CIMCO File Compare

[SlaveCam]

Still using CIMCO as NC file comparer, because I have not been able to find a better one.

Why does it highlight the rest of the line even though only G90 should be highlighted? This is giving me unnecessary work, because now I have to check that the coordinates are identical as well (which of course should be the comparer's job).

[Colin Gilchrist]

Beyond Compare 4. (Or they might be on release 5.0 by now)

By Scooter Software. 

Worth the price. It does the best for comparing NC Code. It doesn't just do line-by-line matching.

It will actually scan through to match 'sections' of NC Code. In addition, there is an option for 'aligning sections manually'. This is very helpful when there are 100's of extra lines of code. You can manually align the Tool Change sections, and it really makes it easy to copy > paste large sections of NC Code. 

[Tim Johnson]

On 8/22/2021 at 1:31 PM, SlaveCam said:

Still using CIMCO as NC file comparer, because I have not been able to find a better one.

Why does it highlight the rest of the line even though only G90 should be highlighted? This is giving me unnecessary work, because now I have to check that the coordinates are identical as well (which of course should be the comparer's job).

When I received my new computer I upgraded to Version 8. Version 6 was MUCH better for comparing files.

[MIL-TFP-41]

Notepad++ with the compare plugin is way more robust than the Cimco editor.

Downside...if you compare a file that you pulled out of a control & it stripped the spaces (like Fanuc's do) the compare doesn't work with that...but Cimco still will work.

[Leon82]

35 minutes ago, MIL-TFP-41 said:

Notepad++ with the compare plugin is way more robust than the Cimco editor.

Downside...if you compare a file that you pulled out of a control & it stripped the spaces (like Fanuc's do) the compare doesn't work with that...but Cimco still will work.

You can add the spaces back in with cimco

[SlaveCam]

My preferred choice of comparer has been Winmerge because it's free but I just tried Beyond Compare and without any fiddling it seemed to do a better job and had more "intelligence" when comparing two NC files. Can you share a ruleset for standard Fanuc, Colin? Though I bet it's not a big effort to create one myself (ignore N lines and comments and tokenize the G-codes so that order would not matter).

12 hours ago, MIL-TFP-41 said:

Notepad++ with the compare plugin is way more robust than the Cimco editor.

Downside...if you compare a file that you pulled out of a control & it stripped the spaces (like Fanuc's do) the compare doesn't work with that...but Cimco still will work.

Do you know where to d/l the said plugin for fanuc?

[Metallic]

I appear to be a total noob with this but I am guessing you do this because you want to compare old code vs new code? I find that I am usually reposting code and trying to avoid hand edits if possible.

 

Mind educating an ignorant soul on what the value of something like Notepad++ would be for the CNC programmer?

[#Rekd™]

Notepad++ is free….lots of people using it for editing posts etc. 

[David Colin]

19 hours ago, SlaveCam said:

My preferred choice of comparer has been Winmerge because it's free but I just tried Beyond Compare and without any fiddling it seemed to do a better job and had more "intelligence" when comparing two NC files. Can you share a ruleset for standard Fanuc, Colin? Though I bet it's not a big effort to create one myself (ignore N lines and comments and tokenize the G-codes so that order would not matter).

I don't know if 'tokenizing' Gcode location can be set but it would be a great feature!  @Colin Gilchrist ?

[SlaveCam]

On 8/25/2021 at 2:23 AM, Metallic said:

I appear to be a total noob with this but I am guessing you do this because you want to compare old code vs new code? I find that I am usually reposting code and trying to avoid hand edits if possible.

 

Mind educating an ignorant soul on what the value of something like Notepad++ would be for the CNC programmer?

Every time I repost I compare the new file with the existing one in the machine's memory. Operators have a habit of putting M0/1's and tool breakage calls, or change speeds and feeds. Then I update my "master" mastercam file, if needed. Those are the only hand edits allowed.

Also when updating mcam or making changes to a PST I like to compare my "reference" NC file with the previous one to make sure nothing has broken.

There are other uses as well..

[#Rekd™]

On 8/24/2021 at 7:23 PM, Metallic said:

I appear to be a total noob with this but I am guessing you do this because you want to compare old code vs new code?

When you update your post (example going from MC 2021 - MC 2022) it is always a good idea to compare some code to make sure it is similar.

[Colin Gilchrist]

On 8/25/2021 at 1:40 AM, David Colin said:

I don't know if 'tokenizing' Gcode location can be set but it would be a great feature!  @Colin Gilchrist ?

Not sure which program you're referring to?

I've used Notepad ++ with the G-Code Language plug-in. It was nice once I got all of the color highlighting and brace-matching setup. But this was also at a company where I had admin rights to my computer. Sadly, I don't have that luxury where I'm at now, so I work with what I've got.

I have both Notepad ++ and Beyond Compare 4.0 (or 5?) on my laptop at home, and I find myself defaulting to Beyond Compare most often when I'm working with comparing G-code files. It just does a great job of comparing and allowing you to swap chunks of code back-and-forth between the two windows. There is a vertical "document map" which shows two columns that represent the entire document, so you get great visual feedback about "where you are at" in the program. This is especially helpful with Posts. You can use the "align with" function to match up the start of Post Blocks, to see where there are differences between the NC Code.

I find that there isn't a single software that does everything well, so I use the tools at my disposal to take care of the task at hand.

For example; someone else mentioned getting a NC Program where the 'spaces' have been stripped out of the NC File. I will typically open these files in the Cimco Editor, and "add spaces". I will use Cimco, because it ignores all the comment strings, and only puts spaces between the G-code and M-code tokens.

Then I bring the files into Beyond Compare to do my alignment and comparison. I like the feature in Notepad ++ for "strip spaces at the end-of-lines". So I will often open one or both of the text files inside Notepad ++, simply to strip the extra spaces. (but only at the ends of the lines). Sure, it is a pain to open another program, just to strip off the last space character, but it is a task where I don't have a similar function available in Cimco or Code Expert Editor.

[David Colin]

I was referring to Beyond compare about Gcodes location (and why not Mcodes and XYZcodes). I tried it and it does a great job with alignment and showing exactly what characters are different on each line and allowing to swap between windows. Regex is great too to set syntax colors or make rules to filter not important differences (like Ncodes). However I wondered if it's possible to go further with blocks location on the line(which may not be important). 

[Metallic]

2 hours ago, #Rekd™ said:

When you update your post (example going from MC 2021 - MC 2022) it is always a good idea to compare some code to make sure it is similar.

That makes sense, thanks. I can see the utility for sure, on my end specifically for post editing.

[Corey Hampshire]

2 hours ago, Colin Gilchrist said:

I've used Notepad ++ with the G-Code Language plug-in.

What is the plugin called? I would like to have it for Notepad ++. I searched and didn't find anything that seemed to be the right one.

[MIL-TFP-41]

1 hour ago, Corey Hampshire said:

What is the plugin called? I would like to have it for Notepad ++. I searched and didn't find anything that seemed to be the right one.

This is the one I have installed, along with the compare plugin

https://zero-divide.net/?shell_id=151&article_id=4809_notepad-absolutely-free-g-code-editor-with-code-highlighting

 

[Colin Gilchrist]

1 hour ago, Corey Hampshire said:

What is the plugin called? I would like to have it for Notepad ++. I searched and didn't find anything that seemed to be the right one.

Technically, it is a User Defined Language, which is why you're probably not finding it.

Download the one that MIL-TFP-41 listed above. (Zero-Divide does great work)

or...

At one time, I had tweaked a couple of different UDL files for Notepad++ for general Fanuc G-Code, Siemens 840D, and Heidenhain, but I don't know that I saved those UDL files when I left the place I was working at the time. (PCX Aerostructures)

[Watcher]

On 8/22/2021 at 12:39 PM, Colin Gilchrist said:

Beyond Compare 4. (Or they might be on release 5.0 by now)

By Scooter Software. 

Worth the price. It does the best for comparing NC Code. It doesn't just do line-by-line matching.

It will actually scan through to match 'sections' of NC Code. In addition, there is an option for 'aligning sections manually'. This is very helpful when there are 100's of extra lines of code. You can manually align the Tool Change sections, and it really makes it easy to copy > paste large sections of NC Code. 

Best money I ever spent in a piece of software.