Where to download an mDraw.Exe which works

#1

The mDraw.exe inside the “latest” gitHub zip file says “This is not a Windows 32 bit program” when I try to run it.

Can these idiots ever ever ever get one thing right?

#2

Have a look inside the “dist” folder within the unpacked strcuture, which should contain OS-specific folders for Mac and Windows, giving the exes.

I posted this issue about this time last year when I initially found the same problem you did with the higher-level exe, mdraw announcement thread , but then found the dist folders.

I think the FAQs might benefit from some updating.

#3

Here are images which show the zip file contents and the exe I tried to get to work. Does yours have a different size/date/something?

mDraw-zip.gif1120x494 77.8 KB

mDraw-file.gif882x796 99.7 KB

#4

Ok, the answer is that the application in the github download is a Windows 64-bit build. I just tried it on my 64-bit machine where it ran fine, but on the XP machine I got the error message you got. Thinking about it, this was exactly the problem I first had with the older GRemote system, it shipped with a 64-bit executable. I’m afraid the fix for mDraw is a little bit more complicated than the fix I found for GRemote (which was to just dump the 64-bit java run time bundled up and use the pre-existing 32-bit java runtime on my machine).

What you will need to do is build it again on your 32-bit system. You will need Python 3.4 with py2exe as well, which you can usually get via Pip. You will also, I think, need to install pyqt5 to get the dlls for the build, but I don’t think you will need to convert all the forms to py files again.

Possibly the easiest way to do this is to download WinPython and choose the QT5 options which will give you PyQt5 already set up as part of the installation. Here is the 32-bit page. Choose the 32-bit Qt5 option.

Once installed, you then copy the sources under mDrawGui folder to a similarly-named folder in your documents, and use py2exe with setup.py to specify the build. There will be some tweaking you need to do in the build options, I set bundle-files to 1

Incidentally, you can actually run the python source without actually building the exe, if you open mDraw.py with Idle, then choose “run module”, and there isn’t any significant slow down in performance when running it this way, I do most of my modification development running it this way and only produce an exe when I reach a milestone stage. Once python has read in the import files it seems to cache them anyway which speeds subsequent opens.

Or, lobby Makeblock to do a 32-bit windows build :slight_smile:

#5

Thanks for the info. Yes I did the same thing.

I’m not in front of my old XP machine which I’m using with the plotter, but on my Windows 7 machine it works as you describe. I’ll try taking the “new” exe to the XP machine when I have time in the next few days.

#6

Aha! Thanks for clearing this up. Why was MakeBlock silent here about it?

Argh! No! This stuff should really work out of the box. They really have no need for 64 bit execution. I’ll learn what I can from this kit and with a bit of luck know enough to buy from other producers in the future…

Where are they? Why don’t they reply?

#7

I’ve already posted this in the other hot topic but just in case you miss it,

In the latest mDraw, under Distributions folder, “mDraw V1.1 for Windows” works for 32-bit systems

#8

They’re watching but talking! Thanks for the heads up…!

#9

That should have been:

“Watching but NOT talking…!”

#10