CNC Software announces the release of Mastercam X3. Mastercam X3 offers expanded machining flexibility and an increased emphasis on speed and automation. Feature Based Machining, new high speed tool motion, and faster toolpath generation combine with dozens of additional new enhancements in a package intended to improve shop floor productivity.

Here are the most significant highlights and new functionality in Mastercam X3:

Feature Based Machining – Almost every shop deals with solid models, and Mastercam delivers a powerful way to automatically mill and drill these parts. Valuable for experienced power users and easy enough for new users, FBM evaluates a part’s features and automatically designs an effective machining strategy.

2D High Speed Toolpaths – The success of Mastercam’s 3D high speed toolpaths leads to new high speed machining expressly for 2D machining. Although optimized for high speed cutting and hard milling, these offer many additional benefits including superior finish and longer tool life.

Faster Multiaxis Toolpaths – Substantially faster multiaxis toolpaths combined with enhanced control lets users get more out of these powerful toolpaths than ever before.

Mastercam in SolidWorks – This powerful new X3 package brings the most popular Mastercam toolpaths directly into SolidWorks. Designers who work with the world’s leading CAD system can now program those parts with the world’s leading CAM toolpaths in the same interface. This package will be released after the general release of Mastercam X3.

Other new enhancements include:

• New controlled engagement toolpath
• Import full SolidWorks history trees
• Expanded support for cutting STL files
• CAD enhancements
• 3D high speed toolpath enhancements
• …and many more