Annoying anomaly where geometry disappears MCAM 2022

[[email protected]]

When looking for geometry on a certain level I noticed something. If you highlight your selected geometry by clicking on it in the selection window, it shows you a yellow dashed line of the geometry regardless of whether the level it's on is visible. If you leave that highlighted and then turn visibility for the level that the selected chain geometry resides on, then turn off the yellow highlight by exiting the chain selection it makes the geometry invisible on the level it actually resides in. you have to turn that level on and off again for it to reappear. Could this possibly be a video driver thing or does this still occur in 2023.

[gcode]

Go to System Config/Selection and see if you have "Glow Highlighting"  enabled

If you do, turn it off

[Colin Gilchrist]

I always disable:

> Glow Highlighting

> Use stipple on solids/surfaces/meshes

> Use dashed on wireframe

These are some of the most performance killing eye-candy, and I prefer the simple yellow highlight of yore. I'm probably a luddite though...

[gcode]

Yes.. I have all those turned off as well

[[email protected]]

Does that stop the behavior where it makes it disappear as well I assume? Thanks I will look into that, have any of you actually experienced what I am talking about? 

[crazy^millman]

3 hours ago, Colin Gilchrist said:

I always disable:

> Glow Highlighting

> Use stipple on solids/surfaces/meshes

> Use dashed on wireframe

These are some of the most performance killing eye-candy, and I prefer the simple yellow highlight of yore. I'm probably a luddite though...

First thing I do for any customer. Everyone has agreed much better to work with Mastercam turning that off.

Sorry not seen your issue. I would make sure Windows update has not jacked up your Nivida settings.

[Colin Gilchrist]

On 9/29/2022 at 10:53 AM, [email protected] said:

Does that stop the behavior where it makes it disappear as well I assume? Thanks I will look into that, have any of you actually experienced what I am talking about? 

I tested what you were referring to, and yes, I get the same behavior.

If I open the chain manager with levels that are invisible, and highlight any chain in the manager, then turn on visibility of those levels, and exit the Chain Manager dialog box, then any chain geometry (multiple chains) on those "now visible levels", are not displayed. You either have to toggle the level visibility again, or run "Regenerate display list" command.

[Colin Gilchrist]

I think I probably use a different workflow to find chains associated to an operation. This may or may not be helpful to you:

First, I turn on the visibility of "all levels". Then I enable the "Display only associative geometry" button, and click on the operation I want to investigate.

Clicking on the operation hides all "non-associated" geometry on the screen. The only geometry displayed is "attached to the operation".

I window-select all the geometry, and then I disable the "Display only associative geometry" button. This leaves the "op geometry" highlighted (selected), but all other geometry not selected.

I then press "ALT + E" for the Screen Hide command. All other geometry is temporarily hidden, and I can now use Analyze Entity Properties, to figure out what levels the geometry exists on. I will often select all the remaining (op) visible geometry, and then use Move Level command to place all the Operation's chains on a new level, or figure out what levels I want to remain visible so I can work with/on that geometry.

Final step after working with the geometry is to press ALT + E one more time, to bring all the other geometry back to visible, and then choosing which levels I want to be visible in the Levels Manager.

24 minutes ago, Colin Gilchrist said:

I tested what you were referring to, and yes, I get the same behavior.

If I open the chain manager with levels that are invisible, and highlight any chain in the manager, then turn on visibility of those levels, and exit the Chain Manager dialog box, then any chain geometry (multiple chains) on those "now visible levels", are not displayed. You either have to toggle the level visibility again, or run "Regenerate display list" command.

This also affects any chain, on a level where the visibility has been toggled, not just the chain you had selected. I had 3 levels with different chains (and other non-chained geometry). When having any chain highlighted in the Chain Manager, and exiting the dialog box, any chained geometry on those levels disappeared. Toggling visibility again restored the visibility of those levels.

[[email protected]]

That is super useful information! I also appreciate you actually verifying the same behavior, then giving such a detailed explanation of your work flow really helps! Ever since I started doing 5th axis 2 years ago it really has opened up my mind to different ways of doing things in Mastercam. I used to be such a stickler for keeping all ops as separate MCAM files to minimize possible confusion. Now I have done programs with my fixtures, soft jaw pockets and all ops including different machines all in one MCAM file. If you stay on top of organization it is possible without too much confusion. I think I will be trying to utilize the level grouping next for more organization. I'm still figuring out whether or not I prefer multiple models for different ops vs multiple planes.