Solidworks-Mastercam level management

[MattW]

I know some others are doing all their layout planning-fixturing-etc., in Solidworks, as I am attempting. If I save the file as a parasolid, and then bring in solids only into Mastercam, each solid in the assembly is on its own level. Cool, but there is no identification of what is actually on each level. At this point, I can extract a BOM in excel format from solidworks, save as a CSV file, and bring into Mastercam. This has been working, but the BOM from solidworks will list qty 12 pit bulls, for instance, instead of 12 individual pit bulls. The levels match up to the order the parts appear in the solidworks assembly, but the BOM starts needing some editing when there is more than one part in the assembly. How are others handling this, or am I just making this too complicated?

[88Matt]

MastercamDirect

[Guest]

Just have to be careful using MCDirect.

 

There are many features that done in Sw are not properly brought into MC resulting in incomplete and incorrect models.

[MattW]

I hadn't tried Mastercam Direct in a while, so I just installed the latest version. It doesn't appear in assembly mode, so I saved the assembly as a part and launched Mastercam Direct there. It opens Mastercam, but not the part. I know it used to, but I don't even see where I can change anything. In any case, you can't control how the file ends up in Mastercam with Mastercam Direct, I don't think.

 

What I want to do is extract the Assembly tree out of Solidworks so I can import that into Mastercam as the level list. I can get close, but I want to cut down on the hand editing required. Am I describing the issue any better? I don't think I did too good on my first try.

[88Matt]

its a c hook.