LatheEasyStep – experimental QtVCP macro for step-by-step lathe programming

I know the macros, and I think they are useful. But my goal is something more holistic, closer to the way I’m used to working.I want to create a program, work through it step by step, and be able to go back at any time to change something or reuse individual steps. That’s how I’ve always worked on industrial machines. At work, I actually always wanted to use Heidenhain controls, but in reality I mostly ended up with Siemens. Both are good systems, but they offer a structured, process-oriented way of programming that goes beyond single, isolated macros.As far as I know, LinuxCNC doesn’t really offer something like this out of the box. That’s why I started writing it myself, and I will continue developing it until it reaches a level where I’m satisfied with the result – no matter how long that takes.The existing macros are good, but they usually solve only one small task at a time. For me, that’s not enough. I’m looking for a workflow-oriented solution, not just individual helpers.I’m primarily writing this for myself, because I plan to actually work with it later. I do think other people could benefit from it as well, but that’s just my personal opinion. For that reason, I’ve already made the current state partially functional and public. It is clearly not finished.If there is a better, complete solution available, I’m happy to look at it. If not, I will carry this project through to the end, because in the end I need a tool that fits my way of working.If you know of existing concepts, examples, or similar approaches, feel free to point them out. I’m always open to ideas.

@Mark

Andys Marcos are great, but i think its something different. you only can do one task at a time as far as i know, right?

@aDm1N
You said in your last post "as far as I know, LinuxCNC doesn’t really offer something like this out of the box." That confuses me, because I already wrote about NativeCAM on the previous page. You didn’t respond to it specifically, but I simply assumed that you were already familiar with it. It’s possible that you overlooked it or that you just don’t like the tool. both are perfectly fine. However, if you simply missed it:NativeCAM does exactly what SIEMENS ShopTurn does. You write your program directly on the machine, editable and with a preview.The only thing is that the contour function was never fully completed back then and would need to be added by someone who can program. It’s called “Polyline” and already exists in milling, where it works perfectly. It just hasn’t been implemented for turning yet: 

 
 

NativeCAM is an interesting project, but it has a fundamental issue today:the codebase is very old (Python 2, GTK2/PyGTK) and has not been actively maintained for quite some time. I have taken a closer look at the project locally and am currently trying to get it running on a modern system (Debian 13, Python 3, LinuxCNC 2.10). At the moment it already fails at the basic dependency level, since Python 2 and PyGTK are essentially unavailable on current distributions. Before discussing any functional extensions, a significant porting effort is required (Python 3, GTK3/gi).Only if NativeCAM can be made stable on a modern system does it make sense to consider whether and how the lathe functionality could be extended or reimplemented. For now, my focus is not on new features, but solely on determining whether the project is still technically viable as a future foundation.

There is a version of nativecam in a linuxcnc branch that mostly works.
It's a work in very slow progress. It's based on Qt.
github.com/LinuxCNC/linuxcnc/tree/qt_ncam

There is also another project I've seem on the forum that keeps it gtk based and just updates it to python3 and whatever pygtk is called now.

But I would suggest you just finish what you have built, as it seems you are pretty far along.
You could always convert it to another platform later.