Settings Tab Reference

Owned by Daniel Rogge
Last updated: Nov 12, 2021 by Amanda Lucas
2 min read

The Settings tab is divided into four sections:

  • Selected Machines

  • Commissioning

  • General Settings

  • Development Tools

The Selected Machines section displays a list of connected Tormach machines, shows their status (green or dark LED), and provides buttons that allow you to add or remove a connected machine. For more information on connecting a PathPilot controlled machine, go to Connect a PathPilot-Controlled CNC Machine.

The Commissioning section is used during robot mastering. Unless an encoder battery has failed, the user should not have to master the robot as part of normal operation. More on mastering here: FIXME - link.

The General Settings section allows you to:

  • Select preferred linear units (millimeters, meters, inches).

  • Select preferred angular units (degrees, radians).

  • Select the preferred code editor. This is the program that launches when you highlight a file on the File tab and select Edit. The default (and recommended) code editor is PyCharm.
    To specify another editor, install that program on the control computer somewhere in the /home/pathpilot directory, then enter the file path to that executable in the code editor dialog box.

  • Enable or disable the main program loop warning. Programs created conversationally loop indefinitely unless you add an Exit() statement to the end of the program. A warning is displayed regarding this, but you can disable the warning by clearing the Enable Main Loop Warning checkbox.

The Development Tools section allows you to:

  • Reload the program interpreter. If you write robot programs that import custom libraries, and want to modify those libraries as part of the development process, you must reload the interpreter for those library changes to take effect.

  • Launch HAL SCOPE, a software oscilloscope that allows you to visualize any signal (like motor torque) used by the robot’s controller.

  • Launch HAL METER, a simple utility that allows you to inspect the current value of any signal used by the robot’s controller.

  • Launch RVIZ or RQT, tools used frequently in ROS development.