Inspecting a Step

Once a strip chart has told you where, the Step Info column tells you what. Every panel in it is a view of the one selected step — except the panel at the top, which deliberately is not, and the reason for that exception is worth knowing before you read the column.

Where it is

The Execution page at /execution, rightmost column, switched on and off from the quick-toggles on the menu bar. Most of it stays empty until a step is selected, and selecting one is a click on a strip chart or on the tool path in the 3D canvas.

Sentence Syntax, and why it sits outside

The top panel is the odd one out, and it is placed outside the step group on purpose: a line of NC need not produce a machining step at all. A tool change, a coordinate selection or a comment is a sentence with no motion under it, so a panel that reads sentences cannot be a member of a group keyed on steps.

It shows the sentence's own text and the reading the interpreter made of it, with a badge naming the file, the line and the sentence, and a button that copies the parsed form.

Its two empty messages say different things, and the difference matters:

No sentence selected — nothing is picked yet.
This line has no executed SyntaxPiece — a line is picked, and it did not run in this session. That is an answer, not a gap: the line was skipped, or it belongs to a pass the run never reached, or the session has been reset since.

The sentence it follows comes from two directions: selecting a step brings its sentence here, and so does clicking a line in a Program file panel. That is the bridge between reading the program and reading the run.

The rest of the column

Below the group bar every panel is a view of the same selected step.

Panel	What it shows
Step Properties	The step's values, for the fields you have chosen
CWE	The cutter–workpiece engagement — what the cutter was actually touching
Sim Cutting Force Cycle	Simulated cutting force through one spindle revolution
Sim Spindle Moment Cycle	Simulated spindle moment through the same revolution
Sensor Cutting Force Cycle	The same force as measured by a dynamometer, against time
Sensor Spindle Moment Cycle	The same moment as measured, against time

The two sensor charts are present only while their checkboxes on the Preference menu are ticked; both are off by default, so a column nobody has configured ends at Sim Spindle Moment Cycle.

The group bar above them carries the step number as a badge, or No step selected. That badge is the only place the step index is shown — Step Properties leaves that row out rather than repeat it, so when S.I. is among the keys you chose, the list you configure and the list you see differ by one row.

Step Properties shows short names. Hovering a name gives the full one, and the unit follows the value. A field with nothing in it reads -.

CWE is a footprint, not a solid. It is a small 3D view of its own, drawing the contact contours the step left behind rather than the volume it swept, because contours are what a step stores. It has its own view controls and a contour-grid toggle, and it reads No cut in this step for a step that removed nothing — a rapid, or a move in air.

Two scales, and the join between them

The strip charts beside this column and the cycle charts inside it are the same measurements at two scales: the strip charts span the whole mission, the cycle charts span one revolution of one step. Changing the selection on a strip chart re-reads every cycle chart, so scrubbing the mission scrubs the detail with it.

The two simulated charts plot against spindle angle in degrees; the two sensor charts plot against time in seconds, because measured data arrives on a clock rather than on a phase. Both sensor charts need measurement data attached to the project; with none, they read No data for step while the simulated pair beside them is full.

Each cycle chart's header carries a value boundary — Auto, or a fixed ± bound that pins the scale so two steps can be compared without the axis moving under you — and a reload. The two spindle moment charts carry one more: a Line / Dartboard switch, where Dartboard replots the same cycle as a locus in the plane instead of three channels against the cycle parameter. Sim Cutting Force Cycle carries a frame switch instead — To workpiece / program or To tool / tool-running — choosing whether the plotted force is the one on the workpiece, in program coordinates, or the one on the tool, in the tool's running coordinates.

Clicking a point in a cycle chart marks that point for its whole group. The two simulated charts share one mark in spindle angle; the two sensor charts share another in seconds. The mark survives a switch between Line and Dartboard and a change of selected step. The simulated pair's mark also reaches the CWE panel: the cutter in that view rotates to the angle you clicked, so “the force peaked here” and “this is what the cutter was touching there” become one picture rather than two. The sensor pair's mark is a time, not an angle, so it stays on its own two charts and leaves the cutter where it is.

The column with a step selected and the other three columns toggled off, so it fills the window: Sentence Syntax at the top, the step badge on the bar below it, then Step Properties, CWE and the two simulated cycle charts. The two sensor charts are absent — their checkboxes on the Preference menu are off, as they are by default.

Choosing what Step Properties shows

Step Properties does not show everything a step carries — it shows what you asked for, out of a much longer list. The small button on that panel's header opens the chooser, beside the list it configures.

Candidates are on the left, grouped into categories; a category header ticks or unticks the whole group, and Add Selected moves what you ticked across. Anything already displayed is greyed with a tick beside it, so the left side never offers you a duplicate. The displayed list is on the right, in the order it will appear: drag a row, or use its up and down buttons, and remove one row at a time or Clear the lot. Reset, on the dialog's header, empties the list entirely; Clear and Reset each ask you to confirm first.

There is no Save button, and that is not an omission. Every add, removal and reorder is written as you make it, and the header reports the write — so the way to undo an experiment is to put the rows back, not to close the dialog.

The chooser open over the column, at /execution. The counts in its header are this account's displayed list against every property a step can present; the green ticks down the candidate side are the rows already on the right.