A tour of the screen

Prime Motion brings three jobs together on your Android tablet: designing a part, planning how to cut it, and running the program on the machine. The navigation bar along the bottom moves you between them. In landscape the same tabs sit in a floating dock instead; see Portrait and landscape.

E-STOP sits at the right end of the bar on every screen. It needs three taps, each within a second of the last. See E-STOP, feed hold and reset.

How the interface is designed to work

Prime Motion is built for a tablet at the machine, where your attention belongs on the cutter and your hands may be busy. A few principles shape every screen:

• One place for each job. Running, jogging, homing, probing and setting work zero all happen on Control, so you never hunt between screens with the machine waiting.
• Your choice of orientation. Portrait and landscape hold the same controls; turning the tablet only rearranges them. See Portrait and landscape.
• The machine moves only when you ask. Loading a file, opening a screen or connecting never moves it. Motion starts from a control you chose, such as Run → Start, Air Run or Outline.
• Safety stays in reach. E-STOP sits on every screen, above every panel. It needs three quick taps, so a stray touch cannot trigger it.
• Controls show what they can do. The command rail offers the actions that fit the machine's state. A dim tab is waiting for something, never broken, and a refused action says why and what to do next.
• You keep your place. Tools open a panel over the screen you are on instead of a new screen, so the model or machine view stays in sight.
• Fingers move the view; the S Pen does the work. In Design your fingers turn, move and zoom, while the S Pen draws and picks. See Touch, S Pen and the viewport.
• Mistakes are cheap. In Design, Undo reverses a whole step, such as a finished sketch or a set of holes, in one tap.

Why a tab can be dim

A dim tab ignores taps. It is waiting for something, never broken:

• With no machine profile, only Wizards, Design and Help respond.
• With a profile, Control, Tools, Wizards, Help and Settings always respond.
• Projects, Macros and History respond once the machine is ready to work: homed since it connected, or connected if it has no homing switches.

Design, Wizards and Help are never gated. You can design, plan toolpaths and read this manual with no machine at all, and Help stays reachable while the machine is unhomed or in alarm, which is exactly when you may need it. The reasons are in the homing gate.

The position readout

On Control the top of the screen is the position readout: the active work coordinate system, the WPos / MPos choice, one box per axis, and the machine's state at the right.

Each axis box shows two numbers. The large one is the coordinate set you chose with WPos or MPos; the small line underneath is the other set. Reading the position display explains both.

Three workspaces inside Design

Open or create a design and three workspace tabs appear at the top of Design:

They are three views of one document. A dimension can use a named parameter instead of a fixed number, and toolpaths are generated from the model. A model edit can regenerate affected toolpaths automatically. Check the result in Manufacturing: regenerate any red ⚠ operations before you post. With no design open, the workspace tabs are not shown at all. Start in the Designs panel.

Panels that slide in

Most tools open a panel rather than a new screen. On Control a panel drops down from under the position readout; in Design it drops down under the workspace tabs. A panel names itself in its title and closes with its × or its own Cancel. While a panel waits for your decision, the screen behind it is shaded and does not respond. E-STOP stays reachable above every panel.

Related

• First launch
• Portrait and landscape
• Touch, S Pen and the viewport
• Using Help
• Your first job, end to end