Host software

[Steve Kelly]

Hey everybody.
The past three days I have been getting my friend up and going with a
RAMPS V1.0 on his Prusa. The first two days we worked at my house and
we used GCDump to jog the axes and get feedback off my desktop. It was
good because I was able to teach him G/M codes and he learned how to
manipulate the printer manually. Today I went over his house and got
repsnapper running on his Linux install. Even though repsnapper had
the buttons to manipulate the printer, he always was manually entering
and sending the Gcodes. At this point, the only thing repsnapper has
to offer him is the gcode preview, because he is using sekinforge to
slice.

So the point is, what host software should we be teaching with? RepG
is very plug and play (FiveD/RAMPS being the exception). It takes alot
away from the user though. Repsnapper is still being heavily hacked
on, and I don't know if the will have the new slicing stuff ready by
the end of March. GCDump is very hacker friendly, and the builders
would be able to learn the fundamentals of the printer communication.
It is a command line program though, and only compiles on Linux right
now.

If we were holding this tomorrow, I would say GCDump. By March, RepG
and RAMPS might be the best bet. Anybody know what they did in
Germany?

-Steve