MC2024 - Using Stock Model in Verify

[volitan71]

27 minutes ago, crazy^millman said:

When i teach Mastercam one of the first things I tell people is my way is what I have come up with for programming parts. Take what I teach you and use what is helpful to you. Canned training is great to get familiar with the software, but when I teach I use customer parts. I want to use real world examples to teach. As I teach I dump a lot of information into the training. I would rather lay the ground work for what someone can accomplish than limit them to what some book teaches. What are the traps and other things to be thinking about? Why use this method over that method? What are tricks to be faster more efficient when programming? Interact and engage the students and you see the process gain a life of its own.

I use no Ribbons and spread my managers over several screens. For me increases my programming sped by 20-40%. Having the recent functions parked on right side as a toolbar and list as many as the selection. My RMB has things to make life easier with Auto Cursor and Lock Auto Cursor on it. I have the stolen screen space set to 100% since it was stolen from us I want to know it was stolen from us not hide it and then accidentally click on it and loose my chain of thought as I am programming parts. The attributes being tied to the RMB or floating in my opinion was a poor decision from a GUI standpoint. Might be easier from a product development standpoint, but from the end user stand point I hate it.

 

Have you ever shared screenshots of this? I'd like to see it with no ribbon

[rgrin]

16 minutes ago, Aaron Eberhard said:

On the other hand, I did have a customer that wanted each Op as a separate file...

Lol, this is how 99% of the people at my place of work do it.  I think it's an old school holdover from when our computers were not as powerful and nobody sees any reason to change.

I was in the same boat as you guy's using 1 machine group to program a part start to finish.  For the same reasons, I liked sharing 1 tool library for a part.

But I have been dabbling with using the machine group setups and it is nice selecting a "master model" for each op and stock setup/fixturing for each op.  The tool library hasn't been AS important as I thought since I have large magazine and I just program all my parts with the same tools.  I think I am probably just fortunate that way.

Like Millman said, we all need to be exposed to all the different ways of doing something and figure out the way that works best for us.

[crazy^millman]

6 minutes ago, volitan71 said:

 

Have you ever shared screenshots of this? I'd like to see it with no ribbon

Many times. Here is 2024 with my 4 sub menu items and some of the QAT replacements for the Ribbons.

[volitan71]

5 minutes ago, crazy^millman said:

Many times. Here is 2024 with my 4 sub menu items and some of the QAT replacements for the Ribbons.

Thanks!

 

And you have Toolpaths, Levels, Solids etc.. on another monitor in there own separate windows?

 

[Aaron Eberhard]

15 minutes ago, rgrin said:

Lol, this is how 99% of the people at my place of work do it.  I think it's an old school holdover from when our computers were not as powerful and nobody sees any reason to change.

I was in the same boat as you guy's using 1 machine group to program a part start to finish.  For the same reasons, I liked sharing 1 tool library for a part.

But I have been dabbling with using the machine group setups and it is nice selecting a "master model" for each op and stock setup/fixturing for each op.  The tool library hasn't been AS important as I thought since I have large magazine and I just program all my parts with the same tools.  I think I am probably just fortunate that way.

Like Millman said, we all need to be exposed to all the different ways of doing something and figure out the way that works best for us.

A properly set up tool library and a large enough magazine/storage on the machine is worth its weight in gold!  

The job setup/fixture setup/etc. will be really valuable if it ever becomes a "op setup" sub-group of the same machine.  Right now, it's just in the way... 

That's the big benefit of doing separate machine groups right now.   Every time you want to change which fixture you're using (op10 to op20, etc.) you have to go into Machine Group properties which can take a minute or two  on a large file by the time you load it, change whatever you have to change, then get back out and it sits there flashing changing whatever it's changing.   

[Kyle F]

 

44 minutes ago, Aaron Eberhard said:

On the other hand, I did have a customer that wanted each Op as a separate file...

I've been at my first and only shop for about 12-13 years I think now. This is how it always was,... until recently figuring out the right way from these forums LOL.

It makes sooo much more sense to have everything in one file, now when I'm messing with a 5axis toolpath and "oh look, I need a little bit more clearance on my fixture"

Now I just hop into the fixture machine group and push/pull the solid, and change those milling depths, same file, easy peezy.

22 minutes ago, rgrin said:

Lol, this is how 99% of the people at my place of work do it.  I think it's an old school holdover from when our computers were not as powerful and nobody sees any reason to change.

I was in the same boat as you guy's using 1 machine group to program a part start to finish.  For the same reasons, I liked sharing 1 tool library for a part.

But I have been dabbling with using the machine group setups and it is nice selecting a "master model" for each op and stock setup/fixturing for each op.  The tool library hasn't been AS important as I thought since I have large magazine and I just program all my parts with the same tools.  I think I am probably just fortunate that way.

I feel the same, for now at least, I enjoy the multiple machine groups. Downside to these large files with lots of solids is though now my xxxxty PC specs are really starting to show. It's sad the percentage of my day I am just chilling waiting for something to regenerate... but I guess it gives me time to do research and write replies like this one haha.

13 minutes ago, Aaron Eberhard said:

A properly set up tool library and a large enough magazine/storage on the machine is worth its weight in gold!  

The job setup/fixture setup/etc. will be really valuable if it ever becomes a "op setup" sub-group of the same machine.  Right now, it's just in the way... 

agghh I am so excited for my new machine(s) 

[Chally72]

1 hour ago, crazy^millman said:

Many times. Here is 2024 with my 4 sub menu items and some of the QAT replacements for the Ribbons.

 

Always fun to see what tilting towards extreme efficiency and ultimate muscle memory for a power user looks like  

 

 

57 minutes ago, Kyle F said:

 

I've been at my first and only shop for about 12-13 years I think now. This is how it always was,... until recently figuring out the right way from these forums LOL.

It makes sooo much more sense to have everything in one file, now when I'm messing with a 5axis toolpath and "oh look, I need a little bit more clearance on my fixture"

Now I just hop into the fixture machine group and push/pull the solid, and change those milling depths, same file, easy peezy.

I feel the same, for now at least, I enjoy the multiple machine groups. Downside to these large files with lots of solids is though now my xxxxty PC specs are really starting to show. It's sad the percentage of my day I am just chilling waiting for something to regenerate... but I guess it gives me time to do research and write replies like this one haha.

agghh I am so excited for my new machine(s) 

 

Very early on in my career I was at a shop that handled things similarly to the "one file per op" approach. I cannot imagine being shackled by that in the year 2024!

[Kyle F]

6 minutes ago, Chally72 said:

Very early on in my career I was at a shop that handled things similarly to the "one file per op" approach. I cannot imagine being shackled by that in the year 2024!

I am quite lucky in the sense that I have full autonomy in my process/tooling/etc so no more!!! In our program directory I went ahead and made a new folder titled "multiaxis 2024" which is all one file per part, and I just have to hope no one in the future will judge me on the old programs!
We've got some 2d wireframe programs from late 90's that are still in rotation so no way I'm going back and editing old old old ones.

[Chally72]

1 hour ago, rgrin said:

Lol, this is how 99% of the people at my place of work do it.  I think it's an old school holdover from when our computers were not as powerful and nobody sees any reason to change.

I was in the same boat as you guy's using 1 machine group to program a part start to finish.  For the same reasons, I liked sharing 1 tool library for a part.

But I have been dabbling with using the machine group setups and it is nice selecting a "master model" for each op and stock setup/fixturing for each op.  The tool library hasn't been AS important as I thought since I have large magazine and I just program all my parts with the same tools.  I think I am probably just fortunate that way.

Like Millman said, we all need to be exposed to all the different ways of doing something and figure out the way that works best for us.

 

There are two things that will help retain the "one machine group, multiple setup" flow preference in the near term with new Machine Group Setup:

1. Multiple ways to override the Stock page selected stock for what you actually want to use in Simulation. In 2024 you have the "stock model operation" override talked about earlier in this thread, where selecting a stock model op as the first op in a selection to launch into simulation with will automatically apply that stock model as an override no matter what is selected elsewhere. Also in 2024 you have the Stock Override choice in the Simulation options last tab of MGS, where you can override the stock permanently and just point to a file, solid, etc.

 

2. In 2025, the ability to make Workholding items or Groups Active or Inactive. This means that I can do things like select a bunch of solids and group them and call them Setup 1 and Setup 2, for example, then turn off Setup 2. This has the end effect of passing only the stuff that's active (Setup 1) into verify/simulation. This way you don't have to keep on adding/deleting workholding to support a multi-setup flow- you just toggle between your organized fixture sets. This is trying to take what you used to do via level organization, (IE, stuff all of setup 1 fixturing on a single level, all of setup 2 on a single level, etc) and divorce level management of individual solids from the act of organizing and simulating groups of fixturing. 

 

These are a few immediately visible steps along the path that the team is taking to make MGS actively support and encourage single-machine-group, multi-setup flow. 

[crazy^millman]

2 hours ago, volitan71 said:

Thanks!

 

And you have Toolpaths, Levels, Solids etc.. on another monitor in there own separate windows?

 

Yes Planes on the left monitor and Tool paths/Solid half of the right monitor and Levels the other half.

[JB7280]

On 1/31/2024 at 11:41 AM, rgrin said:

Lol, this is how 99% of the people at my place of work do it. 

One of our best programmers uses Mastercam like this.  But I think it's just an old habits as most of his career was spent using Esprit, and that's how you did it in Esprit.   

[gcode]

I like accessing the Stock page with this button as it takes you straight to the stock page

Once you've set your stock you can launch Verify.

It's much quicker than Toolpaths/Files/Simulation

 

 

[Chally72]

This button, starting in 2024, also takes you directly to the Simulation settings page and Stock choice in MGS, which controls both Verify and and Simulate