Keyboard Arrows (Cont'd)

Continuing the discussion from Keyboard arrows: @LightBurn
I have a USB connected keypad, which is “supposed” to act like the keypad on a standard keypad, but apparently, does not. The arrow keys are ignored by LightBurn. They work for Carbide Motion, so I know they “work”. Since the driving computer is a laptop, there seems to be no way to control the movement without using the mouse…which is on the laptop, just barely an arms length from the CNC machine where the laser is attached. This makes it really inconvenient to position the laser.

I understand the desire to reserve the arrow keys for moving artwork…but of course, when I’m printing, I primarily need to move the head, not edit. So…the request would be:

To put a toggle on the Move dialog that would “Take over / lock” the arrow keys for its own usage. You click that toggle on and arrow keys are interpreted as move clicks; pgup and pgdn as Z-Axis moves; Home as home. Then, you can “click it off” to go back to editing if you want to.

THEN…(and isn’t there always more?)…I find the need to type in the distance to be traveled rather cumbersome. In Carbide Motion (which, I agree, is NOT the model for convenience), you can press 1-4 to set default distances (short to long). My workflow in CM is I press “Num Lock” on the keypad, then 1-4 to set the distance, then turn off numlock and use the arrows to move around or plunge. It works pretty well.

Could LightRoom provide some distance defaults assigned to 1-n; only when in the new “Locked” mode; which might even be user configurable?

Thanks for the great product. I’m enjoying learning!

  • Gary

Check that you don’t have this box checked:

Also, if you look at the top of the window, you’ll see this:
image

If you post suggestions there, they’re more permanent than they are here (they don’t sink), other people can vote on them, and it helps us track and prioritize feature development. By all means post here first as a question (“hey, does LightBurn xxx? if not, I’ll add it to Fider”).

I actually found that Feature Suggestions right after I posted…sorry about that. I’ll post it there as well.

Are you suggesting that I change my Windows settings to change the behavior of the mouse based on the arrow keys? That changes all of my workflows everywhere else…so I’m not likely to make that kind of change.

No, I said make sure that switch is OFF - Someone else found that with an external USB keypad, if that switch was enabled the keys didn’t work, but with the switch off, the keys did work. You’d also need to have ‘NumLock’ enabled on the external keypad too, so the keys register properly.

It is not set on…and the keys are not recognized in either numlock on or off. I tried it both ways with no love.

I copied the suggestion into the Feature Suggestion area.

Thank you for any consideration!

This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.