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We’re always looking for ways to improve Easel and make your experience even better, and no one knows what’s needed more than the people using it every day.
We’d love to hear your feature requests! What’s something you’ve wished Easel could do? What would make your workflow smoother, your projects easier to design, or your time in Easel more efficient and enjoyable?
This thread is focused specifically on feature ideas and requests. That could mean tools, design improvements, workflow options, or anything else you’d love to see added or improved in the software.
Your input helps us better understand what matters most to our community and plays a big role in shaping what we work on next.
Hello @AshleyMiller,
Thanks for opening up this thread! One feature I’d love to see in Easel is layer locking and grouping—it would really streamline complex designs and prevent accidental edits. Adding custom grid snapping settings could also boost precision and efficiency. Excited to see how Easel evolves with community-driven ideas!
“Bed Levelling”: this draws from 3D printers, but it’d be great if we could probe Z height at multiple locations (especially automatically) and have the software account for variations in the gcode.This could literally be as simple as the users specifying how many such probes they’re willing to do (1,4, 16, etc.), and being responsible for moving the probe puck each time. This could greatly help with surfacing and whatnot.
Ball nose bits, and other variable geometry bits in 2D cutting.
Thanks so much for sharing these ideas, James! Out of curiosity, do you usually work on designs that have a lot of overlapping shapes or parts? I’d love to hear more about the kind of projects where this would be most helpful.
And I really like your note about grid snapping! I appreciate you taking the time to jump in and share your thoughts
Thanks for sharing all of this, Matthew. There’s a lot of thoughtful detail here, and I’d love to make sure I’m fully understanding what you’re envisioning, especially around the 2D/3D workflow and the probing idea.
If you’d prefer to continue the conversation over DM or email, feel free to let me know. Either way, I really appreciate you taking the time to share your input!
I just sent a more detailed DM, and I’m happy to discuss it further. But that ball nose endmill is a BIG request, I know from basically all of us who want to do 3D carving.
Here’s a bunch of ideas I’ve had over the years, in no particular order.
Better support for repeated workflows.
Right now if you want to repeat the same cut on a different piece of material, you have to repeat all the steps, including setting the Z-Index. (It’s also easy to mis-click the Set x/y button when you mean to reuse the previous setting. I’d love to have a specific workflow for repeating the previous cut that allows you to skip over setting the Z and X/Y coordinates.
Not only will this be faster in the software, but it’ll also reduce the time by not having to take the dust collection on-and-off. There’s obviously a small risk, especially for surface & V cuts, but if we understand the risks, it would help a lot with batching out products.
Assignable “Layers” for different cuts.
I envision this as a way to handle complex cuts that require different bits without resorting to multiple workspaces (which is very error-prone). If we could assign objects to different layers, each layer could have it’s own cut settings. And easy way to represent this would be to colorize the layers.
With this, we could finally resolve some of the more common frustrations, such as having a V-Carve project use the V bit for the outside perimeter.
Along the same line, it might be nice to have an option to simply allow the use the “roughing” bit for outside perimeter through cuts. One way I could see this working is the roughing bit would be used for cutting almost all the way through, and the detail bit is used just to finalize the details and then free the piece at the bottom. This would allow the process to still just use 2 setups, the shape wouldn’t be freed before completion, and we could still use really fine bits without having to make dozens of passes on the outside edge.
Allow “even spacing” to work with grouped objects.
Ask for dimensions on importing SVGs.
I have a lot of trouble with SVGs coming in at the wrong size. I think the SVG import should ask what the dimensions should be, and possible offer quick options for common import errors. For example, mine seem to always come in at 75% of the expected size.
This might be too hard to make work, but it would be cool to have a way to define one of the dimensions of a shape as relative to the material thickness. I envision this as a way to make cutouts that still work without rebuilding your entire design if you measure your material and it’s a slightly different size, such as for box joints or dados.
But I think this gets into the weeds pretty quick as you start thinking about anchoring the shape.
Inverted depth. Right now all milling is thought of as amount to subtract from the top, but sometimes it’s more important what’s preserved.
I don’t know how this would be implemented exactly, from a UX perspective, but the key ideas I have are:
Some (or all if necessary) dimensions are how much is left, rather than what is removed. I like the idea of some, since it works well if you change your material’s thickness, and want only some details to change depth and not others.
Could, theoretically, offer a 2-step Z-Index check, where we measure to the wasteboard/bottom then move the bit up so it’s above the material (exact top-height wouldn’t be needed if there’s no dimensions that are based on material subtraction).
This works really well with some types of batching products (#1), since if we’re cutting all the way through, we don’t care about the exact Z-index so much as ensuring the bit always cuts down to the wasteboard.
Simple layout tools. This doesn’t need to be fancy, but it would be nice to be able to quickly layout a bunch of objects with consistent spacing, such as in a grid or just simple packing.
Saved x/y locations. I’d love to have a bunch of saved X/Y locations I can refer back to. I know I can type them in, but it would be even better to just have them saved (preferably with labels). This way I could much more easily use jigs and fixtures for repeated operations—or even just making aligning one-off things quicker.
Hello Ashley, I love easel am using it now a couple of years and have no intention to move on to anything else. But I have to tell you I wrote on the forum a couple of weeks ago about easel slow to take any changes and today I have the same problem reaction time is very slow.
Hi Ashley, posted a request for scroll bars for the product view window on3/10. I could repeat that post but it may be easier for you to look it up. Thanks Fred Knox
On the left side of the screen: could you please add rulers for XY axis, with the ability to put guide lines in the design piece for easier alignments?
It would be nice if you could make it easier to repeat paste items based on the positioning of the first pasted item. IE: hitting V would place a series of the same object equally spaced calculated on the position of the first piece you paste.
Could you PLEASE add the ability to shut off a cut without either changing the cut to 0 or creating a new work piece? This would help immensely.
Maybe add the ability to specify which bit is used for roughing cuts (It seems when I use 1/4" for roughing and 1/8" for finishing, it wants to use 1/8" to cut out the piece when a 1/4" would be quicker).
Maybe a second finishing bit, to decrease time. There are many times I have cuts that an 1/8" would be perfect for, but I have to use 1/16" or 1/32" due to smaller items. A chance to specify 1/8" where appropriate and 1/32" where appropriate would be very helpful.
Thank you for your consideration. I love the program.
[quote=“TimothyLeavitt, post:13, topic:162092”]
Maybe add the ability to specify which bit is used for roughing cuts (It seems when I use 1/4" for roughing and 1/8" for finishing, it wants to use 1/8" to cut out the piece when a 1/4" would be quicker).
[/quote]If you look at the new “outline” feature in beta (it’s explained on the forum by the Easel dev), it would let you take care of this. It lets you use a third bit for ‘outlines’ as opposed to your roughing and detail bits.
We just announced a new feature that will let you specify a bit to use for cut outs. Check out the details here and opt in to try it out and give us feedback:
My requested feature is a v-bit inlay process. The fit and flexibility of this method would be exciting to use…and available in most other CNC software. I also would like to see what @TimothyLeavitt suggested: ability to specify which bit is used for roughing (it is a simple request and easier to do than adding Outline Bits).
HI Ashley
I havent read the threads - but have noticed plenty complaints in the past about adding tools or toolsets to EASEL. You are very limited at the moment, unlike all the competitors - is there a reason for this ?
