2024 - Stock Setup (Yes, Another Thread)

[neurosis]

2 minutes ago, gcode said:

My training has been 47 years at Hard Knocks U.

I've only had a few minor sit-ins. No official training.  When I sat in with the local resellers we were trying to get to the bottom of some bugs I was encountering. 

I was doing fairly large assemblies back in those days as well and by the time I would get about 4 parts and 20 operations  (machine operations, not tool path operations) deep, you couldn't open the part file without it crashing. 

[#Rekd™]

1 hour ago, gcode said:

I use a separate Machine Group for each operation.

 

Tom are you talking Machine group with stock setup or toolpath group? If Machine group could you post a screenshot of your toolpath manager from any file like this?

[gcode]

40 minutes ago, #Rekd™ said:

Tom are you talking Machine group with stock setup

Yes..and frequently a different machine definition 

[Newbeeee™]

7 hours ago, gcode said:

I use a separate Machine Group for each operation.

Been doing it this way for years

Surely....if you're 'grammin a single part on the one machine - start to finish - there's absolutely no need for this?

Surely.... :shrug:

 

[neurosis]

If I thought that there was enough people still participating on the forum to matter I'd make a poll to see who does and doesn't create multiple job operations under a single machine group and who doesn't.  I'd be curious to know how others are using the software.

[gcode]

I'll do this for simple parts that are going through several machines

Our big parts are too big in file size and number of operations to do this 

 

[Jobnt]

13 hours ago, neurosis said:

back in the X6 era and they told me that in the old days, every operation was a different part file.

Methinks "they" were mistaken. Unless they were talking about GibbScam.

I've been putting multiple ops in the same file since v9.

[#Rekd™]

54 minutes ago, gcode said:

I'll do this for simple parts that are going through several machines

Assuming it is all on one machine, do you still use multiple machine groups?

 

[gcode]

1 minute ago, #Rekd™ said:

Assuming it is all on one machine, do you still use multiple machine groups?

 

Occasionally.. it helps to keep tool lists and stock setups separate

[byte]

Just now, gcode said:

Occasionally.. it helps to keep tool lists and stock setups separate

that's a very good way of working gcode

[neurosis]

13 minutes ago, Jobnt said:

Methinks "they" were mistaken. Unless they were talking about GibbScam.

I've been putting multiple ops in the same file since v9.

They'd been using the software since the very early days. 

I've talked to people during the V9 era who learned how to use the software that way and still did.  One of the guys was doing some contract work for us and training a kid who no longer works for us to use Mastercam. That was the way that he used it.  I think that he'd also been using it since Mastercams early days. 

We purchased MC about a year before X came out. 

For the record, we were also an early adopter of Gibbs. Back when we were using Cimatron it had no lathe module to speak of. 

[Jobnt]

27 minutes ago, neurosis said:

For the record, we were also an early adopter of Gibbs. Back when we were using Cimatron it had no lathe module to speak of. 

I was introduced to CAM with Gibbs when it was Macintosh only and came in 3 separate modules. Then Virtual Gibbs came out for Windows and they discontinued the Mac version. Real shame too because the Mac version was way more powerful than Virtual Gibbs. 

I also used Cimitron for a short stint doing 'trodes. Real powerful but a YUGE learning curve and I hated the way it trapped you in modules.

[neurosis]

1 minute ago, Jobnt said:

I was introduced to CAM with Gibbs when it was Macintosh only and came in 3 separate modules. Then Virtual Gibbs came out for Windows and they discontinued the Mac version. Real shame too because the Mac version was way more powerful than Virtual Gibbs. 

I also used Cimitron for a short stint doing 'trodes. Real powerful but a YUGE learning curve and I hated the way it trapped you in modules.

 

We purchased Gibbs the year that they moved to PC. I can't even remember what year that was.  We purchased Solidworks around that same year so I assume that it was around 1996.

[Jobnt]

10 minutes ago, neurosis said:

Solidworks

I didn't know they were even out back then. I was still using Cadkey doing surface modeling.

[neurosis]

36 minutes ago, Jobnt said:

I didn't know they were even out back then. I was still using Cadkey doing surface modeling.

Cimatron had just started their attempt at adding solids to Cimatron iT.  Their sketcher was so horrible that it wasn't even worth trying to use them.  I'd been surface modeling everything using Cimatron up to that point but even with the horrid sketcher, you could see the advantages to using Solids. 

When we purchased Gibbs, someone talked to us about Solidworks. We'd never heard of it.  We got a demo and purchased it almost immediately. 

When I talk about people using Mastercam the way they did back in the old versions, I do the same with Solidworks.  I learned how to use it in it's early days and now, having not had any updated training, suck with it.  Or at least compared to someone who's been properly trained. Lots has changed, added, etc. since those early days

Prior to that, it was all Smartcam for me.     I'd been using Smartcam since 1988 or so. 

Man have we derailed this topic or what? 

[Jobnt]

11 minutes ago, neurosis said:

Man have we derailed this topic or what? 

Maybe a bit.  

I have no official training with solidworks but I have about 10,000 hours of seat time with it since the 00's so I'm fairly good at it. I knew the first time I sat down in front of it how much of a game changer it would be. 

Smartcam, holy xxxx you're old!

 

[byte]

9 minutes ago, Jobnt said:

Maybe a bit.  

I have no official training with solidworks but I have about 10,000 hours of seat time with it since the 00's so I'm fairly good at it. I knew the first time I sat down in front of it how much of a game changer it would be. 

Smartcam, holy xxxx you're old!

 

you laugh but i did an interview with a company ten years ago and they were still using it, the owner was complaining he couldn't find any programmers who knew the software,

[neurosis]

13 minutes ago, Jobnt said:

Smartcam, holy xxxx you're old!

 

Not too old.  I've been programming since I was 18 years old.  I got kinda lucky.  The shop I worked for at the time just fired their programmer who just happened to be the owners son.    I told the owner that i was willing to come in after work and learn the programming system on my own time.  After a couple of months I was programming parts for them and have been programming ever since.

I had no official training on Cimatron. That was a difficult system to learn.  I had to figure that one out with no training and no help.

[Jobnt]

30 minutes ago, byte said:

you laugh but i did an interview with a company ten years ago and they were still using it, the owner was complaining he couldn't find any programmers who knew the software,

4 years ago I worked at a local place in my small town and the guy used Mastercam v6 or v7 I think. What ever the last version that you could not make changes to a toolpath, you had to recreate it. 

All they did was simple prismatic parts so there was no real reason to upgrade, except nobody would touch it when he was gone so nothing got done.

 

[gcode]

I started with Anicam 1.0 in the early 90's The system was obsolete and I bought it 

from Machining Time Savers for $300.

It ran on an NEC workstation,  13" four color monitor, two 8" floppy drives and 64K of ram.

One disc contained the executable, the second was storage. 

There was no mouse .. everything was driven by key board commands.

The 8" floppies wore out and had to be replaced on a  regular basis.

Eventually I reached a point where 8" floppies were unobtainable, and I had to move on.

I moved up to TekSoft and an IBMXT  with a mouse... that was a huge deal at the time

TekSoft turned into ProCad **

ProCad97 was a crash fest, 98 was worse so I purchased Mastercam V7 in 1998

I bought a seat of SolidWorks in 2000 and still have it on maintenance. 

I don't use it nearly as much as I used to and my skill level with SW is not what it used to be.

In 2013 my employer purchased a seat of hyperMIll which I use for roughing impellers

I still finish them in Mastercam though.

[cruzila]

Wow, I may not be the oldest around here.....when I was a 10 year manual guy we got a computer and a CNC

I learned how to run a computer and software at the same time with Gibbs on a Mac. Still have an old Mac that works and it;s very powerful up to 2-1/2 axis work. simple and fast.

[gcode]

16 hours ago, cruzila said:

Gibbs on a Mac

I briefly worked at a shop that built V8 racing engines from billet

Their main programmer used a seat of 2.5X Gibbs running on an old Apple.

We had several seats of Mastercam and used Port Expert  for the 5X head machine,

He absolutely refused to even look at it.

He had a whole closet full of dead Apples and spent his weekends prowling the swap meets

looking for Apple parts,  He spent more time keeping his last Apple running than he did programming.

[Müřlıń®]

On 6/7/2023 at 4:05 PM, Chally72 said:

If you go into the Simulator tab of Machine group setup, there is a Stock Setup Override in 2024 to explicitly allow this behavior.

 

 

I just installed 2024.....already found a bug for me...

 

I have a 2023 file I opened up with 2024.

The file already had a bunch of created stock models in the manager.

When I click on the Stock Setup Override toggle but do not choose a stock model and just X out of the simulalator popup,  Mastercam crashes every time.