• Are you looking for a coupon code to buy my software? You can get one from lots of 3rd party sites but they won't work. My software never goes on sale and has never been discounted. The only coupon codes that are given is when I give a club presentation and I offer a discount to the attendees. Other than that, everyone pays the same price.

Segment Pro Summary Question

Glenn McCarron

PRO Member
Hi Lloyd. Just planning my next project and am running into a bit of an issue. I attached my project and it is basically dark ( Wenge) with 18 spirals ( Maple) The problem is in the Summary report as it only counts 9 maple per row and not 18. Hence the Wenge count is also wrong. Not sure what may be causing the issue.
 

Attachments

  • 2017-11-14-17-2-3.json
    145.5 KB · Views: 11
Don't know if Lloyd is out and about.

I downloaded your json file. Imported it. SP said it was successful. Yet, I cannot find it in the Plan section.
This is the second json file I have not been able to see after importing.
 
It came up for me. Mike take another look, the thumb nail is really small and you might have missed it. And the maple did only show half the quantity in the summary, but showed that right amount in the ring view
 
Bob:
Finally found it. So the import works.

I found the same as Bob. The summary shows 9 maple per ring. The ring view shows 18.

On a side not and not to derail. I am working on a 21 row, 36 segment per ring bowl with a SW type pattern. Will see how it goes.
 
Last edited:
Sorry. I've been working on some video tutorials in my shop and have been very focused on that.

The way that the software understands painted segments is that a file with an entry for every segment that is painted. This becomes difficult because when you paint a bunch of segments using repeats of more than one and perhaps a diamond pattern, the software first has to determine if that segment has been painted before and if so, it needs to change that entry. If it hasn't been painted before, it needs to add that entry and if it is being painted with the default species, it has to remove that entry altogether. This works quite well, but there are so many things that can go wrong, especially if you do a lot of Undos where everything has to work in reverse. One thing is guaranteed to confuse it. All bets are off if the number of segments per row changes. It is OK if you reduce the number of segments but if you increase it, it is likely to become confused.

There is one more thing that I suspect is the issue which has to do with the default species. If at some point you changed the default species but had already painted segments with that species, there are entries in the file that no longer should be there because those segments are now painted instead of default species. About the only thing I can do about this is give a warning that if you change the default species, it will be necessary to reset all of the painting that has been done.

I opened your plan and reset the segments and then painted two Maple segments on each with 9 repeats per row and the Summary is now correct.

Unfortunately, for me to see where the error occurred, I would have had to be watching to see what steps were taken during the original painting so I wouldn't have a clue as where to start with troubleshooting it.

The process I came up with to handle the painting of such large number of segments has to be more complicated than I would like it to be. Fortunately, I know the things that can break it and I may have to simply warn you that doing one of those things requires the segments to be reset. Fortunately, most designs can be recreated very quickly.

I created a new export file and added 'repainted' to the description so it should not overwrite your existing plan.
 

Attachments

  • 2017-11-14-17-2-3.json
    119.9 KB · Views: 21
Thanks Lloyd for the explanation of the issue. It is good to have a bit of an insight of how SP thinks.
Still a very good software for segment designs. I have found it is not that much of a problem to design a pattern in SP, then build a duplicate in WTP. I do this from time to time if I want to experiment with ring thickness.

While painting the segments is not as easy in WTP for a complex pattern using the ring view from SP or the paint view, one can quickly paint the rings in WTP. I found it pretty easy when using the ring view in WTP to change species.

Between the WTP and SP there is not much that cannot be done in designing a vessel.
 
Hi Lloyd. Thank you for looking, fixing and explaining the issue. You are probably correct with the default species. Using Wenge I found it hard to see so I had changed the #1 species to make it easier (so I thought). I was also experimenting with different species to see what I liked the best. I settled on the Wenge mainly for the contrast. So it was probably me that confused the program. I'll keep it in mind the next time.

Prior to downloading your fixed file I did reset all segments and redrew my pattern. Now everything looks OK.

Thanks Mike and Bob as well.
 
Just one last question. If a ring is divisible by 18 why do you not have the option to use it in the "Repeats per Row" ?

My guess is it is written into the program to having repeat per row (1 - 12) option. If I am correct, it basically limits 12 as the max number to repeat per row. I would guess for most users 12 is more than enough.
 
I had to stop somewhere and 12 repeats per row seemed to be reasonable. For my next release, I'll bump it up. I believe there is an upper limit because if you have 18 repeats of a filled rectangle, the amount of processing is massive.
 
Thank you for explaining Lloyd, makes perfect sense. I'm not sure how much easier you can make it, after all to do two groups of 9 repeats was not that difficult. SP is such a great design tool even if you have to redraw in WTP. Such is the case for my pending project as I have a very specific inside diameter on the bottom and through the neck of the vase to accommodate inserting a glass cylinder.
 
Back
Top