Does MCAM allow parametric drawings/models?

[Tinger]

Does Mastercam allow parametric designs?

[JParis]

In the truest sense, no.

[cncappsjames]

12 hours ago, Tinger said:

Does Mastercam allow parametric designs?

In V8 it did. MoldPlus abandoned the project though and it never made it out of Beta. 

[Aaron Eberhard]

Solids will be parametric if you make them in Mastercam, but the 2d/Wireframe part of it is not, which is very confusing to people who have only ever drawn in sketch-based software like SolidWorks...  But it's just the way CAD was in the 80s

For example:

You make a wireframe rectangle that's 2"x1".   You cannot create dimensions that you can edit after the fact and both sides of the rectangle will go to 3" instead of 2".  You have to move the right side line, then extend the two 2" lines.   The closest thing to doing this easily is Transform > Stretch, but it's not nearly the same as Solidworks/Inventor/etc. just editing the dimension.

You have a solid that's been extruded from that 2"x1" rectangle.  After manually manipulating the wireframe to extend it to 3"x1", the solid will be regenerated at the new size, so that is parametric. 

7 hours ago, cncappsjames said:

In V8 it did. MoldPlus abandoned the project though and it never made it out of Beta. 

Really?  That's an interesting project.   I can see how that'd be dang-near impossible for a 3rd party to do.. It would take a massive rework to do it from the inside..

[SuperHoneyBadger]

12 minutes ago, Aaron Eberhard said:

You have a solid that's been extruded from that 2"x1" rectangle.  After manually manipulating the wireframe to extend it to 3"x1", the solid will be regenerated at the new size, so that is parametric. 

I came up with SolidEdge and their "Synchronous" (insert trumpet fanfare) modelling. So the way I learned was the wireframe makes the initial solid, then, in MasterCam terms, you delete the wires and use the Push/Pull arrow, or Move to change a face/dimension. I never even thought to change the wireframe to resize a solid, as I immediately blow up the solid history. I have always really enjoyed making solids in MasterCam - as I progress, I do yearn for some associativity from time to time - but hey, this is CAM.

Also, from my understanding talking to a few SolidWorks guys "parametric" they use referring to some form of spreadsheet or table that can drive geometry with formulas and such? Am I off base with that?

[JParis]

2 hours ago, SuperHoneyBadger said:

Also, from my understanding talking to a few SolidWorks guys "parametric" they use referring to some form of spreadsheet or table that can drive geometry with formulas and such? Am I off base with that?

You can use spreadsheets to drive different configurations of parts, you can use formulas to dimensions, you can define a single dimension as a variable and then tie many things to that single variable....

The Push/Pull in Mastercam is akin to utilizing a blow torch and butter knife...yes, it works but it is a rudimentary tool..

One of my guys was timid over bringing on Solidworks for our design work...now that he's up to speed on it, he wouldn't go back.

[JB7280]

I've seen people mentioning Parametric CAM.  Not sure what that means though.  Does that just mean the solid has a feature tree?

[Aaron Eberhard]

3 hours ago, SuperHoneyBadger said:

I came up with SolidEdge and their "Synchronous" (insert trumpet fanfare) modelling. So the way I learned was the wireframe makes the initial solid, then, in MasterCam terms, you delete the wires and use the Push/Pull arrow, or Move to change a face/dimension. I never even thought to change the wireframe to resize a solid, as I immediately blow up the solid history. I have always really enjoyed making solids in MasterCam - as I progress, I do yearn for some associativity from time to time - but hey, this is CAM.

Also, from my understanding talking to a few SolidWorks guys "parametric" they use referring to some form of spreadsheet or table that can drive geometry with formulas and such? Am I off base with that?

In its truest sense, Parametric just literally means "driven by parameters."   Pragmatically, that means that there's a way to alter the parameters and regenerate the model based on the edited values.    

You can expand that to whatever degree you want, but whether the parameters making it are generated by manually adjusting a dimensions or by a formula or by referencing a spreadsheet, the result is the same.   This is why Solids in Mastercam is parametric (edit the base wireframe and the solid will update) and the wireframe is not (there's no parameters that will cause wireframe to automagically adjust).

Mastercam can absolutely do the same thing as SolidEdge, when you extrude a solid, there's an option on the advanced page to create it without history.  From there you can use push/pull, move, etc. 

1 minute ago, JB7280 said:

I've seen people mentioning Parametric CAM.  Not sure what that means though.  Does that just mean the solid has a feature tree?

There's various stages to what they mean (half the time they don't know )....   Parametric CAM can mean something like Mastercam (update the solid/wireframe and the toolpath will update) all the way up to generating toolpaths based solely on an input formula.

[Kyle F]

1 hour ago, JParis said:

One of my guys was timid over bringing on Solidworks for our design work...now that he's up to speed on it, he wouldn't go back.

Lately we have had a few customers (even a big aerospace one) give us only .PDF prints and no CAD files whatsoever. Has been a bit annoying having to draw and extrude these parts lately, as I am not super experienced so it can take me over a whole day just to draw up and model a part LOL. I mean, it all pays the same, but it's annoying and it opens the door for me to mess it up even easier haha. Not to mention it's just time I should be spending doing something more important, and I know we do not charge for this process, we just eat the cost.. When the print has CLEARLY got 3d views of a modeled part but the customer swears up and down they don't have access and can't get a solid file... anyways rant over, and apologies.

 

1 hour ago, Aaron Eberhard said:

In its truest sense, Parametric just literally means "driven by parameters."   Pragmatically, that means that there's a way to alter the parameters and regenerate the model based on the edited values.    

I will sometimes use multiple machine groups in the same .mcam file, one for soft jaws/fixturing op and then the op2/whatever. It is a big can of worms that I know we have all discussed before but when doing "parametric fixturing" it really comes in handy.

I will program the op2 before the fixturing, so I can manually move around the soft jaw wireframe and regen the soft jaw solid. Or adjust a large chamfer on a fixture to accommodate a certain toolholder/whatever situation I encounter while programming.

Amateur-tip: when creating your own solids for parts/fixtures I definitely recommend notating each extrusion/boolean/whatever for when you want to go back and make changes.

I'm currently working on a part for the MAM which the customer of course did not supply a solid for, so I had to create one. Nice and clear notations

I also have the baseplate, which bolts to the pallet, and the subplate, which of course locates and mounts to baseplate, modeled up and labeled as well. And for each nut/bolt/dowel pin, it's got the description as well as the mcmaster part number.

[JParis]

55 minutes ago, Aaron Eberhard said:

In its truest sense, Parametric just literally means "driven by parameters."  

Simplest

I understand what you're going for it however, it doesn't truly align with what is a "Parametric" modeling CAD system.

Mastercam is an Etch-a-Sketch compared to a parametric CAD system.

It is functional, it does work. You can do some pretty trick things with it....it does however take a lot more to get stuff done

 

3 minutes ago, Kyle F said:

Lately we have had a few customers (even a big aerospace one) give us only .PDF prints and no CAD files whatsoever.

I certainly hope your front office is quoting that NRE for that work

[Aaron Eberhard]

4 minutes ago, JParis said:

Simplest

I understand what you're going for it however, it doesn't truly align with what is a "Parametric" modeling CAD system.

Mastercam is an Etch-a-Sketch compared to a parametric CAD system.

It is functional, it does work. You can do some pretty trick things with it....it does however take a lot more to get stuff done

 

Right, which is I don't consider the wireframe stuff as parametric

[Kyle F]

4 minutes ago, JParis said:

I certainly hope your front office is quoting that NRE for that work

I have tried to push for it,.. but we are not. New "big" customer, they want a small family of parts, supposedly around half a mil per year of work so we are doing it on the house. Makes no sense to me but I'm just a measly paid-by-the-hour programmer.

[Mick]

Parametric is wonderful....

[cncappsjames]

5 hours ago, Mick said:

Parametric is wonderful....

A LOT of years I did ALL my CAD in Mastercam. It's VERY good at the part level for CAD... minus not being parametric. However, there came a point around 2006 or so IIRC where it became just too much because certain projects I was working on were changing too frequently so then I got into CATIA.

Around 2015/2016-ish I migrated to Autodesk Inventor for nearly all my CAD needs. From time to time, I will draw a part in Mastercam... because I can , and sometimes certain features that I cannot figure out how to build in Inventor, I'll build in Mastercam... again... because I CAN.

12 hours ago, Aaron Eberhard said:

Really?  That's an interesting project.   I can see how that'd be dang-near impossible for a 3rd party to do.. It would take a massive rework to do it from the inside..

You could drive CAD from a spreadsheet. I was awesome. I did a BUNCH of lathe family of parts projects with it. I was REALLY sad they abandoned it. I KNEW it would be hard though.

[Newbeeee™]

11 hours ago, Kyle F said:

Lately we have had a few customers (even a big aerospace one) give us only .PDF prints and no CAD files whatsoever. Has been a bit annoying having to draw and extrude these parts lately, as I am not super experienced so it can take me over a whole day just to draw up and model a part LOL. I mean, it all pays the same, but it's annoying and it opens the door for me to mess it up even easier haha. Not to mention it's just time I should be spending doing something more important, and I know we do not charge for this process, we just eat the cost.. When the print has CLEARLY got 3d views of a modeled part but the customer swears up and down they don't have access and can't get a solid file... anyways rant over, and apologies.

 

I wonder if this is anything to do with liability of data - "print is master"?

They (Customer) may have been previously burnt by "designer" modelling inaccurate and machine shop making to model and it doesn't meet print....There was a TONNE (note metrico - larger than imperial :lol:) of this going on where "designers" didn't understand or couldn't comprehend the need for accuracy, or just didn't care.

How accurate is pdf to cad - does that take the dimension to drive wireframe? Or pdf3d to model - again does this take the actual dims (unsure how smart a pdf is - prolly not?)

[Kyle F]

5 hours ago, Newbeeee™ said:

I wonder if this is anything to do with liability of data - "print is master"?

They (Customer) may have been previously burnt by "designer" modelling inaccurate and machine shop making to model and it doesn't meet print....There was a TONNE (note metrico - larger than imperial :lol:) of this going on where "designers" didn't understand or couldn't comprehend the need for accuracy, or just didn't care.

Yeah that could be possible,.. Most of the time the CAD models that are given to me aren't nominal anyways,.. a 1.000 +.002/-.000 is usually modeled at 1.000 (those sort of things) but generally speaking locational tolerances are good. If I'm drawing in mastercam I feel like it's way easier for me to just misinterpret the drawing or fat finger a location/size (and I am definitely no GD&T expert)

5 hours ago, Newbeeee™ said:

How accurate is pdf to cad - does that take the dimension to drive wireframe? Or pdf3d to model - again does this take the actual dims (unsure how smart a pdf is - prolly not?)

I know I definitely wouldn't trust it haha!

[gcode]

I've been spoiled for quite a while now, and my modeling skills have suffered for it

due to lack of practice.

We have a Catia guy whose job is to validate customers models and prints.

Then he modifies the models to nominal dimensions.

This means I've been doing very little serious modeling.

What modeling I do, is mostly building surfaces for toolpaths if needed.

[Newbeeee™]

3 hours ago, Kyle F said:

I know I definitely wouldn't trust it haha!

I was thinking out loud, with not a lot of thinking!
Wondering if the pdf is similar in construction, to a DXF - which is a text file containing all the data geometry.
Because I know there is the "measurement" command within a 3D pdf, so you can measure distances etc. So I guess....the geometry within the file has to be "accurate"?
But as the pdf is lots smaller than wireframe or model file, it can only be stripped out or compressed

[jstell]

On 5/7/2024 at 11:44 AM, Aaron Eberhard said:

Right, which is I don't consider the wireframe stuff as parametric

It is maybe worth noting that with basic solids like block or sphere, they are parametric.  You can go back and just change the numbers to re-size.  Also, any extrude function can be edited to change the distance with just a number.

But the thing that I have found interesting over the last several versions is that in analyze mode you can edit XYZ locations of endpoints of lines and center points of arcs, as well as radius or diameter and sweep angle of arc and the vector angle of a line, and the the 3D length of either.  Changing 3D length and sweep or vector doesn't give you a choice of which end is going to change, so that's not very good control.   But it does allow you to just change numbers to modify the chained geometry for a solid function.