upgrade JobControlX to 11.2? also, upcoming JC"CUT"?

[Dave Garrett]

I've heard the job calculator function is buggy to broken.
I'm not sure if that consensus was for 11.0 and it's been resolved with.2 or not.
As many of you likely rely on the time estimation for customer quotes, you understand why I can safely say that's a deal breaker.
I'm no software engineer, but it seems odd that a working feature would become bungled on an update.
However, I'm patient and my JCX is still mostly solid and reliable.
While we're on the subject, can someone "in the know" fill me in on Job Control "Cut" ?
Is it an add-on for a fee or standard with the next JC?
I would LOVE to see "vector ordering" that works for files with high vector counts. (all of my artwork)
or maybe the ability to stop a running cut job and re-start it later anywhere in the list of vectors.
Of course, if I can't quote a job then all the fancy pants whistle toots ain't squat!
Surely the Tro-team is on it.
Apologies for sounding spoiled to those who learned chinese just to be able to reverse engineer their controller software with minimal success.
Much respect to the laser wizards in the shadows, behind the scenes, on the phones and the SMC! I owe my livelihood to you.

[Scott Shepherd]

I've not heard that the estimator was broken. I have two machines running 11 or higher and haven't noticed any issues with that. I don't use it a lot but I do use it and haven't seen the errors.

JC Cut is separate.

[Kev Williams]

At the risk of sounding like a broken record- My old DOS Casmate has a wonderful vector sorting program, which was initially designed for vinyl cutting. Since the vinyl moves thru the machine from left to right, it sorts everything from left to right, to reduce vinyl backtracking as much as possible. It also will always sort object so holes always cut before outlines...

demo ;)
here I've just drawn a bunch of random boxes, making sure to put some within others--
425386

the sort menu, which I've never changed-
it sorts left-most objects first, but holes within objects take precedence...
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Here's the contour order, and notice the counterclockwise objects are now RED...
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note the inner holes will always cut before what's around it...

NONE of my other graphics programs sort objects this way. So what I'm driving at here, you might check into some cheap or free vinyl cutting software, just for the sorting abilities they may have...

[Scott Shepherd]

I run into that same error of too many objects to sort. They fixed it once and after that, I never had any issues. Seems like it's broken again because I got the message again just this week and I hadn't seen it in years.

Isn't it odd, Kev? Someone makes software that works well and instead of everyone using it's code or logic, they kill off the thing and use stuff that doesn't work as well.

Overall, the sort is pretty powerful. You can do a quick sort or you can have it make a bunch of passes through the sort and it'll refine and refine and refine as many times as you tell it. Quick sort works pretty well.