This is a feature I believe I have seen in other cnc control systems, but I believe is it especially useful for plasma tables. The idea is if you have a heavy plate on the table that is not exactly square to the machine coordinates, you can somehow mark the edges and have the controller automatically rotate the work coordinates to more easily allow you to fit the parts to be cut to the available stock. The best description I have seen for the process for this is in a post from about a decade ago in a linuxCNC forum here. basically you would set your work coordinate zero in the bottom left corner of stock, jog the torch to the top left corner to align the y axis, then jog the torch to the bottom right corner to align the x axis.
Alternatively, a function to display the stock currently on the machine would be very helpful. Basically use the torch to define the corners of the stock, and have it show up in the machine display in firecontrol. This would make positioning the file much easier as you would be able to see where the cuts will land without having to do a dry run. Positioning and rotating the file would still be manual, but the display showing the actual stock will make things a lot easier.
I have not been able to do what you are asking…or at least have not figured out how to do that. But, I have frequently used the rotate image to match the the available space on the metal. It is a lot of trial and error and you rotate, set your origin of the work piece and zero all axes. Then you move the torch around to make sure that all parts of the image (looking at the visualizer in FireControl) are still within the boundary of the metal on the table. In this method you need to keep looking at the actual position of the torch to the metal and the image on the visualizer.
It is not a very fancy process but it works.
There may be something in the XR platform since it has auto-squaring and the the limit switches are all part of the system. With the smaller tables, limit switches are basically an add-on feature.
This would be nice, not sure what it would take to make it happen. Not sure how heavy of plate your talking about, but if your slats are clean I can move a 4x8 sheet of 1/2" enough to square it up.
This would mostly be helpful for very heavy pieces (like that half inch plate, I’m surprised that will slide well enough to do that) or if a cut is going to use a large portion of the stock. Being able to see the stock in the program or being able to align the cut to the stock more easily will help a lot with positioning the cut on the material without having to do a dry run. It helps avoid both moving heavy materials and could potentially cut down on setup time.