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 Post subject: Re: Another "new gem design app" thread
PostPosted: Mon Jul 03, 2017 1:02 am 
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I have spent a few more hours, trying to work with the tool to recreate an existing design.
This has been the lessons I have learned so far…. IF SOME ONE ELSE HAS OTHER TIPS PLEASE LET ME KNOW
TIPS for working with a rectangle (OR ANY SHAPE REALLY.)
1) With the default square shape, create two temporary tiers both with symmetry of 4 at an angle of something like 50 degrees.
a. One for the pavilion to create the center point
b. One for the crown to establish the girdle width
2) Then cut the 90 degree girdle to set the L/W you want.

( I just tested this again, and it needs some adjusting, when you change the l/w the girdle thickness changes...... )


that is not working either....

Lets try cutting a temp to a ctp, leave it square, then after the center point is there, adjust the l/w
But it still might help with a temp ctp and give me starting points for the girdle at 4 corners that are level.
3) No cut the true pavilion facets, it should find the center point from the temp tier after about 4 - 6 facets are in place, the center point should now be established from the actual facets. You can delete the temporary pavilion tier
4) When you work with the crown, you will find it easier to cut the facets to the temp meet points, which set the girdle thickness. I have found it challenging to set the girdle thickness, when I am starting with just a few faces. After a while, when the true girdle is established, you can delete the temp 60 degree tier.

For now, I am recreating existing designs just because I can then concentrate on learning the tool. Much easier if I know that the angles will in fact work out.

One challenge for me has been that I choose a rectangle design to start with that had 20 facets for the primary angle. This has been a challenge in several ways:
- A standard symmetry has not worked, since it is a rectangle. So I ended up cutting with symmetry of 2 at a time. It took a while before the meet point of the CTP would be recognized.

- It took me a few attempts to come up with the temp tier concept. That has helped

I know that you are looking for bugs and not enhancements.
But I have found several items that have made it harder to work with.

1) Have a TCP toggle, so it knows I want to cut to a center point, instead of having to play with the depth to get it close. (The first 4 facets were hard to get right.
2) It would be nice to have a few other key numbers displayed similar to the L/W that is displayed:
a. A height or thickness number
b. The actual length, height and width. (For when you are designing around a specific piece of rough.
c. A way display girdle thickness. When you start out, the girdle will be one of the edges, I know that if that edge gets totally cut away, you may need a way to have the person identify the girdle
3) Let me enter in some of these values when I am adjusting a width and the l/w is changing and I want to shoot for a specific value.
4) The program is doing a lot of work to try and determine meet points. In this design, I am putting in several facets that all meet at the corner. It would be nice in general if when cutting, I could select a meet point. Even better is the ability to lock in a meet point for a series of cuts.
5) When I cut a number of cuts at the same angle, the program adds them to an existing tier. BUT if I need to try and edit it there is no symmetry that will work. I basically lose all of the work.

RECOMMENDATION:
If I cut a number of facets, leave them as separate tiers, during design. That way if I need to adjust one, (say I did not have it at the meet point for whatever reason,) THEN, in a post design phase, let me edit the cut information. I will sometimes need to do this anyhow to add notes about what meet points to cut a group to. This gets into the fine details of detailing the design so it is a true meet point design. By merging them early in the design process it causes problems. (I ran into problems before I created the temp center point that I talk about above. I had a lot of trouble getting the first few facets correct to form a center point.


6) Last, if I change the symmetry, or mirror, it would be nice if the indexes that are going to be cut were available for display. I am recreating existing designs, and I end up having to make a cut to see what the indexes are. (and when you merge them automatically, if I am wrong, I have to start all over) frustrating when I am shooting for a center point of 20 facets, but very little symmetry other than 2 at a time.


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 Post subject: Re: Another "new gem design app" thread
PostPosted: Mon Jul 03, 2017 2:17 am 
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Rej, I used it as part of my work flow last week, I had perviously designed a custom gem in gem cad and put it into gem ray to have the angles optimized, my machine is an old lee so I can't see exactly where say 45.42 degrees is nor can I see where 45.4 degrees is as it is only marked off in full degrees, so I used your app to round the angles and adapt the deapth of cut to still make the meet, it also made it easy to cut, but ya it's a great app.


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 Post subject: Re: Another "new gem design app" thread
PostPosted: Mon Jul 03, 2017 3:35 am 
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a question.
in the following image, I am trying to get the corner angle to meet by adjusting the angle.

is there an easy way to do this? I am doing it n=by trial and error.

Image


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 Post subject: Re: Another "new gem design app" thread
PostPosted: Mon Jul 03, 2017 5:05 am 
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wilsonintexas wrote:
a question.
in the following image, I am trying to get the corner angle to meet by adjusting the angle.

is there an easy way to do this? I am doing it n=by trial and error.


Not really, this s the issue a few people have brought up. You'd need to be able to select two meetpoints but my app only recognises one right now. I think this will be top of my list for the next beta release.

Regarding rectangular cuts and having to set symmetry to 2, does gemcad offer a way to create rectangles that's quicker than mine, i.e.: all 4 sides at once? I was under the impression that you'd be doing it in two steps there as well..

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 Post subject: Re: Another "new gem design app" thread
PostPosted: Mon Jul 03, 2017 12:48 pm 
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Rej wrote:
Regarding rectangular cuts and having to set symmetry to 2, does gemcad offer a way to create rectangles that's quicker than mine, i.e.: all 4 sides at once? I was under the impression that you'd be doing it in two steps there as well..

Nope, in GemCAD you either have to cut your 96-48 tier then your 24-72 tier, or you have to make a square then use the scaling feature to change it to a rectangle with your desired L/W ratio. There's no easy way to do it.


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 Post subject: Re: Another "new gem design app" thread
PostPosted: Mon Jul 03, 2017 10:44 pm 
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Trying to do Long and Steele's Lazy Oval,

Running into problems getting meetpoints to show up.

I will keep trying,

Alex


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 Post subject: Re: Another "new gem design app" thread
PostPosted: Mon Jul 03, 2017 11:02 pm 
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Alex Edwards wrote:
Trying to do Long and Steele's Lazy Oval,

Running into problems getting meetpoints to show up.

I will keep trying,

Alex


Is the meet meant to be where the two mirror planes meet to start forming the girdle? Then yeah, that's the software's fault. I only show meetpoints that represent the first cutting plane's intersection with what's already cut, in this case you'd probably expect a meet offered where they touch, or if not then at least be able to specify a meet at the midpoint along the temporary girdle you'd have at that point.

There a quite a few bugs to do with mirror from what I see. The meet "lock" issue many are having is related to mirrored cuts as well. Locking should work ok when mirror is set to 0 though, but I'm looking into what can be done for mirror issues right now.

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 Post subject: Re: Another "new gem design app" thread
PostPosted: Wed Jul 05, 2017 8:46 pm 
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Rej, I think once you work out the multiple meet point thing, the program will be a killer application. I really like the 3 views and the ability to adjust a single tier. The way you handle mirroring is very logical, and follows the same thought process of cutting.
Fantastic job.
The only thing I would think needed would be the typical geometric ratios and volumn calculation on the print out. I find these actually pretty useful.

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 Post subject: Re: Another "new gem design app" thread
PostPosted: Wed Jul 05, 2017 10:46 pm 
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Precision Gem wrote:
The only thing I would think needed would be the typical geometric ratios and volumn calculation on the print out. I find these actually pretty useful.

I'd say the ratios are necessary, not just useful. Also, it would be nice to have a number for total height, like Jeff Graham always added to his designs, H/W = (P+C)/W+0.02. It's trivial to calculate, of course, but nice if you don't have to.


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 Post subject: Re: Another "new gem design app" thread
PostPosted: Thu Jul 06, 2017 5:12 am 
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AlBalmer wrote:
Precision Gem wrote:
The only thing I would think needed would be the typical geometric ratios and volumn calculation on the print out. I find these actually pretty useful.

I'd say the ratios are necessary, not just useful. Also, it would be nice to have a number for total height, like Jeff Graham always added to his designs, H/W = (P+C)/W+0.02. It's trivial to calculate, of course, but nice if you don't have to.

The ratios are super useful to me. They give me a very important set of information at a quick glance when trying to figure out what design to use for a piece of rough. Do I need a shallow crown because of the way the rough slopes? C/W ratio. Is the rough deep with a belly or flat and angular? P/W ratio. Is the rough vaguely oval or rectangle shaped? L/W. And for carat weight estimates? V/W3.

They're all super useful for planning, at least for me, and the planning stage is the only reason I can get the yields I do.


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 Post subject: Re: Another "new gem design app" thread
PostPosted: Thu Jul 06, 2017 5:21 am 
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Yes sorry the printout is very much a placeholder to test PDF generation.

There was some discussion about what a "better", more modern format would look like. Arya had submitted an idea in another thread. I don't know if we should just start a new thread about ideas for a new print layout or we just stick to this one but I'm happy to get some feedback on this. I know the final format won't please everyone but I'd love to have people argue their points on what should be included and how it should be layed out. Maybe the old gemcad format is fine...

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 Post subject: Re: Another "new gem design app" thread
PostPosted: Sun Jul 09, 2017 3:04 am 
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Rej wrote:
Yes sorry the printout is very much a placeholder to test PDF generation.

There was some discussion about what a "better", more modern format would look like. Arya had submitted an idea in another thread. I don't know if we should just start a new thread about ideas for a new print layout or we just stick to this one but I'm happy to get some feedback on this. I know the final format won't please everyone but I'd love to have people argue their points on what should be included and how it should be layed out. Maybe the old gemcad format is fine...



I think that we need some way to log the "bugs" and "wish list" and then see the priority you place on them. I know that it is not a democracy. It is your ap, and you can choose how to prioritize things.

That said, if there was some way to have vote buttons (that you have every right to ignore) or a way to assign a relative priority it would be nice. When I worked commercial CAS/CAM there was a priority of "A, B, C...) where A was a show stopper, B was impacted operations, C was a nit......

We also separated BUGS from Enhancements....... But this early some "enhancements" (like multiple meet} are as critical as "A" DR.


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 Post subject: Re: Another "new gem design app" thread
PostPosted: Wed Jul 19, 2017 12:39 am 
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I wont talk about the cutting program as I haven't been using it much, preferring to stick to Gemcad which is pretty simple and can do most things one would like.

However the raytrace part which is integrated with the cutting program works very well indeed. This part definitely has the potential to supersede Gemray.
The colors can be adjusted to a closer match with the stone
The scintillating image produced also seems more accurate than that produced by gemray
So simple and quick to use - please give me more to get my teeth into!

At some point Rej, I'd like to understand a little more about some features. Color density for one.

Every stone I to cut gets a preview in this app. Could it be integrated to Gemcad in real time, so I didn't have to keep saving the Gemcad file to look at it in Gemcut?


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 Post subject: Re: Another "new gem design app" thread
PostPosted: Wed Jul 19, 2017 5:05 am 
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Richard Burton wrote:
At some point Rej, I'd like to understand a little more about some features. Color density for one.


Color density is meant as a means to more accurately represent material where light seems to die out very quickly, like pyrope and some sapphires. The problem is that if you model the light "correctly" according to the proper equations, it sometimes doesn't look right. Maybe it's the fact that computer monitors don't handle brightness the same way our eyes do because of other gem properties, crystal structure, impurities, etc but I'd rather give the user à few more tools to get it right by eye because that's ultimately the way the stone will be perceived.

Clarity kind of falls into this as well, but it's even more of an approximation. It's meant to model à bit of light scattering off impurities or gas bubbles but obviously is correct because there's no blurring. With all these parameters, the goal is to help you evaluate how a cut will perform in a material but it'll never be 100‰. Real-time raytracing means corners will be cut (no pun intended).

Richard Burton wrote:
Every stone I to cut gets a preview in this app. Could it be integrated to Gemcad in real time, so I didn't have to keep saving the Gemcad file to look at it in Gemcut?


Funny enough, the original app idea was to have a "companion" app that just read gemcad files and offered a real-time alternative to gemray but eventually the challenge of writing a full-blown app got the best of me and here we are.

While it would be possible to have my app detect when a file that's loaded is modified and reload it automatically, I can't tap into gemcad memory to pull out the design you're working on. It has to be written to disk, so there could be a combined workflow where you work in gemcad, save the file and GemCutStudio reloads it automatically or at least with a reminder popup similar to "The file has been changed outside this editor, reload?"

To address the question of bugtracking, unfortunately I'm not there yet. This initial release was to get early feedback on the app's direction and it's pretty clear I still have work to do on the "cutting" side. While thats disappointing because it means the app won't ship next week, it's good to catch this early on and not have my app flop or be shot down as useless on its initial release. "first impressions" right?

I've gathered lots of great feedback and I'm hard at work making the experience better. Thanks for your patience.

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 Post subject: Re: Another "new gem design app" thread
PostPosted: Wed Jul 19, 2017 12:21 pm 
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You rule,,, keep up the good work. When this is done its going to change a lot for all of us I think.

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