Learn/GcodePilot/Jogging & control
Jogging
Updated v2.3.5At a glance
- Keyboard continuous and step jogging with host-planned motion on any supported firmware
- Jog targets are clamped to the travel envelope — works even without limit switches or homing
- Speed set as a percentage of the machine's max feed; step menus follow the display units
- Shuttle path-follow jog (plasma) runs the torch along the programmed path to any point
- Jog HUD and hotkeys: on-screen arrows and keyboard jogging with a live step and speed readout
Jog from the keyboard: arrow keys for X/Y, Page Up/Down for Z (rebindable in Settings → Keyboard). Hold
a key for continuous motion, or open the JOG dropdown on the bottom bar and pick a fixed step —
Cont, or unit-aware increments from 1″ down to 0.0001″ (10 mm to 0.001 mm on a metric machine) — for
one step per tap. The − % + stepper sets jog speed as a percentage of the machine's max feed, and a
change applies live, even to a jog already in motion.
Planned motion, clamped to the envelope
Continuous jogging doesn't lean on the firmware to figure out where to stop. GcodePilot plans the full
accel/decel profile itself and streams the trajectory as $J= waypoints, planning the deceleration to
land exactly at the travel envelope — so a held key glides to a stop at the boundary instead of
faulting, and clamping works even on a machine with no limit switches or homing. On the bundled FluidNC
builds that advertise firmware jogging, continuous jog hands off to the controller's native jog engine
for the tightest response; everything else uses the host path automatically.
Click-jog and the Jog HUD
Toggle Click-Jog in the JOG dropdown and a viewport tap drops a green target at the clicked X/Y — Tab commits a controlled, cancellable move to it at the jog speed (Z stays put), and targets set while moving queue up in order. View → Show Jog HUD floats a draggable on-screen jog pad over the 3D view that drives the exact same pipeline as the keyboard — same continuous/step behavior, same speed, same gating.
Shuttle: jog along the program
On plasma machines the left-toolbar Shuttle toggle drives the machine along the loaded program's path — hold ↑/↓ to run forward or backward along the toolpath at the jog speed, XY only, slowing through corners so it traces them. Park the torch anywhere on the path and the Play button offers to start the program from right there — see Run From Here.