DAMN X BUGS!!!!

[L Hanft]

UG and training issues here at the University are complicated by the fact that the UG folks only wanted 1 contact person for the entire University. That 1 person has the "sold to #" required to enter UG's cast system and setting up multiple accounts with a single "sold to #" does not seem possible at first glance. The IT person that is the contact person does not use the software and has little interest except to say that it is installed. Making all the associated modules function is another issue and missing licenses can take days or months to correct depending on the local IT and UG systems person's mood. We were trying to evaluate UG someime this semester because it's a "GIFT" and we should be using it if it's free (actually we pay several (many) thousand dollars/year in maintaince fees.. so it ain't free) Some folks in adminstration have considered dropping (not renewing)our Solidworks contract which is basically everything they have, unlimited seats, set fee (so cheap it would bring tears to your eye). Students revolted....well, they wroted letters to the editor for the campus paper and met with the Dean... so Solidworks may be safe for a while. At any rate we now introduce 2nd year students to Solidedge, again because its "Free" and any student that wants to learn Solidworks is left to their own means. We have the largest engineering "Job Fair" in the Nation I often ask others if they bother to attend and ask the potential employers what packages they use and what we could do to make our graduates better...I mostly get silence.

[MCam Newbie]

Thoskins and Gavetta hit the mark squarely IMHO.

 

I would like to comment on DC Gorns post, or actually join in on his "Gee, I wonder why ...."

Again, just an opinion, albeit a strong one, I agree with DC that macro language support in MasterCam would be a huge plus.

Let me tell you why, and prod you all to ponder the possibilities that could be afforded by such an addition.

Way back when I still had lots of hair, and even more enthusiasm, I used some software (DOS days) from Pathtrace Systems that included a macro system. That feature recorded keystrokes into a man readable file which allowed for editing.This man-readable recorded keystrokes file could then be modified in a text editor to query for user input, pause for the needed data, and continue on, while executing the macro. Anything from selecting simple "yes/No" answers, to entity selection, performing error trapping of the input, getting cutter sizes, performing mathmatical calculation, do if then branching, etc., could be done from this text type file.

You could put up a graphic, label dimensions using A, B, C etc., then ask the user to input values for A, B, C, and the macro could do all the rest, clear to posted code, saving geometry files, part files, whatever could be done from the keyboard.

The possibilities boggle the mind. Family of parts, posting to multiple machines, auto tool selection dependent on feature size, nearly anything the system could do, could be automated into a macro. Error checking for bogus input could be handeled easily also. The feature worked in Design, Machining, and even in the editor! (I still use the software, circa 1990 or there abouts, and the simple macros I created way back then are still huge timesavers in certain situations!)

CNC Software might do well to consider building in such a feature for a future release, or as an additional optional module interested users could purchase.

I would certainly have an interest in obtaining the capability, were it available.

The speed and potential time savings of being able to "hot key" into a macro call mode is very useful, fast, and once people begin to use the feature, most will find the tool indespensible. That has been my experience, and I find myself often wishing for such a powertool, so much of our software use is repetitive tasks that would lend themselves to just such a tool.

Hope this puts a "bug" in the ears of the "People who CAN MAKE THIS HAPPEN", to many users delight, most certainly!

[Jimmy Wakeford from Barefoot CNC]

Mcamnewbie

The macro language in v9 was readble and I wrote some pretty neat things with it for family of parts reverse posting,etc.

In X I am getting more into the vbscripting of the same as time allows. It will be much more powerful than macros but a little more difficult. I use vb6 and .net to create the interfaces then call them up as activex dll's.

 

If you still have V9 loaded look in the mcam9vb directory at the examples. There are some very good examps of creating different types of geometry, getting user input, etc.

 

There are quite a few of us banging out scripts for mc on the forum and maybe can help you out.

[Paul McGarr]

For what it's worth...

 

Wasn't there something a while back called "production pro" from Mastercam? I barely remember it, but I think it was for family style machining.

 

 

Prolly quite a few versions ago I'm afraid.

 

Paul

[Fig sign]

In the days of V9 I used operation groups from

Typical part and used it on all similar files .

Fast ,quick and handy.

Yet I asked for paraametric part support ,but this thing is handy too.

You can edit this file externally as regular MC( or MCX and I used it mostly to set all depthes to ZERO .

Safer to correct them after ,then to scrap a part

VX looks to correct one nasty issue I dealed with it in V9

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Use this dialog box to export operations from the current Mastercam file to an operations library. Export these operations with or without their geometry.

 

You can also automatically check for and exclude duplicate tools from the exported operations.

 

Click the operation to select it for export. Mastercam marks selected operations with a green check mark. Press [Ctrl] and click to select multiple operations or to deselect an operation. Press [shift] and click to select a range. Choose OK to export the selected operations.

 

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I hate trolls and trolling .

Go to Macintosh forum and saay that APPLe $ux and you switch to Windows and wait for reaction.

On Linux Forum you will be considered imbecile ,noone would even respond to you .

BR