• 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.

Lamination Pro's Southwest Designs

B

Bill Nuzzo

PRO Member
For the past several days I have been spending hours learning how LP works and getting myself into the minds of the programmers. This program is a geometric tour de force that boggles my mind. To learn how to actually build the SW designs, I kept revising the designs and reading the assembly instructions (click ‘file/print preview’). I even built some strips on paper and cut them out and reassembled them. In the process, I developed a few questions and comments:
• Under File/Options why not be able to specify decimal inches rather than fractional? Laminate strip widths and Laminate Cut Widths are always shown in fractional and cannot be entered as decimal.
• For SW designs, why would anyone want to make the center cut wider than their saw kerf (which would require multiple cuts) when so many great designs can be made with a single cut down the centerline. The adjacent cuts are, by default, always the saw kerf width.
• Why not allow user to specify exact saw blade width in decimal inches instead of only 1/8”, 3/32” or no kerf? (The no kerf works well when using scissors to cut the pattern out of paper.)
• Why use fractional inches for saw blade, strip width and laminate cut width and decimal inches for height and for SW design strip width and center kerf width?
Comment:
The SW patterns generated by LP for a feature ring are for a vertical orientation of the ring and only for the outside. The pattern for a sloping ring or for the inside of the vessel would look different. Also the shape of the SW patterns get very interesting if the vessel has a significant vertical curve to it!
This is a fantastic and fun program to use.
Bill Nuzzo
 
Bill,

The lack of ability to work in decimal inches is simply a matter of time (or lack of time). Until this past month, I have been working fulltime as a business consultant and since I run Woodturner PRO by myself, including writing Lamination PRO myself (I use consultants for the other two programs), there just hasn't been time to do all the things I'd like it to do. Now that I've retired, I will finally have the time to pay it the attention its due. The software is not top on the priority list, though. I'm first working on new video tutorials and a long-overdue replacement of the website (except for the forum). This isn't a small job, though. :-<

With regards to the center kerf, allowing it to be variable in width is the thing that gives the feature all its power. One of the tutorials I'll be doing shortly is one that is purely about the SW design and how and where to make that center cut and why having it a variable size is so important.

The saw kerf size isn't really an issue as the minor difference is simply not discernible in the final design so I don't see that getting much of my programming time. In fact, in Charles Rannefeld book 'Laminated Designs in Wood', which is the holy grail of this art form, he didn't even take the saw kerf into consideration at all. This would make a very discernible difference, however.

The reason that Lamination PRO is nearly all in fractions was my attempt to make the software easy to use. There aren't many programs where you can use it 100% without every having to remove your hand from the mouse. As soon as you add input fields to allow decimal entries, it means you also have to enter fractional values if you choose that over decimal and typing fractions isn't high on anyone's list. With input fields, you'd have to type every input yourself and by selecting values from a list, you can run circles around anyone typing values.

Lamination PRO was a fun program to write, alright. Having never taken a class in either trigonometry or programming, I had to do a lot of trial and error. I told my wife that now that I've retired, I'd like to take classes in both of those topics and she said that is probably the worst case of 'cart before horse' she'd ever heard of.

I hate it when she's so right.

Lloyd
 
LLoyd,

Thank you for your reply. Where do you find the time to monitor the forum, design programs, work another job and eat & sleep? No need to reply.
PS: I've had no further trouble with WTP crashing on 2 other PC's. I'm getting the PC fixed that wouldn't re-boot after upgrading the nVidia driver.
 
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