Drawbot Experimental Branch with Look Ahead Ring Buffer

I’ve created a new experimental branch so as not to ruin the latest working version. It has two big changes.

Feed Rates
The old feed rates were units/s.  I’ve adjusted the feed rate setting and display to be in units/minute – call G21 and it will display mm/min, call G20 and it will display in/min. This makes more sense because most machines are rated in in/min. I didn’t think 2cm/s was fast until I converted it and realized I was running almost 50in/min. Not bad for a hobbyist!

Look-ahead Optimization
Let’s say the machine has to draw 5 lines in a row, all in the same direction. In the past the software insisted that the machine come a complete stop between each line segment because the software had no idea what was coming next.
In the latest version the software stores the next several lines in a ring buffer and plans ahead: if the lines are all in the same direction it doesn’t slow down. If they are on a slight angle it slows a little. Anything 90 degrees or more is an automatic full stop.

A generous user on http://reddit.com/r/singleline/ created a new “Hello World” vector that I’ve been using to test and the results are fantastic! Using the old method it took 11 minutes to draw. In the new method it takes only two!

At this point I feel the software is “good enough” and I’m going to focus on pen up/down.