SmartCAM Automation Overview

SmartCAM's powerful macro system and configurable user-interface allows the user to automate their common, and not so common, tasks and make the functionality easily accessible.

This section of the "Learning SmartCAM" documentation will give a broad, fundamental explanation of how SmartCAM's Macro system works, an explanation of common terms and programming concepts, and information on building a user interface with Visual CTK and integrating your automations into SmartCAM. By reviewing this information, the reader will get an introduction to programming concepts and SmartCAM MCL (Macro Control Language) features in particular.

Why Automate?

There are several reasons why one might use SmartCAM's automation features. These include:

• Family of parts - a case where the user often creates similar parts with slight variations.
• Common operations - a case where the user often runs the same operations over and over again.
• New functionality - to give the SmartCAM application the ability to do something that it cannot already do.
• Integration - to integrate SmartCAM with other applications.
• Simplification - making existing functionality easier to use for you.

The reasons one might automate are manifold, but the tools and processes are all very similar. They are also fairly easy to learn and use.

Organization

The Automating SmartCAM documentation is organized in the following fashion.

• Fundamentals
  The basics of macro development. If you are new to the idea of script, macro, or computer programming, start here.
• Record and Playback
  Automating a series of tasks with a macro. This is the simplest form of macro programming and the basis for more advanced techniques.
• From The Beginning
  Making full use of the SmartCAM macro system.
• Creating a User Interface
  Using Custom Control panels and dialogs.
• Debugging your Macros
  Finding and fixing problems with your macros.

Additional Resources

The following additional resources are available to aid in learning how to Automate SmartCAM.

• General Programming Tutorials/Books/References
  SmartCAM's macro system works very much like all other procedural programming languages, scripts, or macros. General programming concepts found in other languages work the same in SmartCAM's macro language. While the language syntax may not match, the general concepts found in online and printed materials for DOS Batch language, Visual Basic, VBA, C, WordBasic, perl, and other languages may be of assistance.
• SmartCAM User Forum ("Join the SmartCAMcnc Email Forum" shortcut in the SmartCAM section of the Windows Start menu) - allows SmartCAM users to help each other.