PRIME MOTIONA tour of the screen
Prime Motion is one app doing three jobs — designing a part, working out how to cut it, and cutting it. The tabs across the bottom follow that order.
| Tab | For |
|---|---|
| Run | Running a program and watching it |
| Jog | Driving the machine by hand, homing, setting work zero |
| Projects | The G-code files you are going to run |
| Design | Modelling, CAM and parameters — three workspaces in one tab |
| Tools | The cutter library |
| Macros | One-tap G-code |
| Wizards | Machine setup, and recovering an interrupted job |
| History | Every job that has run |
| Help | This manual |
| Settings | Everything configurable |
E-STOP sits at the far right, on every screen. Three taps — see E-STOP, feed hold and reset.
Why some tabs are unavailable
Anything that can put the machine in motion stays locked until the machine has been homed, and almost everything stays locked until a machine profile exists. See the homing gate.
Design, Wizards and Help are never gated. You can model, generate toolpaths, and read this with no machine connected at all — and the manual stays reachable even while the machine is unhomed or alarming, on purpose.
The position readout
The numbers at the top appear on the machine-facing screens. Two sets: where the machine is in itself, and where it is on your workpiece — see Reading the position display.
Three tabs inside Design
The Design tab holds three workspaces, switched at the top:
| Workspace | For |
|---|---|
| Design | Sketching and modelling |
| Manufacturing | Toolpaths and posting |
| Parameters | The named values the model is built from |
They are three views of one document — change a parameter and both the model and the toolpaths follow.