Can you machine a solid...

[kunfuzed]

... without having the solids moduale? Opened a .sldprt and tried to just xform it into place, and Mcam said "Solids moduale not found, contact your reseller". Is this a glitch... or just the downside of my boss being to cheap to purchase the moduale?

[Ray H.]

you can toolpath it, but you can't move it in an xform

[Ray H.]

you could also creat a surface from a solid under create/ surface from solid

[b_daddy]

Ok, who wants to tell him?

 

You need Solids to open a .sldprt.

[Todd Tracey from Fastech]

He waqs right. You can open a solid w/o the Solids Add-on BUT you can't move it. Need to create surfaces or use WCS to machine where it comes in. That can be tricky sometimes as well.

[Pete Rimkus from CNC Software Inc.]

"...You need Solids to open a .sldprt...."

 

This had been the case in V9, but not in X. ANY user can open files containing solids and have them come in as solids. These can be analyzed, machined, converted to surfaces, etc.

 

But like Ray H said, if you don't have the Solid's addon you can't modify it in any way.

[kunfuzed]

Thanks for confirming that. Actually a lot of our models we've been getting are IGES, but I thought I'd try knitting one in Solidworks and then importing it back into Mcam.

[HevyMetl]

You can do wonders with a work coordinate system. I get the guys next door to do it all the time, because I keep the solids option like a dog with a bone.

 

Select WCS and then select a solid face to be your orientation feature. You can then cycle through your xyz orientations to put the part exactly where you want it for machining. HTH