Is it just me???

[Thee Dragracer1951]

Or does this happen to you too?

Mastercam dies when I try to translate something.

I am pretty sick of this. I have sent file after file to QC about this issue. I'm about to the point where I'm going to start looking for other software. I'm just a little shop. I have in excess of $30k into Mastercam. This is just outragous.

I've had a file crash five times in the last ten minutes.

I've been told it was the MDM1120.prm file. It's fine (at 1k in size) every time

I'm going to spend a couple hundreg grand on a twin spindle live tooled lathe. I'm looking for a programming solution for that that will work better than Mastercam. I know they are out there. I am more than happy to report these things to QC. Been doing that. My point is, I shouldn't have to. The software ought to work correctly. I don't mean just some of it. I mean all of it. I have long since given up using HSP toolpaths. They just don't work.

I don't want to see more bells and whistles on the next release. I want the stinking thing to work.

Can ya tell I'm a little upset about this?????????

 

 

I just had a little contour surface gouge the part. Scrapped it. I had over 8 hours into it. I backplotted it. looked fine. I verified it. looked fine. gouged the part. I'm tired of it. I just want to make good parts.

[Matt Berube at Ferron Mold]

I have never had a problem with crashes related to translating geometry.

 

I have had gouging problems lately with solid drive faces. Creating surfaces from the solid and using that for a drive always solves the problem.

 

Sorry I can't be of more help than that and I hope you are able to figure something out soon !

 

Is it possible you could update some drivers or hardware to fix the translation issue ?

[Thee Dragracer1951]

Matt

The issue is that it is complete random in it's occurance.

I just had (On this same file) a set of drill toolpaths. Center drill, drill and ream. I picked four holes for the center drill

Call a drill cycla again and pick "last" for the same holes. do the same thing for the reamer. The drill and reamer only got three of the four holes.

Every day it's something different that does not work correctly.

I'm loosing time and money over this.

[gcode]

Jim,

look in your Files setting in System Config

and see where your temp files are pathed.

When you have a crash, make sure that folder is empty before launching Mastercam again.

Whem Mastecam closes propely, that folder

gets cleaned out. When I crashes, debris from the crash may be left beind, corrupting then next launch.

For drilling tolpaths, I just Copy/Paste

the centerdrill toolpath over and over

changing the tool and cycle type as needed.

I never use solids to define drilling toolpaths

[?Mark]

There are problems with op manager being somewhat "unstable" imo as well. Can't really put my hand on it also, as it seems to be random, which in turn makes it hard for cnc to narrow down the problem...

[Thee Dragracer1951]

I've had strange things happen when I copy a drill cycle and change the tool.

I've had strange things happen with tool numbers when I copy ops from one tool path group to another. I've crashed machines because of it.

I wish I knew what it was that causes this stuff because it is very frustrating.

Gcode. I'll check that out about the temp files. Sounds like it may have something to do with it.

[Thee Dragracer1951]

My config file says that my temp file path is C:mcamxcommontemp131106.

Now, in that file are a bunch of files with todays date.

There are also two folders labled, 093548 and 144624

Those folders have files in them (for the most part .tmp files) dated 1/22/08 in one folder and 1/4/08 in the other

Should I get rid of those folders?????

Could this have sumpin ta do with it???

Am I on ta sumpin here?

Huh? Am I???

It'd be a first ya know.

[gcode]

quote:

---

Could this have sumpin ta do with it???

---

YES

If you are uncomfortable deleting that stuff

make a new temp folder and PATH to it.

Open a Mastercam file containing solids and watch what happens to the new temp folder.

Close Mastecam and look again.

As I said earlier, sometimes a crash leaves a bunch of files behind in the temp folder.

You open your file again and the new temp files conflict with the old temp files so you crash again.... and again... and again...

[MIKE_B]

Jim

 

I am having the same issues as you. Don't feel bad

I just drew a fixture in solidworks 2008 then tried to bring it into mcam. It opened up with some missing parts so I just saved it as an igs out of solidworks. The igs file opened fine in mcam. Now the problem I am having is when I try and mask on level to change the color of something mcam crashes almost everytime I select all. I have had this happen on translating as well

My reseller had me change my memory buffer in system config to 70% for the translating issue. That seemed to help a little but I am still having issues like yourself!!

 

 

Mike

[gcode]

quote:

---

I just drew a fixture in solidworks 2008 then tried to bring it into mcam.

---

Export from SW as a parasolid and use a SolidWorks

coordinant system to control your landing in Mastercam.

Once you learn to do this, you will never have to translate a solid in Mastercam again

[MIKE_B]

g

 

I like the way igs files come in with not as many levels. If I have 20 clamps the igs file puts them on one level the parasolid has everything on its own level and can make it a pain to find and name levels once in mcam.

 

Not sure if I am on to something but it seems that when I bring the file in I can do pretty much whatever I want. Once I save it I begin to have problems.

[Thee Dragracer1951]

Gcode

How many folders should be in that temp folder?

I have a bunch of them.

All of them have for the most part, tmp files. I can just dump em but was wondering about having 8 folders in the temp folder...

[gcode]

If you open multiple sessions at once

Mastercam will create a folder for each session.

If you have no Mastercam session open, the folder should be empty

[Thee Dragracer1951]

K...I'm dumpin them.

Thanks

[Matthew]

Dragracer,

 

These drills ops that are loosing drill points when copied, are the points generated from picking the centre of a circle on a solid? I've had this issue before and I believe it was confirmed by my reseller to be a bug at one time (still is for me using X MR2, not sure about the latest version). My solution to this is to create wireframe geometry on the face that has the circles, then I pick entities instead of center points. HTH.

[Bob W.]

I agree 100% that when one spends $10k-$30k on software it had better work perfectly, especially when it is controlling $100k+ machines. Why keep adding features when the nagging bugs have not yet been worked out. LETS GET WITH THE PROGRAM! MAJOR pet peeve of mine too.

[Thee Dragracer1951]

I don't recall off the top of my head.

My standard method is to bring in a solid. Create surfaces and wire frames on seperate levels and then have at it. I'd have to go back and look at it to tell you for sure....

I don't "normally" machine from the solid. Maybe I'm missing something but how do you surface a solid? Don't you need to creat them first?

Kind of an aside...but I'm curious.

[Redfire427]

Dragracer1951,

 

To create surfaces from your solid model: Create/ surfaces from solid/ then select solids icon and then toggle to solid body. Select your solid and accept.

[Ployd]

They need to fix what isn't working properly. When your working in the shop you don't have time to find alternate solutions or work arounds. That means your losing money. Especially if you damage your machine or workpiece. You expect it to work the way it is supossed to. No software is perfect but I agree with Drag Racer 100%!

[Colin Gilchrist]

I agree with everyone here that the software SHOULD work 100%. I do think this highlights the needs for offline G-code Verification becoming an absolutely critical component for every shop. With what I have seen and learned over the past year and a half of using the software, that if you take the time (or spend the money) to properly configure it, that you will not have crashes due to your G code EVER AGAIN.

 

Some of you may be skeptical, but machine and control simulation really has caught up to the real world.

 

I don't care what CAM system you buy, unless it has an Verification package that verifies the actual code you run on the machine, and is 100% capable of simulating EVERY function that causes motion, sets a variable, or performs some machine related task that you need to be aware of.

 

Someone from Prosin Molds did a nice write up of his evaluations of high end cam software. Not only are you looking at upwards of 30-60K once you factor in all the software, posts, and training, (and oh yeah, did I mention posts?) there is the steep learning curve to deal with.

 

 

Oh, Jim, to surface a solid, when you start creating a 3D surface toolpath and Mastercam prompts you to select drive surfaces, you can activate the solid selection icon on the "general selection" toolbar, set your options to select face or select body, and pick either the whole part, or individual faces to machine.

 

HTH,

[Chris Rizzo]

I would gladly give up any prospective features for more stability and refinement with what we've got now. Granted a code verification enhancement will be a big help, but in reality it has nothing to do with usability situations like this one Jim is having.

 

 

m2c

[Lars Christensen]

gcode,

 

I am brand new in Mastercam X2 and Solidworks, could you enlighten me in why parasolid vs. just open solidworks file in Mastercam? and why create a coordinate system in solidworks vs. using wcs in Mastercam.

 

Thank you

Lars

[gcode]

quote:

---

why create a coordinate system in solidworks

---

Co-ordinante system is SolidWorks's version of WCS

Create one that replicates the orientation

you would like to have in Mastercam.

When you Save As (a parasolid) go to the options

dropdown of the File page. You can export

your parasolid in that oreintation and when you

import it into Mastercam it will land the way you defined it in SolidWorks.

You can build alsorts of fixtures assemblies

clamps etc and bring them into Mastercam

with complete control over how they land.

Its much simpler that WCS and it also works for

STL files exported from SolidWorks

[crazy^millman]

Well I checked my temp folder I had 80 folders and some of them had 3 to 4 folders in them. It was taking up about 450 mb of room and 810 files so think this could help me as well. Thanks for the reminder Tom.

[Lars Christensen]

Thank you so much, I owe you one gcode