AutoVectors Studio

What's new in AutoVectors Studio

Every change to AutoVectors Studio, newest first — what it does, and the measured number behind it.

Showing the 10 most recent. Older releases are archived by year below. Each entry describes Studio as it was on its date.

  1. Smoother on a nested kit, and one frame around a selection

    v0.32.0

    Dragging, panning and zooming a finished nest

    Studio painted the red overlap shading for every pair of parts whose boxes touched, even when none of them overlapped — on a finished 90-part nest that was 183 pairs shaded for nothing on every frame. It now shades only pairs that really overlap. Measured on a 90-part nest at 1900 px on an Intel iGPU: the time between frames during a drag fell from 22.9 to 15.4 ms, dragging through the pile from 24 to 17 ms (worst frames 47 → 24 ms), and on the demo kit the raster per frame from 35 to 13 ms. Real overlaps still shade red exactly as before.

    Rotating and node editing paint once per move

    Rotating by a corner grip, dragging a node or a handle, and dragging a cut line's end used to paint the whole roll twice per mouse move — once stale, once fresh. Every repaint now goes through one gate and the stale one is gone.

    Dragging with the Autonest panel open

    With the panel open, every mouse move re-prepared the whole kit for nesting (18–46 ms per move). The per-part preparation is now remembered until a part is rotated: 21.9 → 3.3 ms per move on the demo kit, so the panel can stay open while you arrange. What gets nested is unchanged — the run rebuilds its own inputs.

    Opening an .ai file

    Turning the file's bytes into text was done the slow way, twice per file. Cold open of a 3.3 MB CorelDRAW .ai: 478 → 126 ms; EPS in proportion. Byte-for-byte the same parts — the fixture test pins the .ai against its SVG and PDF.

    One dashed frame around a selection

    Selecting several parts drew a dashed box around each of them — with the whole car selected, a salad of dashes. There is now one dashed rectangle around the whole selection, the same frame the rotate grips and stretch handles sit on. A single part looks exactly as before.

  2. The dropdown list is ours too

    v0.31.1

    Every list a field opens now matches the workspace

    The list under Roll, Format, Start of cut, Rotation, Search time and the plotter screen's pickers used to be drawn by the browser in its own grey with a system-blue highlight — the one surface left off the system. In current Chrome and Edge it is now the same plate, corners and shadow as every menu, with the chosen row in cyan. Browsers that cannot style a list yet keep the native one; the field itself is unchanged.

  3. Every surface on one system, and the roll never moves

    v0.31.0

    The rest of the workspace, finished

    The Export and Autonest panels, the plotter screen, the right-click menu, the Save menu, the shortcut editor, the corner-radius panel, the privacy notice, the Gravity controls, the node-editing, symmetry and reduce-nodes strips, and the whole phone layout now wear the same plates, pockets and keys as the ribbon. One primary action per panel, recessed fields with small labels above them, drawn icons instead of typed symbols, checkboxes that match, menus without borders.

    Panels drop over the roll, not onto it

    Opening Export or Autonest, entering node editing, symmetry check or reduce nodes, and the nesting progress line used to push the whole drawing down and let it back up when they closed. They now drop from the ribbon OVER the top of the roll, like the ribbon's own second line does on a narrow window. The drawing stays exactly where it was — through every panel, mode and run. The Gravity card also stays in place while a shake or a nest runs instead of vanishing and shifting the cards after it.

    Smaller things

    Autonest's fields sit on one baseline. Stop keys are amber as intended (a stylesheet order bug had hidden the colour). The phone chip row fades at its edge so a cut-off key reads as "more", the overlap pill no longer covers the ruler, and the More sheet's rows share one weight. Escape closes the shortcut editor even when the rail button still had focus.

  4. Nothing above the roll moves, and nothing yellow tells you what you can see

    v0.30.1

    The ribbon never pushes the drawing and never leaves a gap

    Since 0.29.1 the ribbon kept the tallest height it had needed, so that selecting a part could not move the canvas. On a wide screen that left an empty band under the cards after the first selection. Now the ribbon is one row tall, full stop: if it has to wrap on a narrow window, the second line lies OVER the top of the roll like a flyout instead of pushing it down, and when it unwraps nothing is left behind. The worksheet chips ("4 sheets · 13.6 m film", "Try 470 cm sheets") moved from the ribbon to the footer, where status belongs — on a 1900 px screen the ribbon no longer wraps at all.

    No more yellow strips for things that worked

    "Shake settled the layout 14.7 cm shorter", "Opened … 54 parts", "Saved", "Aligned 3 parts", "Cut out: kept …", "12 parts placed inside cutouts" — all gone. The result is on the roll already. A strip may now say only that something did NOT happen: a file that could not be opened, a shape left out of an import, a nest that found no room, a shake with nothing to move, a Keep that overrode a check. And the strips that remain float over the top of the roll instead of pushing it down.

    The pen is a nib now

    The last one read as a mouse arrow. This one has the rounded back a real nib has, the vent hole, the slit, and a holder running off to the top-right.

  5. The workspace, machined

    v0.30.0

    Commands sit in pockets, not in twenty little boxes

    Every command in the ribbon used to be its own bordered box, all the same weight, so nothing was louder than anything else and "Send to plot" looked like "Demo". The ribbon is now four milled pockets — Roll, File, Layout, Output — with the commands inside as plain keys lit from above, and one filled emerald key standing alone at the end of the run: Send to plot. When you select something, its size, rotation and mirror controls arrive in a fifth, lime-tinted pocket, so the static half of the bar and the half that acts on your selection read as two things.

    One icon set

    All icons are now drawn on the same grid at the same stroke. The Pen tool is a nib — the old three dots on an arc read as dots and a circle, not as a pen. Select is outlined like its neighbours, Measure is redrawn at the rail's size, and the active tool wears a cyan bar on the rail's edge you can find without reading it.

    Gravity says beta

    It still has gaps, so it says so on the card the way Send to plot does.

    Smaller things

    Numbers in fields and the footer are tabular, so a size no longer jitters while you drag. Keyboard hints are drawn as keys. The overlap warning is a chip. Import notes about ignored text and pictures are gone (0.29.2). Nothing moved: the ribbon is 4 px taller on a wide screen, and the Export panel, the Autonest panel and the plotter screen still wear the old style — they are next.

  6. Opening a template says nothing when there is nothing to say

    v0.29.2

    No more notes about text, labels and pictures

    Nearly every real template carries a "TOP" label, a logo bitmap or a dimension line, and none of them is ever cut. Studio used to name each one in a yellow bar above the roll, which pushed the drawing down to tell you something you did not need. It now skips them in silence. The line that said the file had opened in the preview is gone too — the preview is open on the right with the parts in it.

    What still warns, and why

    Anything that means CUT GEOMETRY is missing or that the size may be wrong still says so: a curve left out because its spline type cannot be converted exactly, a shape skipped because its transform could not be read, PLT arc commands that are not supported yet, a drawing whose width and height imply different scales, a PDF where only page 1 was imported. Those are about the cut, and Studio will not go quiet on them.

  7. The workspace stops moving when you select a part

    v0.29.1

    The ribbon grows, but it no longer drops back under you

    On a screen narrow enough that the ribbon cannot hold every card on one line, selecting a part pushed the size, rotate and mirror cards onto a second line and moved the whole workspace down; deselecting moved it back up. The ribbon now keeps the tallest height it has needed at that window width, so selecting and deselecting changes what is in the ribbon and never where the drawing sits. On a wide screen, where everything already fits on one line, nothing is reserved and nothing changes. Resizing the window starts the measurement again, so a window you make wider gives the space straight back.

  8. Across the roll: the job can start at the plotter's edge, and the ruler counts from it

    v0.29.0

    Start at the plotter's edge, or where the sheet has it — you pick

    Two 51 cm squares placed at the top of a 152 cm roll asked the plotter for 1490 mm, because the plotter counts across the material from its origin edge and the squares sat at the far one. The plotter screen now has an "Across the roll" choice. "Start at the plotter's edge" slides the parts across so the nearest one starts at the origin edge, keeping their spacing — the width the sheet needs is then the parts' own width, 515 mm for those squares. "Where the sheet has them" cuts them exactly where they sit, as before. The edge is the default, and on a nested sheet it usually changes nothing: the nest fills the working width, so its parts already reach that edge. Where it does change something is a hand-placed layout, and the last worksheet of a nest when what landed on it does not reach the edge. Along the roll a job still always starts at its first part. The picture and the width check are drawn from the bytes, so both follow the choice, and changing it withdraws the width confirmation. The choice is remembered.

    The left ruler counts from the plotter's edge

    The plotter counts across the material from its origin edge — the right-hand edge as you face a cutter that homes on the right, which is the bottom edge of the sheet on screen. The left ruler now counts the same way: 0 at the bottom edge of each worksheet, the width at its top, the grid laid from that edge, and in a stack of worksheets every sheet restarts at its own bottom edge because every sheet is its own plotter run. The footer readout for a selected part says how far along the roll it starts and how far its nearest edge is from the plotter's edge. Nothing moved: the parts, the files and the plotter get the same coordinates as before; only the numbers you read changed ends.

  9. Send to plot takes the whole window, and the picture zooms

    v0.28.4

    The plotter screen replaces the workspace

    Press Send to plot and the plotter screen fills the browser window: the width check and the Cut button on the left, the picture of the cut taking all the rest. "← Back to workspace", the ribbon card or Esc brings the layout back exactly as you left it — same zoom, same selection. On a phone the Export sheet has a "Send to plot" button that opens the same screen, with the picture under the controls.

    Zoom and pan the picture

    Scroll to zoom about the cursor, drag to move along the roll, pinch on a phone; the keys + − 0 do the same, and a double-click fits the width again. At 1280 × 720 the picture is 716 × 460 px, at 1400 × 900 it is 834 × 600 — where 0.28.3 drew a 3.4 m sheet as a 130 px strip in a 1400 × 350 box. The scale, the tick labels and the words stay the same size at any zoom, and the cut lines never move: only the window over them does.

    Fit width, Fit sheet, and what a pixel is

    The picture opens at Fit width: the plotter's full width across the window, the start of the sheet at the bottom, the rest of the roll above to pan up to. Fit sheet shows the whole sheet at once. Beside the buttons a readout says what one pixel stands for — "1 px = 2.3 mm" zoomed out, "1 mm = 3.2 px" close in.

    Re-nest at the number that passes

    A sheet that is too wide now offers "Re-nest at 662 mm" on a plotter that reads 667.8 mm — the plotter's width less the 5 mm edge allowance, and the card says so. It used to offer 667, and a kit re-nested at 667 came back blocked by 4.2 mm.

  10. The picture matches the machine, and you pick the sheet

    v0.28.3

    The plotter picture puts the origin at the right, as on the cutter it was proved on

    On the cutter Studio was proved on, the origin is at the front right — the carriage homes there and the width is counted right to left — and 0.28.1 drew it at the left, a mirror of the machine. The picture now puts "0" and "feed ↑" at the bottom right, the scale on the right, the band of what your sheet needs growing from the right edge and any overflow red on the left, and the caption names the side, so a cutter that homes on the left is obvious at a glance. The bytes never changed: every square and sheet you cut before cuts exactly the same.

    Pick the sheet to cut

    With more than one sheet on the workspace, a row of buttons — Sheet 1, Sheet 2, Sheet 3 — sits above the width check; pick any one and the preview, the width check and the Cut button follow it, with the width to confirm again after every pick. Cut sheet 3 first, skip one, or cut a sheet again after a ruined piece. The test square still comes first on a plotter this browser has not cut with.

    Sent sheets get a tick; the next one is suggested, never forced

    A sheet that went to the plotter shows "Sheet 2 ✓" and stays pickable — its button then reads "Cut sheet 2 again". After a send the panel suggests the next sheet without a tick, wrapping round to the lowest one, and says so when every sheet is done. The ticks last for this browser session and disappear from a sheet you re-arrange, because that is no longer the sheet that was cut.