What's new

What changed in each version of 454 Workshop, newest first. The version you have is shown in About 454 Workshop, in the menu, and beside each app’s name in its header.

Changes that affect how the machine moves or cuts are marked (cutting). After an update with one of those, air-cut your next job before cutting material.

The full record, in more detail than most people want, is the change log on GitHub.

0.7.0-beta.5

27 October 2026

• Back to Jog from the BitZero panel. In 454 Control, Probe… on the Jog & zero panel opens the BitZero panel with a ← Back to Jog button, so you can carry on jogging after probing without opening Jog & zero again. It’s greyed out while the probe runs.
• A newer tool builds the installers (electron-builder 26), for its security fixes. The app inside is the same; the Windows installer is a few MB larger.

0.7.0-beta.4

26 October 2026

• Tools are set up in panels, not typed codes. In 454 Design, Array, Rotate and Copy open a panel beside the drawing: pick the shapes, fill in plain boxes, and the result shows dashed before you click OK. The History bar can change a rotation’s angle or a copy’s distance afterwards.
• Array does rows and columns. A row is horizontal or vertical, and Rows repeats it as a grid: shelf-pin holes in two columns in one go.
• Rectangle, Circle, Ellipse, Polygon and Star have a panel too. Leave the size empty to draw by eye as before, or type it and each click places one, with a dashed one following the pointer. Polygon’s sides and Star’s points have − and + buttons, and a star is two clicks.
• Make toolpaths (the wand in the Toolpaths panel) looks at a drawing and proposes toolpaths: parts cut out with tabs, holes cut through, and round holes a drill in your library fits drilled. It says what it left out and why, and adds nothing until you click Add. (cutting) Check each toolpath, and air-cut, before cutting material.
• A drawing keeps its units. Made in inches, it opens in inches on any computer.
• Fixes: dimensions stay on their edges after Fillet corners; Fit fits what’s drawn (or the material when nothing is); Extend works on the open ends of joined shapes; closing a message with its X takes it off the list of recent ones; the panels remember their settings after Design is closed; a dimension on an array’s copy keeps it after the copies are changed on the History bar.

0.7.0-beta.3

26 October 2026

• Construction lines stay attached. In 454 Design, a construction line drawn from a circle’s centre, a corner or a midpoint follows when that shape moves or changes size. Drag the line itself and it lets go.
• Mirrored copies stay mirrored. Move an original, resize it or change its dimension, or move the mirror line, and the copy follows. Change a copy by itself and it lets go. Untick Keep the copies mirrored for plain copies.
• Shift+D shows or hides the dimensions, for a clear view of a busy drawing.
• Tidier: the tool’s prompt sits above the History bar instead of on it, and goes away when no tool is chosen. Dragging a dimension’s value out of the way is no longer a step on the History bar.

0.7.0-beta.2

24 October 2026

• Security update. The desktop app now runs on Electron 42, which brings the latest security fixes for the browser it’s built on. Nothing should look or work differently; if anything does, tell us.
• 454 Control works on a computer without 3D graphics. The 3D preview says it can’t be shown, and everything else works as usual. Before, nothing in Control could be pressed on such a computer.

0.7.0-beta.1

24 October 2026

• Version 0.7.0. Still a beta: the betas count again from 1.
• A shorter way round the holes. In 454 Design, drilling, chamfers and profiles now take a short way round their shapes instead of the order you picked them in, and a shape inside another is cut first. On a sheet of 90 holes, the bit’s travel between them dropped by more than half. (cutting)
• Lift inside a part. A new setting in Job setup: between holes and slots inside a part that an Outside profile cuts out, the bit lifts only this far, 2 mm say, instead of 6 mm. Off unless you set it. Use it only when nothing stands on your parts. (cutting)

0.6.2-beta.67

24 October 2026

• Keep lined up. In 454 Design, turn on the chain-link button in Align and nest, and the Align buttons keep shapes lined up: a hole centred on a board stays centred when you make the board wider, by a dimension, a parameter, the History bar or a drag. Select a shape to see what it follows; click its chain marker to stop.
• Concentric, and Same width, Same height, Same size. Four new buttons beside Align’s. Kept, three holes the same size as the first follow when you type a new diameter into it.

0.6.2-beta.66

23 October 2026

• Fixed: the Z nudge took minutes, and the readout didn’t show it. In 454 Control, on a file with long rows (a surfacing pass), the nudge waited behind minutes of the job already sent to the machine. Control now sends only a few seconds ahead, so the nudge lands within seconds, and the Z readout includes it: it shows where the bit is. (cutting)

0.6.2-beta.65

23 October 2026

• Fixed: the Z nudge didn’t move Z on some files. In 454 Control’s Adjust panel, on a file that gives the depth once (a surfacing pass), the panel changed but the bit stayed where it was until the end. Now Z moves straight up or down by the nudge, a few moves after you press it. In an inch file the nudge is in millimetres, as the panel says. (cutting)

0.6.2-beta.64

23 October 2026

• A quieter History bar. No note when you’ve gone back a few steps: the marker shows where you are.
• Choose which app opens at start. In the desktop app, Window → Open at start picks 454 Design or 454 Control for this computer: Design on the laptop you draw on, Control on the one by the machine.
• Only what can be done now can be pressed. In 454 Control, while the machine is moving on its own (pausing and lifting, ending a job, going to XY zero, homing), every other button that would move it is greyed out, and so are the keys and the game controller. STOP never is. Resume can be pressed only when there’s something to resume.
• No Spindle speed in the Adjust panel with a router, whose speed is on its dial.
• Fixed: Resume after Pause & lift carried on from the wrong place. In 454 Control, it went back to the start of the cut (or the next toolpath) instead of where it stopped, and pressed while Z was still lifting, or a second time, it did nothing. It now carries on from where it stopped, waits for the lift to finish, and says when there’s nothing to resume. (cutting) Try it with an air cut first.
• You can see which file is open, and whether it’s saved. 454 Design’s header shows the drawing’s file and Saved or ● Changed, not saved, and the window’s title shows it too, with a • while it has changed.
• Dimensions survive Fillet, Trim, Join and Explode. In 454 Design, a rectangle’s width and height stay when you round its corners, and a line’s length stays when you join it into an outline. One whose shape is really gone is removed, with a note, instead of “lost its reference”. A toolpath that cut a shape that’s gone says so.
• A material thickness no machine could cut is asked about. In 454 Design, typing a thickness over 100 mm in Job setup asks if it’s right, and says what it comes to (11.9 typed in inches is 302 mm). Save G-code asks too when a toolpath goes deeper than its bit’s cutting length or 100 mm.
• Z to +6 mm goes to 6 mm above your Z zero. In 454 Control’s jog panel, the button (was Z +6 mm) now takes Z up or down to 6 mm above the Z zero you set, as Carbide Motion does, so you can check the zero with a 6 mm block. It lifted 6 mm from wherever Z was. It needs the machine homed. (cutting)
• Dimensions show just their value. In 454 Design, a dimension that follows a parameter shows its number; point at it to see the parameter.
• Your parameters are listed as you type a value. Start typing in a dimension’s box and your parameters appear under it with what each comes to. Click one, or press Tab.
• Ramps go faster. In 454 Design, a profile or pocket ramps in as fast as the cutting feed allows, with the bit coming down no faster than your plunge rate (it used the plunge rate all the way). Ramp in: Ramp, slowly keeps the old way. Down the side of a 3D tab, the bit now comes down no faster than the plunge rate too. (cutting)

0.6.2-beta.63

23 October 2026

• History steps can follow parameters. In 454 Design, a step’s size (an offset’s distance, a fillet’s radius, an array’s count, spacing or angle) can be a parameter or a formula; change the parameter and the step and everything after it are worked out again.
• Array is on the History bar, and can be changed later like the other steps.
• An easier History bar. An icon instead of the word; a marker you drag to go back and forward through the steps; and right-click a step to go to it, change it, or delete it. When you’ve gone back, the right-click menu can remove all the steps after the marker.
• Toolpaths left out of a run show faint. In 454 Control’s preview, the toolpaths you untick don’t stand out as if they’ll be cut.

0.6.2-beta.62

22 October 2026

• Changing the material thickness shows the Working panel. In 454 Design, a new thickness in Job setup works out the toolpaths that follow it again, one at a time, with the panel showing which, instead of looking frozen.
• Fixed: with Z zero at the bottom of the material, a new thickness left most toolpaths at their old heights. Only through cuts were worked out again, and Save G-code would have written the others for the old top of the material. Every toolpath now follows the thickness when Z zero is at the bottom. (cutting)
• Fixed: Pause didn’t lift. In 454 Control’s run bar, Pause & lift now stops the machine and the spindle and lifts Z to the top, on any Shapeoko (the old button relied on a firmware feature stock Shapeokos don’t have). Resume brings the bit back down where it stopped and carries on, with the same adjustments; End job finishes instead. (cutting) Try it with an air cut first.
• Fixed: Z +6 mm in the jog panel did nothing. It now lifts 6 mm from where Z is (less near the top).
• A clearer Adjust panel. Four labelled rows, each showing what it’s at now: Feed rate, Spindle speed, Rapid moves and Depth nudge (▼ deeper, ▲ shallower), with the units on every button.

0.6.2-beta.61

22 October 2026

• Fixed: a toolpath ran very slowly after left-out toolpaths or a tool change. A toolpath at the same feed as the one before has no feed of its own in the file, and the BitSetter’s slow touch left the machine at 40 mm/min. 454 Control now always sets the file’s feed again. (cutting)
• Fixed: files in inches. 454 Control’s own moves (lifting, parking, the tool-change position, the BitSetter) are in millimetres, but in or after a file in inches the machine read them as inches: a lift stopped far short of the top, and parking could ask for a spot far past the end of the machine. They now always run in millimetres, and the file’s own units, feed and modes are put back after them and after every tool change. (cutting) Air-cut your next inch job.
• The Windows icon shows the whole logo, not just the 5, on the taskbar and the desktop.

0.6.2-beta.60

22 October 2026

• Run only some of a file’s toolpaths. In 454 Control’s Toolpaths tab, untick Run on the toolpaths to leave out, and Start runs the rest: no need to go back to Design and save the G-code again. Before each toolpath after a left-out one, the machine lifts, changes the tool if the left-out one loaded it, goes to where the toolpath starts and starts the spindle. (cutting) Air-cut the first time, and check that a left-out toolpath wasn’t the one that cut a part free.

0.6.2-beta.59

22 October 2026

• Change tool measures the new bit. In 454 Control, Change tool in the jog panel went to the tool-change position and then offered only Done, without measuring, if the BitSetter hadn’t measured the bit when Z zero was set (answering Later, or reconnecting, left it without one). Now it measures the bit that’s in first, with the spindle stopped, then parks, then measures the new bit, so your Z zero is kept. (cutting)
• Dimensions can be dragged out of the way. In 454 Design, with the Select tool, drag a dimension’s value. A distance’s line moves out to the side, with thin lines back to the edges it measures, and its value slides along it; a diameter or radius can go anywhere, with a thin line back to its circle. It stays where you put it when the shapes move. Esc during the drag puts it back, and Undo undoes a move.

0.6.2-beta.58

22 October 2026

• Handles as in VCarve. In 454 Design, selecting a shape shows its scale handles straight away. Click the selected shape again for rotate handles (curved arrows at the corners, and a centre you can drag); click again to go back to scale. A double-click on text opens it for editing.
• Midpoints you can see. While drawing, the pointer snaps to the middle of every side: lines, rectangle sides, polyline and outline segments (the middle of a curve) and arcs. A triangle and the word Midpoint show when it does; ends, corners and centres keep the small square.

0.6.2-beta.57

20 October 2026

• A change made back in the history keeps the steps after it. In 454 Design, click an earlier step on the History bar and change something: the change goes in there, as in Fusion, and the steps after it stay. Come forward to them (click a later step, or Redo) and they’re done again on top of your change. One that can’t be, because its shapes aren’t there any more, turns red and is skipped. They used to be dropped.

0.6.2-beta.56

20 October 2026

• The port chooser names your machine. Connecting in 454 Control, each port is listed by its name, such as Carbide 3D Shapeoko 5, not just a path like /dev/ttyACM0. The one that looks like your machine is first, marked, and already chosen. On Linux, the ports built into the computer, never the machine, are out of the way under Show all ports, and a long list scrolls with Cancel always in view.

0.6.2-beta.55

20 October 2026

• A moved curved outline is drawn where it is. An outline with curves in it, such as one made with Join, was still drawn where it had been after it was moved (dragged, nudged, pasted, centred or nested), though it had moved, and its holes went with it. Its toolpaths followed where it really was. If you moved one before this update, close and open the drawing to see it in its true place, and check its toolpaths.

0.6.2-beta.54

20 October 2026

• A Tools menu. In 454 Design the menu bar now has Tools, after View, with every tool on the toolbar in the toolbar’s own groups: Draw, Change shapes, Move and copy, Combine, Text and Align and nest, then Dimension, Measure, Parameters and the guides. Each does what its button does, and shows its key.

0.6.2-beta.53

20 October 2026

• The Edit menu edits the drawing. In 454 Design, Edit now has Undo, Redo, Cut, Copy, Paste, Paste in place, Duplicate, Delete, Select all, Group and Ungroup, each doing what its key does. Before, Edit → Undo didn’t undo a drawing step, and Select all selected the page’s text. While you’re typing in a box, Cut, Copy, Paste, Delete and Select all still work on the text.

0.6.2-beta.52

20 October 2026

• Jog with a game controller. An Xbox-style controller, USB or Bluetooth, as a pendant at the machine: the sticks jog while held, the D-pad steps, B stops. Switch it on in Settings → Accessories. It only ever jogs or stops: it can’t start a job, set zero or run the spindle. See Game controller.

0.6.2-beta.51

19 October 2026

• The History bar takes less room: each step is its tool’s icon (a rectangle, a fillet, an offset), and pointing at one shows its name, when it was made, and why it was skipped if it’s red.

0.6.2-beta.50

19 October 2026

• The History bar, along the bottom of the drawing: every change you make is a step, named for what it did (Rectangle, Fillet 6 mm, Offset 3 mm, Weld). Click a step to see the drawing as it was just after it, and a later one to come forward again. The history is saved in the drawing’s file. See History.
• Change a step, as in Fusion: double-click it, change its numbers (a rectangle’s size, a fillet’s radius, an offset’s distance, how far a move went), and every step after it is done again. Fillets, offsets, mirrors, welds, joins, trims and moves follow the change; toolpaths cut the shapes as they now are. A step that can’t be done again turns red and is skipped, never guessed at. Undo takes a change back.
• A new or opened drawing starts its own history: the drawing that was open is in its file, or put aside for Recover.

0.6.2-beta.49

19 October 2026

• The Inlay wizard. Select the shapes, press + and choose Inlay: choose the carving bit (a V-bit or a tapered ball nose) and the end mill, set the depths, and Create makes both halves, the pocket and the plug, each in a group, with the plug on a sheet of its own. See Inlay.
• The + key makes a new toolpath for the shapes selected, as the + at the top of the Toolpaths panel does.
• A Working panel while toolpaths are worked out, so the app never looks frozen: it says which toolpath it’s on, with a bar. Control shows “Loading…” while a big G-code file loads.
• The toolpath editor works nothing out until you press Create or Update, as in VCarve, so typing never lags. Create says so if nothing is selected, or if the shapes can’t be cut (open lines for a pocket), and which were left out.
• Undo and redo are quick again on big projects: toolpaths already worked out are used again, not worked out from scratch. Opening a drawing, and layer and sheet changes, are quicker for the same reason.

0.6.2-beta.48

19 October 2026

• (cutting) V-carving with a tapered ball nose. A tapered ball nose from the tool library is now carved as what it is, a cone ending in a small ball. Before, it was carved as a sharp V-bit of the same angle, which on a bit that narrow is far too deep: a 2 mm wide line came out 10.6 mm deep, not 2.9 mm. Inlays work with one too. A V-carve made before with a tapered ball nose takes its ball when it’s next recalculated: check its depth before cutting.
• (cutting) Fixed: flat-tipped and tapered bits cut past the walls where a V-carve climbs into a corner of an outline made of short straight pieces (text, imported and traced shapes), by up to 0.7 mm. Sharp V-bits were never affected and haven’t changed.
• Fixed: Preview in wood showed V-carves shallower than they’re cut, at corners and down slopes, by millimetres with a narrow bit. It now shows them as cut.

0.6.2-beta.47

19 October 2026

• Fillet corners. Select some shapes and round every corner at once, or only the corners pointing out or in, with round fillets, dog-bones or T-bones. Any corner the radius won’t fit is ringed in red and left sharp. See Fillet corners.
• Toolpath groups. Ctrl+click toolpath cards and group them: a group folds to one line, its toolpaths are ticked, shown and recalculated together, it moves through the cutting order as one, and it can be saved as a G-code file of its own. See Groups.
• Choosing a material in the tool library: click it in a tool’s Feeds and speeds list. The Material dropdown is gone.

0.6.2-beta.46

18 October 2026

• 454 Workshop for Linux, as an AppImage: one file that runs without installing, on 64-bit Intel and AMD computers, and keeps itself up to date like the Windows version. See Installing on Linux. It’s new: it has run jobs against the simulated machine, not yet at a real one.
• Nothing has changed in the Windows version.

0.6.2-beta.45

17 October 2026

• (machine) The computer stays awake while the machine is busy: a job, a probe, a jog or a quick action running, or the spindle on. A computer that went to sleep partway through a job stopped feeding the machine with the spindle running. The screen can still turn off. In a browser, Control keeps the screen on during a job.
• (machine) 454 Control’s 3D view is drawn only when it changes, not 60 times a second. On a computer without graphics acceleration, drawing it starved a long job of lines, leaving the machine waiting mid-cut.
• Change tool… in the jog panel, as in Carbide Motion: the machine lifts, stops the spindle, goes to the tool-change position and waits. With a BitSetter, it then measures the new bit and keeps your Z zero.
• A tidier Machine tab, in the order you work: Machine, Set up (Jog & zero, Probe Z, Spindle), Run job, Quick actions. The spindle controls and the console open in windows of their own, and the jog keys stand out.

0.6.2-beta.44

5 October 2026

• (cutting) The V-bit flattens the floor its clearing cutter can’t reach. An end mill can’t get into the corners of a V-carve’s flat floor, or into parts narrower than itself. The V-bit now goes back over those places at the floor’s depth, as VCarve’s does, so an inlay seats. It’s for a V-carve with its own clearing pocket, an inlay made from now on, and inlay toolpaths from a VCarve project. Make older inlays again to get it. The note about floor left high, added in beta.43, is gone: there’s nothing left to warn about.
• (cutting) Fixed: a pocket with a stepover over 50% could leave a thin strip standing down the middle of a channel, where the rings from the two sides didn’t quite meet. The middle is now cut. Pockets at 50% or less (the default is 40%) were never affected and haven’t changed.
• V-carves and pockets with islands calculate much faster. A V-carve over many shapes that took 14 seconds now takes a fraction of one, and pockets with islands are about four times quicker. The toolpaths are exactly the same.

0.6.2-beta.43

4 October 2026

• (cutting) Fixed: updating an inlay plug’s V-carve lost its start depth. Opening the plug’s V-carve and pressing Update made its walls begin at the surface, so the plug came out small and loose. It now cuts as it did when made. If you’ve edited an inlay plug’s V-carve, make the inlay again.
• Fixed: choosing a clearing pocket’s cutter unlinked it from its V-carve, so a later change to the V-carve’s max depth added a second pocket. The one pocket now follows.
• A V-carve’s clearing pocket says when it leaves floor. An end mill can’t get into the corners of a V-carve’s flat floor, or into parts narrower than itself, and 454’s V-bit doesn’t flatten them. The clearing toolpath now says so on its card, with how high that floor is left. An inlay won’t seat on it: use a smaller cutter, or pare it flat.

0.6.2-beta.42

4 October 2026

• (cutting) Fixed: VCarve toolpaths made editable had wrong depths in projects in inches (a 0.26 in cut came across 0.26 mm deep), and pockets from newer VCarve came across 3 mm deep whatever their depth. Both now get their real depth, with the project’s own cutter size and feeds. A toolpath whose depth can’t be read isn’t converted. If you’ve made a VCarve project’s toolpaths editable before, make them editable again.
• VCarve inlay toolpaths come across: the V-carve, with its start depth and the V-bit’s real angle, and the clearing pocket that goes with it. Toolpaths that use a group or a block of text find their shapes, and each toolpath comes across once, under its own name.
• Fixed: a lone line or arc in a VCarve project didn’t come across, and open shapes were closed. Both now open as VCarve has them.

0.6.2-beta.41

4 October 2026

• Fixed: text in a VCarve project opened in a pile. Every letter of every block of text landed on one spot. Text now opens where VCarve has it, including text on a curve.
• Fixed: a VCarve project zeroed at the centre of its material opened at half its size, with no thickness. It now opens at its real size with its zero at the centre.

0.6.2-beta.40

4 October 2026

• Recent files. File → Open recent in 454 Design lists the last ten projects you opened or saved. Click one to open it again.

0.6.2-beta.39

3 October 2026

• Watch the job cut. Preview in wood has Play, Pause and a slider: the toolpaths cut in order from uncut wood, in 3D, with the bit shown at its real size and shape. Drag the slider to any moment of the job.
• A view cube in the corner of Preview in wood, as in 454 Control: click a face, edge or corner to look from there, while it plays too. It takes the place of the Angled, Top and Front buttons.

0.6.2-beta.38

3 October 2026

• The app checks for updates every 6 hours while it’s open, not every 30 minutes. It still checks when it starts, and Help → Check for updates… checks straight away.

0.6.2-beta.37

2 October 2026

• Open and Import are separate. Open (Ctrl+O) opens a drawing or a VCarve or Carbide Create project; Import (Ctrl+I) brings DXF or SVG vectors, or a picture to trace, into the drawing that’s open.
• A tidier File group with the usual icons (a folder to open, a floppy disk to save), and Undo, Redo, Fit stock and Measure moved into it from View & History.
• The left panel folds away for more drawing room: « at the bottom of its Tools and Layers tabs. Click » or a tab to open it again.
• Fixed: a toolpath hidden and shown again had no tabs on the drawing until it was updated. Every toolpath shown now shows its tabs. (They were always in the G-code.)
• Fixed: Trim. Rectangles can be trimmed, shapes in a group (an imported DXF or SVG) stop a trim where they cross, and trimming a closed shape no longer sometimes removes the wrong piece.
• Fixed: New kept the old drawing’s sheets. A new drawing now starts with one sheet, and without the old drawing’s parameters or name.

0.6.2-beta.36

2 October 2026

• A File menu. The desktop app’s menu bar is now the usual File, Edit, View, Window and Help. File has New, Open, Save, Save As, the exports and Save G-code in Design, and Open G-code file in Control; Help has the help, the docs, updates and About.
• See every pass. The toolpath editor now shows how many passes a profile or pocket takes and the depth of each one, as you change the depth or Per pass. Type a number of passes to divide the depth evenly.
• Fixed: some cuts went round the final depth twice. For sizes such as 3/4 in deep at 1/4 in a pass, the last pass was repeated at the same depth. It wasted time and cut nothing extra; it’s gone.

0.6.2-beta.35

2 October 2026

• A tidier Toolpaths panel. Preview in wood, Preview in 454 Control, Job sheet, Save template and Apply template are now a row of icons at the top of the panel, with an ⓘ that explains them. Save G-code is still the wide button under the list.

0.6.2-beta.34

2 October 2026

• An ⓘ beside each section, in Design and Control. Rest the pointer on it for a line about what the section is for; click it and the help opens at that part of the guides.
• Every setting in Control’s Settings window is explained in the guides, each in a section of its own in the Control reference.

0.6.2-beta.33

2 October 2026

• Help inside the app. Press F1, or the ? button, in Design or Control and the guides open in a window over your work, at the part about what you’re doing, with a search box. Esc takes you back.
• Fixed: the eye on a toolpath’s card now hides and shows that toolpath on the drawing. Before, the icon changed and the drawing didn’t.
• Pictures in the toolpath editor’s help. Every kind of cut, and Stepover, Ramp in, Lead in/out and Tabs, now show a small drawing of what they mean beside the words.

0.6.2-beta.32

2 October 2026

• Name your toolpaths. Type a name in the toolpath editor, or double-click the name on a card. It shows on the card and the job sheet and in the G-code. See the Toolpaths panel.
• A roomier toolpath editor. It now takes over the Toolpaths panel while it’s open, with its settings under headings and the drawing still in view. Click any setting and a help box says what it does.
• Fold toolpath cards to their titles, one at a time or all at once, so a long list fits on the screen. A folded card still shows ⚠ when its toolpath has a warning.
• Fixed: a toolpath whose cut was changed (outside to inside, say) kept its old name.

0.6.2-beta.31

1 October 2026

• Open Carbide Create projects (.c2d), from current and older versions. The shapes, text, layers, material and XY zero come across, in the project’s units. Contours, pockets and V-carves from projects saved by older Carbide Create come in as editable 454 toolpaths; what can’t be converted for certain is left out and named. Check every toolpath, and air-cut, before cutting. See the Design quick start.
• Fixed: a Z nudge stayed on after its job. Nudging Z in Control’s Adjust panel during a job shifted the next job by the same amount, with the panel reading Z +0.00. A nudge now ends when its job does. If you nudged in an earlier version and haven’t set Z zero since, set it again before cutting.
• Fixed: nudge buttons pressed quickly could leave an older nudge in force than the one shown.
• Keep for the next job. Every job starts with feed, spindle and rapid at 100% and no Z nudge. A new tick box in the Adjust panel carries them into the next job instead, which asks before it starts. See Adjusting a running job.

0.6.2-beta.30

1 October 2026

• Add sheets to a project. A project that needs more than one piece of material can have a sheet for each. The + in the Sheet bar, at the top of the Toolpaths panel, adds one; the pencil renames it and the bin deletes it. Each sheet has its own shapes, toolpaths and G-code file. Before, Design could only show the sheets of a VCarve project. See Sheets.
• Fixed: a multi-sheet project drew every sheet’s toolpaths on top of each other (cutting). Only the shown sheet’s toolpaths are drawn now. The G-code was always one sheet’s.
• Trim, Extend, Fillet, Nest, Check and the DXF and SVG exports now work on the sheet being shown only.

0.6.2-beta.29

1 October 2026

• Messages now say “Job setup” where they used to say “Settings”. The material’s thickness is set in Job setup (the material icon, top right of 454 Design), and about ten messages sent you to Settings instead.
• Fixed: a button that did nothing. Saving G-code for a through cut with no material thickness set shows “Set the material thickness first”. Its button now opens Job setup. Before, it did nothing.
• The docs have this page, pictures of parameters, the depth warning and the start point, and a parameters section in the Design quick start.

0.6.2-beta.28

30 September 2026

• Parameters. Name a size once (thickness = 18) with the fx button, use the name in your dimensions, and change it in one place: every dimension using it follows. Arithmetic works too: 600 - 2 * thickness. See Parameters.
• Toolpath depths and tabs can use parameters, such as a pocket material / 2 deep. They are recalculated when the number changes.
• Design warns when a cut would go past the bottom of the material (cutting). Any toolpath that does is marked ⚠ on its card, and Save G-code stops and names it first. Before this, only V-carves warned.
• Every length box takes arithmetic. Type 12 + 3/4 or 600 - 2 * thickness where you’d type a number.

0.6.2-beta.27

30 September 2026

• A beta copy is offered the next beta without any setup. Before, you had to choose Updates → Beta in the menu, or you were never offered an update. If you installed an earlier beta, choose Beta there once.
• The website has a Download for Windows button.

0.6.2-beta.26

30 September 2026

• One G-code file per bit. For a job with more than one bit, Save G-code can save a numbered file for each bit, in cutting order, for running one at a time.
• Toolpath templates. Save a job’s toolpaths (bits, depths, feeds, tabs) and apply them to another drawing with the same layer names.
• Choose where a profile starts (cutting). Set start puts the small mark where each pass begins on an edge of your choosing.
• Fixed: the toolpath editor showed “Clean up after” for every kind of toolpath.

0.6.2-beta.25

30 September 2026

• A tab’s Length is now the wood it leaves (cutting). Before, a wide bit ate both ends of a tab: a 4 mm tab cut with a 1/4” bit left two slivers. Tabs made before this update come out longer and stronger when recalculated, never weaker.
• New toolpaths start with the tabs you used last, and 1.5 mm thick the first time.
• Preview in wood shows tabs, and wood that’s nearly cut through, in amber.

0.6.2-beta.24

30 September 2026

• Preview in wood is a 3D view you can turn, move and zoom. It works without an internet connection.

0.6.2-beta.23

30 September 2026

• Fixed: 454 Control wouldn’t open in beta.20, beta.21 and beta.22.
• Report a problem… in the 454 Workshop menu opens a short form with your version already filled in.

0.6.2-beta.22

30 September 2026

• New drawing tools: Weld, Subtract and Intersect; Ellipse, Polygon and Star; and text on a curve.
• The selection box: type a shape’s exact position, size and rotation.
• Preview in wood: see the finished piece before cutting.
• Pockets can clean up after a larger bit (cutting): clear most of a pocket with a big bit, then cut only what it couldn’t reach with a small one.

Earlier versions

See the change log on GitHub.