Select ART or Nucleo blocking method

Owned by Tony LeBlanc
Last updated: Oct 21, 2024 by Jonathan Pugsley
5 min read

Selecting ART, ART Premium or Nucleo blocking system-side, by material, by lens style, by order

There are two ways ART or Nucleo blocks can be set up in Rx-Universe.

Firstly, either ART, ART Premium or Nucleo blocking can be set up system-wide, or for a particular lens design or material.  In this case, the job will be blocked on the blocker specified.

A second way is to use one of the previously-existing blocking methods (for example, "7" for the dynamic block list), and ALSO print the appropriate ART, ART Premium or Nucleo block to be used on the work ticket.  Then, when the job is blocked on a blocker, the Set Value, Actual Value, and other fields, will be re-calculated at the time of blocking, and the job marked as being blocked on the particular type of blocker.  In this way, a lab can decide, at the time of blocking, whether to block using the ART, ART Premium or Nucleo technology, or to block on the traditional (usually alloy) block.


The system default for blocking method / block size can be set on the "Setup", "System Settings", "Blocking" tab.  The options are:

  • "U" - Nucleo blocking
  • "A" - ART blocking


The above setting would make ART blocking the system-wide default for all jobs.

To use BOTH a standard blocking method and ART and/or Nucleo blocking, set the blocking method to the standard blocking method, and then choose the option in the "Select ART or Nucleo blocks" section. 

For example, to use blocking method "7" (selection of block using the dynamic selection list), and print both the ART and Nucleo blocks to use, set up the screen as follows:




In this case, Rx-Universe will do calculations based on the standard block selected according to the block selection rules (option "7"), and also pick the correct Nucleo block for the job, and print both on the work ticket, as follows:

The job can then be blocked on either the 58x7 alloy block, the 5-base Nucleo block, or the 5-base ART block, and Rx-Universe will adjust its calculations according to which block was used. 

If only ART blocks, or only Nucleo blocks, are selected in addition to the "default" both, only the pertinent information will be printed on the work ticket.


Specifying ART or Nucleo Blocking for specific lens types or materials

The blocking method can also be specified for specific materials or specific lens styles.  This might be used when only a particular material(s) or style(s) are to be blocked with this method:

Nucleo or ART blocking can also be specified for a particular order:

When Nucleo or ART blocking has been requested, whether system-wide, by material, lens style, or order, the work ticket will show the block to be used:


The "BP1" in this case indicates that "Block Piece 1" should be used (the text comes from the text field on the System Settings screen), and the 65 indicates that a block from the 65mm group should be used.

Setting up the device as an ART or Nucleo blocker

On the Blocker tab of the device screen:

Note the highlighted settings, above:

  • generator prism will usually be set, to minimize prism needing to be blocked.  This is the amount of prism to be reserved for the generator, and the remainder (if any) will be blocked. Note that there is a switch, on the Digital Vendor Device tab, which allows this to be over-ridden for a specific digital vendor.  When over-ridden, all prism requested by the digital calculator (in the KPRVM tag) will be blocked, and no prism will be sent to the generator. 
  • the tape thickness should be set to 0 (since tape is not used with this blocker)
  • the ART blocker flag MUST be set - this causes the interface to accept uploaded data after blocking

On the Digital tab, if you are running Rx-Universe version 7.35.00 or earlier, you SHOULD have the option to save new block info checked - if not checked, the AVAL uploaded from the blocker will not be saved.  In version 7.36.00 or later, this is not required (the ART blocker switch handles it).

Settings on the blocker itself

The ART blocker has two connections to Rx-Universe - one to request job information, in which case it acts as a SBK device, and a second session to upload data - this second session needs to be an UPL session.

Settings for the generator interface

If you are running Rx-Universe version 7.35.00 or earlier, and using an ART-M, the blocker does not upload BLKD and RNGH information.  If the lab uses ONLY ART blocking, you will need to configure the generator interface to set these values.  Do this, on the generator configuration, VCA Over-rides tab, as follows:

Note this is NOT necessary for Rx-Universe version 7.36.00 and later.