Simple step-by-step guide to creating perfect looping tracks

[Pothocket]

Step 1 [i.imgur.com]


Step 2 [i.imgur.com]


Step 3 [i.imgur.com]

[Arcticspyder]

Great job!

[Netpatham]

...That doesn't explain *anything*, though?

[Pothocket]

lol I was just goofing around because the 3rd step is absurd and pointless. If you actually need help with how looping tracks work though feel free to leave a screenshot of the machine you're trying to script and I'll show you how to do it.

[kyojin_desu]

Some actual tutorial would be cool though ;)

[Arcticspyder]

Originally posted by kyojin_desu:

Some actual tutorial would be cool though ;)

Absolutely

[Pothocket]

Ok here's a crash course in track looping. There's a lot of different nuances and problems that can occur but here's the basics.

Do step 1, get your track layout set and script one arm to run on it. This gives you the initial script length that will automatically pad the non-track arms with blank instructions. Fill those blanks with repeats so that those arms continue to interact with each subsequent track-arm. If the instruction length doesn't work out evenly with the repeats you'll need to add one more repeat and force the instruction padding onto the track-arms. It's easier to deal with pauses in instructions on track arms because you have more control over when those arms can pause.

Once you have your final script length you can start copying track-arms. Just ctrl+drag an arm and you'll copy all the instructions along with it onto the new arm. Highlight the instructions on the new arm and drag them back using the grab command for reference. You should know what cycle you want each arm to grab on based on the timing of your solution. In the example shown in step 2 it's every 4 cycles so the arms are timed to grab 4 cycles apart. Then you have to move some instructions from the back of the script to the front. Your copied arm doesn't start on the same spot so it needs move first before it can grab, so you'll always need to move at least one '+' to account for that. For the example it looks like this: https://i.imgur.com/ll9FHbi.jpg

Note that the track arms have a single pause in the instructions which is padding from the repeats on the other arms. Since it's only a single pause nothing has to be adjusted to prevent collisions on the track. Arm 6 is a little farther back because I wanted to make it started sooner so that it didn't "jump" do to the way recording works. All track arms have the exact same instruction loop, they just start/end at different points.

With enough practice you can get pretty much any track stable regardless of length or feedrate. Just get one arm scripted, add repeats to non-track arms, re-adjust track arm to account for any pauses in instructions, copy the arms and adjust their instructions. If anyone has problems getting a loop working just post a screenshot because it's easier to explain