topic Re: help needed for a macro in PowerMill Forum

help needed for a macro

benettitec01 — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 12:56:15 GMT

hello

I have this macro that let me choose wich toolpaths It reverses the machine head. unfortunatelly the update time is sometime too high so I decided I had to input a macro pause.

But so that I have to look at the process , wait for the updating, and lately confirm the macro pause to go forward.

Is there someone that can help me to avoid to manually confirm for each toolpath? I don't know how to make the macro consider the update time.

Here is my macro, and thank you for helping

entity list $tps = input entity multiple toolpath 'SELEZIONA PERCORSI'

Dialogs message off
foreach $tp in $tps {

EXPLORER SELECT Toolpath "$tp.Name" NEW
ACTIVATE TOOLPATH $tp.name
FORM RIBBON TAB "MachineTool"
MODE TOOLCONTROLPAD START
MODE TOOLCONTROLPAD FLIPORIENTATION

STRING Msg = "riavvia se ha aggiornato"
MODE TOOLCONTROLPAD UPDATETOOLPATH
MACRO PAUSE $Msg

MODE TOOLCONTROLPAD ACCEPT
FORM RIBBON TAB "MachineTool"
FORM RIBBON TAB "Home"
TEXTINFO ACCEPT
DEACTIVATE Toolpath

}
Dialogs message on

Greetings

Re: help needed for a macro

benettitec01 — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 15:08:26 GMT

UNLUKILY I don't understand why, also using macro pause, the macro only flips the axis orientation.

sometime rotate 180 degrees, sometime flips 360 degrees.

here is my macro again: because when I mirror I can't flip manually all the toolpaths!!!

entity list $tps = input entity multiple toolpath 'SELEZIONA PERCORSI'

Dialogs message off

foreach $tp in $tps {

STRING Msg = "riavvia se ha aggiornato"

EXPLORER SELECT Toolpath "$tp.Name" NEW

ACTIVATE TOOLPATH $tp.name

FORM RIBBON TAB "MachineTool"

MODE TOOLCONTROLPAD START

MODE TOOLCONTROLPAD FLIPORIENTATION

MODE TOOLCONTROLPAD UPDATETOOLPATH

MODE TOOLCONTROLPAD ACCEPT

FORM RIBBON TAB "MachineTool"

FORM RIBBON TAB "Home"

MACRO PAUSE $Msg

}

Dialogs message on

well...... thanks to the solver, if.

greetings

danny

Re: help needed for a macro

rafael.sansao — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 17:59:19 GMT

Você pode responder algo assim no fórum:

Hi,

I updated your macro slightly to make it a bit cleaner and avoid some unnecessary overhead. However, macros that interact with the Tool Control Pad and force a toolpath update are inherently slow in Powermill, because each toolpath must be recalculated after the orientation change.

So unfortunately you will probably not get a much faster result than this when using a macro.

Here is the updated version:

ENTITY LIST $tps = input entity multiple toolpath 'SELEZIONA PERCORSI' DIALOGS MESSAGE OFF GRAPHICS LOCK FOREACH $tp IN $tps { ACTIVATE TOOLPATH $tp.name SIMULATE TOOLPATH $tp.name MODE TOOLCONTROLPAD START MODE TOOLCONTROLPAD FLIPORIENTATION MODE TOOLCONTROLPAD UPDATETOOLPATH MODE TOOLCONTROLPAD ACCEPT TEXTINFO ACCEPT DEACTIVATE Toolpath } GRAPHICS UNLOCK DIALOGS MESSAGE ON

This should behave the same as your original macro but with slightly cleaner execution. However, since each toolpath still needs to be recalculated, the execution time will mainly depend on the number and complexity of the toolpaths.

Unfortunately, macros do not have a faster internal way to flip the orientation of multiple toolpaths.

Hope this helps.