes" that when checked will cause the program animation to stop at the end of each tool's motion.

Clicking the animate button again will resume the animation. Updated the script function "NCPRotate" to allow rotation in any of the three planes. The tool "Break Lines Into Segments" now supports both absolute and incremental endpoints. When the subprogram setup is set to warn if sub not found there is now an option to cancel program execution when the message appears. This means that you can now open and edit multiple documents at the same time. This is a major interface update that will lead to some useful new features.

Added a "Window" menu that contains a list of the open files as well as tiling options for automatically arranging the files in the document workspace. There is a new toolbar that displays that currently open files. Clicking the name of a file on the toolbar will make the associated file the active document.

If there are more documents open than the 'Open Files' toolbar can display you can now click the small band at its right end to see a list of the non-visible document names. The graphics viewport now behaves like a toolbar, allowing you to detach it from the application window or close it altogether. Added a heading just above the viewport that displays the name of the file that the viewport is currently associated with.

Clicking the viewport or using any of the plot controls will activate the edit file that created the backplot. Added an option to the Preferences dialog called 'Auto Arrange Files'. When this option is checked the open files will re-tile themselves whenever a file is opened or closed, the application window is resized or any of the toolbars are moved. The last selected tiling option from the 'Window' menu is used. Added preferences setting to select whether a new file is opened on startup.

Added a file comparison tool. Added a "Toolbars" submenu to the "Setup" menu. This menu displays all the current toolbars and allows you to turn them on or off from the menu.

These tools allow translating program endpoints between absolute and incremental coordinates. Added a new arc tool called "Break arcs at quadrants" which will break any arc command that passes through one of the four quadrants.

The arcs are broken into up to 3 additional commands of up to 90 degrees each. Added a new tool called "Break lines into segments" which will break any linear motion into shorter movement segments. Added a new address translation tool called "Address calculator".

This tool lets you create custom translations by allowing calculations to be performed on address values. For each block in the file the address values are loaded into local variables and one or more calculations can be performed using these values. The values in the block can be updated or even removed. For more info, please see the help file. Added two new menu items to the "View" menu. These are "Set as Reference" and "Clear Reference" which allow you to set the current backplot as the background drawing.

This allows you to easily compare two backplots by using one as a background image. Improvements Cleaned up the toolbar customize command list. Also added the available icons. Extended the maximum system variable range from to Added another range of variables for extended work offsets.

The variables now are: - G For example, writing a value to also writes the same value to and This makes the extended work offset values available at all three variable ranges. Improved the viewport measure tool. This tool now displays the signed distance in each axis instead of the absolute distance. This gives an indication of direction from the first selected point to the second. The viewport is made active again after dismissing the measurement results, this will allow you to activate the measure tool again without needing to click the viewport in between.

The renumbering tool will now allow you to renumber a selected section of the program only. The entity info window will now close automatically when closing the file that is currently the active viewport file. Added font info as comments for the text to g-code tool. You must enter the same registration key that was used to register the software. Note that licenses aquired from the license manager cannot be de-registered.

Preferences If the Preferences dialog is open and changes have been made to the settings then NCPlot will prompt you to save these changes before shutting down.

Added a preferences setting that allows the translation tools to update values in macro expressions. Added a new preferences option called 'Zoom After Translate'. This option will automatically zoom to extents after a translation tool is applied as long as the 'Auto Refresh Viewport' is also on.

Machine Configuration Added a new configuration page for extended work offsets. Added a machine configuration setting for default script folder. This allows you to specify a script folder for each machine configuration. Variable Display Window The variable display window is now dockable.

Also re-arranged it slightly and added the animation speed slider control. The variable display will now show common variables that are assigned by the program regardless of their contents.

Improved the way the variable list was being drawn. When there was enough variables being displayed to show the vertical scroll bar, the old method caused the list display to jump back to the top of the list after each block in the program. This has been fixed so that the variable list will stay where it is even while animating a program.

Printing Improved printing support: Printing selected text will now allow printing the colorized text. Added a print preview window for the viewport printing. Removed the printing setup menu option, printing operations now use a common setup dialog. These moves are actually saved as a series of line segments when saved. Deleting entities from the viewport after loading a DXF file for conversion would cause an error. The error has been fixed and there is new behavior for deleting DXF entities.

You can now only delete entites after chaining has been applied. When the delete key is pressed the chains belonging to any selected entities are removed from the drawing. When a DXF file is loaded there are now indicators on the drawing that show where each chain start point is as well as the chain directions.

This option allows you to pick the starting point of a chain. After clicking this menu just click a point on the drawing that you want to be the entry point for the chain. Note that this tool only allows you to select closed chains. There is a new menu called "Rotate". This menu allows you to rotate the loaded DXF drawing. There is a new menu called "Mirror". This menu allows you to mirror the drawing in either the X or Y axis.

There is a new menu called "Scale". The menu allows you to apply a scale factor to the loaded DXF drawing. This setting changes the output from clockwise readable text to counter clockwise readable text. Scripting Added several new scripting functions to give much greater control over NCPlot from your scripts.

Added preferences setting for script execution timeout. This setting determines how long to allow a script to run before prompting you to either allow it to continue or to kill it. Making this setting longer is useful if you have scripts that take a long time to run. License Manager Added a license manager settings window that can be used to specify the network IP address of the license server. This is helpful when automatic server detection fails or cannot be used on your network.

Shortcut keys assigned to the items on the 'File' menu were appearing next to the wrong menu item. Fixed a bug in the 'step backward' tool. When the step backward tool shortcut key was held down the cursor moved backward through the program correctly but the graphics would not update. The 'Break Arcs Into Lines' tool was not properly breaking helical arc moves, this has been fixed.

When a loaded file was locked by another application is was possible to lose your edits when NCPlot closed. NCPlot now lets you know when a file has been locked. Fixed a couple of bugs in the remove redundant endpoints tool. System variables and were not being set, these are the modal values for the "N" and "O" addresses, respectively. Fixed the blend arc calc tool for lathe configurations The macro translator tool was allowing macro statements through into the resulting code if used before the first g-code or motion block.

Fixed a problem with the program extents being miscalculated in some cases when an arc motion is at the extents. Fixed a bug in the DXF sorting that could cause some objects to disappear from the drawing.

Fixed a problem with the local variables when using M98 subprogram calls. The local variables were being properly passed to the subprogram, but were not being passed back to the calling program.

The M98 sub calls should maintain the local variables. Fixed a bug in the renumbering tool. If there was a "GOTO" statement in the program without a block number after it the renumbering tool would crash. Fixed a problem with the viewport scroll bar. Dragging the scroll bar back and forth several times would eventually lead to an error message.

Fixed the issue with toolbars not restoring to their saved locations. The auto radius and auto chamfer commands ",R ,C" were not working under lathe configurations, this has been fixed. The saved variable state was overriding the machine configuration's work offset settings, this is fixed. The entities created by the auto radius and auto chamfer commands were not being given the correct tool number, this is fixed.

When the M98 subprogram format is set to use the K address as the repetition count the canned cycles will also recognize the K address as the repetition count. Editor Added the ability to drag text within the edit window. You can now select a region of text and then click and drag it within the edit window.

This menu contains tools that allow you to set the zero point of the drawing. This tool allows you to combine multiple translation operations into one easy step.

Unlike the other translation tools, MultiStep translate always keeps the original program code while inserting new translated code. This allows making multiple translated copies of sections of your program, for example: quickly make rotated patterns by selecting a section of your program, entering a rotation angle and number of copies.

The translated program section is inserted into your program immediately following the selected section. You can mirror, rotate, shift and scale all in one operation. Space Navigator Improved the response of the SpaceNavigator with large files.

Added a setup dialog for the SpaceNavigator. This dialog allows you to customize the orientation and sensitivity of the rotate, pan and zoom controls. NCPlot v2. If the shutdown was cancelled, these items did not reappear. On the address color setup dialog, if the selected color was black then the color box actually showed white. Some fixes to the toolbars were made. Mostly issues with menu items not being shown in the correct check state on startup.

The "Step Forward" and "Step Backward" buttons on the plot toolbar were set to auto-repeat when held down, this has been changed back to 1-click equals 1-step.

Fixed a problem with running NCPlot on accounts without Admin privaleges. On shutting down NCPlot an error was being generated: "Run-time error Application defined or object defined error". This error is being caused by the system not allowing NCPlot to save it's toolbar layout file. The fix was to save this file under the user application data folder. An added benefit to this is that each user can now have their own toolbar layout. Fixed a bug in the DXF conversion setup window.

NCPlot was reporting an error when using saved layers. General External subprogram files no longer need to have filenames that begin with the letter "O". NCPlot will now find subprogram files in either format, ie.

The file extension is ignored and can be anything you like. Added the ability to select and backplot any program in the loaded edit file. There is a new status bar panel that can be used whenever you have multiple programs in your file.

When the panel is clicked a popup menu appears that contains a list of all the programs in your file. Clicking a program on the menu jumps to the selected program and selects it for backplotting. This allows you to backplot any program in your file without the need to rearrange the programs. Tools for CNC Programmers.

Welcome to NCPlot. Contact NCPlot: scottmartinez ncplot. The software may be downloaded and tested and is free to use during this phase of development. Click the image to the left to visit its page. Please feel free to send feedback! StickFont v3 is a an application that converts text to G-Code for machining. Add and edit text with features like text on an angle and text around a radius.