Rhino and X Layer/Level Problem

[PBpaul]

Prior to X, to bring a Rhino drawing in to Mastercam, I would save it as an igs and then run Mastercam and "convert" it. This resulted in a mc9 drawing that had the same levels as the original Rhino drawing, numbered and in order, but none of the Rhino level names made it through.

 

With X, a Rhino drawing can be opened directly. Now you get the original Rhino levels including names, which is great, but there is a hitch. Whatever was in the first level in Rhino gets combined with whatever was in the second level and the original first level gets dropped. In other words, if you had 7 levels in the Rhino drawing, you'll only have 6 after opening it in Mcam X. All your geometry is there, but whatever geometry was in your first Rhino layer will now be found along with whatever geometry was in your second Rhino layer.

 

Hope someone at Mastercam will look into this.

 

Paul

[iowajim62]

Think you need to send that to Q.C.

[email protected]

[Pete Rimkus from CNC Software Inc.]

Sure we will.

But did you know that V9 let you bring in the Rhino .3DM part too? File/Convert/Next/Next/Rhino

[PBpaul]

Pete:

 

Thanks for looking into the level issue.

 

No, I did not know that we could bring in a Rhino drawing to V9 that way! We've been doing the igs thing since day one. Anyway, now that we've moved on to X, I did notice that when creating toolpaths for something drawn in Rhino, I have better luck when the igs step is eliminated.

 

Paul

[Pete Rimkus from CNC Software Inc.]

Paul,

 

The levels issue has been logged as bug #12745.

[PBpaul]

Thanks. In the meantime, I go into my original Rhino drawing and create a new dummy level that contains nothing and move it up to the top of the list. Then it doesn't matter that it gets combined with the second layer. It ain't purty, but it works for the time being.

 

Paul

[Pete Rimkus from CNC Software Inc.]

I found that we try to import the 1st Rhino layer (usually "Default") as Mastercam level 0. That doesn't exist so the entities go to the current main level (usually 1). Then we read the next Rhino layer as Mastercam level 1, and so on and so on. Therefore, we're always cramming the entities from the 1st 2 Rhino layers onto the 1st Mastercam level.

Your workaround avoids this perfectly.

[PBpaul]

Pete:

 

I'm guessing this issue was addressed in SP1. I did the SP1 upgrade this morning and tried opening one of my old Rhino Drawings. Now the first "Dummy" layer that I created in Rhino shows up in McamX but the 2nd layer in Rhino is missing. It's contents, however, are in the Dummy layer. Third, fourth, and so on seem to be fine. I'm thinking I can work around this by letting the 2nd layer in Rhino be the dummy layer. If I'm missing something (which is certainly possible), please advise, but it seems like something still isn't quite right.

 

Thanks- Paul

[PBpaul]

In the interest of trying to do the same thing twice in a row, I just started a new Rhino Drawing using their "inch" template and it creates one layer called "Default" and several others named 01, 02, 03, and so forth. As long as I don't put anything into "Default", I can then open the Rhino Drawing in McamX and I'll have 01, 02, 03, etc. with all the geometry intact. The only thing strange was an error message when McamX was opening the Rhino Drawing for the first time, which said "Memory Table Item Not Found (4353).

 

Even if a layer is switched Off, it still comes through with its geometry. If there is no geometry in a given layer, of course, that layer does not show up in McamX.

 

Thanks- Paul