MC 9 - Warning - Error allocating memory for toolpath function.

[bobbobbob]

My brand new Geforce 8600gt 512mb that I bought to replace the old card that died won't let me crunch my file to send it to my cutter.

 

I've checked the settings on the card they are set to allow the application to choose. I downloaded & installed the latest drivers. & still it is having problems.

 

The second pc is brand new with an on board video card (specs below) it is having the same error messages. It's crazy that both of these pc's are having the same error message.

 

 

Error Messages that occur:

 

Warning - Toolpath Allocation is too low

 

Warning - Error allocating memory for toolpath function.

 

Mastercam is useless in knowing what this error message is. I've searched their knowledgebase & googled to no avail & our dealer has no clue. I'm hoping someone out there has seen this error.

 

 

Mastercam 9

XP Pro sp2

Dell Precision 380

2gb ram

Geforce 8600gt 512mb

 

 

Mastercam 9.1

XP Pro sp2

HP HPa64419fh

3gb ram

P5LP-LE Motherboard - Intel GMA 950 Open GL video

[BernieT]

Look in 'Screen -Configure-Allocations' -- It should look something like this:

 

 

 

 

Otherwise I don't know.....

 

 

HTH

 

 

.

[TKDBB]

In version 9 go to analize - surfaces - all surfaces. set the tolerance to .0005 or less. see if the model checks out OK. If you have bad surfaces MC can spend time and memory trying to crunch a good toolpath and you can get that error message.

Look for small thin surfaces that twist over on themselves.

[Bryan Johnson]

If all else fails, delete mill9.cfg and restart mastercam.

[bobbobbob]

Thanks for the idea's. I'll try them out & post back.

[mold100]

quote:

---

Mastercam is useless in knowing what this error message is. I've searched their knowledgebase & googled to no avail & our dealer has no clue. I'm hoping someone out there has seen this error.

---

No offense if your dealer has no clue, get a new one. Part of the problem is alot of people have been weined from V9

 

1st how much ram are you allocating for MCAM and what do you have running in the background or at the same time. V9 and previous you allowed how much of the ram your system could use. And as a tip set it in 64,000 increments, I had my 9 set both Database and Toolpath to 128,000 also for faster processing I had set my maximum patches per surfaces to 600000 my allocation was around 700 megs for a system with 3 gigs of ram and using a gefoce 6600 le video card and very rarley ever had a problem and I would work on pretty big files quite a bit. I havent been on 9 in a few years but was familiar from 6 to 9.1 and remember this.

[Snehal Shah]

As well what you could try is to delete all files in the C:mcam9commontemp directory.

[Justin Beebe at Folsom Tool]

Go to screen/configure/allocations and allocate more memory for toolpaths. See if this fixes the problem.

[gcode]

V9 is a 3.5 old year release now and my memory of it is fading but I'll give this a shot..

 

You swapped video cards and you're having trouble.

The first thing I'd do is review the BIOS settings

on your motherboard setup page..

Something my be set wrong and eating all your RAM

 

On the software side, I've seen this error caused by 3 things

1. not enough RAM allocation (MC needs more)

2. too much RAM allocation (Windoz needs more)

3. corrupt surfaces (as mentioned earlier)

 

The first 2 can be solved by trial and error.

If your machine will cruch similar toolpaths

but not one in particular, you've probably got

a bad surfce.

You could also try regenning some old files to see if they still run properly..

If they do, your machine/config is probably OK

and the file is the problem.

 

Something to keep in mind.. X3 will be out soon

When X4 comes out V9 support will be limited

With X5, V9 support will end.

Maybe its time to upgrade???

 

[ 08-03-2008, 03:08 PM: Message edited by: gcode ]

[bobbobbob]

I've been upping the toolpath allocation from the original 600,000 as suggested in 20,000 increments. The pc has 2gig of ram & a normal swap file which has room for expansion if necessary. This pc is only used for mastercam, no programs running in the background, huge empty harddrive because all files are kept on the server.

 

It does have x2 installed on the pc, but the user prefers to use 9.1. I'll try the suggestion of deleting the temp file. Deleting the config file wouldn't help because the program was uninstalled & reinstalled. This issue has been happening to older files as well as newer ones so it's not a bad file.

 

I'm doing this remotely so I can't access the bios & check those settings. Is there any reason to think the video card is the issue & to look for a different one?

 

Here is the current config. Any idea's? I appreciate the help because this is pretty baffling.

 

 

[gcode]

quote:

---

Deleting the config file wouldn't help because the program was uninstalled & reinstalled.

---

It might.. if Mastercam can't find a config file it will create a new one with default

settings... which may correct an error we haven't figured out yet..

 

A thought just occurred to me.... do you have read/write priveleges to all pertinant folders??

[bobbobbob]

Yes, this user has full admin rights on that pc.

[bobbobbob]

To close out the issue & help out anyone who has the same problem & sees this.

 

The answer to getting the error message to stop was not to up the allocation but rather to lower it & in both of the pc's I used Mold100's settings as described above. I then upped the allocation by 64,000 as suggested by another poster till I got the error message again just to see if that was the issue.

 

Thanks to all for the help!!!

[Todd Tracey from Fastech]

My suggestion to my customers on V9 was to never exceed 60% of the installed RAM for the memory allocations.

[bhuss]

max database and toolpath allocations - 256000

any more will cause errors. this is a software limitation.

[P_Scott]

bobbobbob,

 

quote:

---

It does have x2 installed on the pc, but the user prefers to use 9.1.

---

My suggestion would be to get some training for the user to help them get up to speed w/X2. The longer they wait to learn the "new stuff" the harder it will be. Since release of the X interface, memory allocation is a thing of the past. There is some user control over how much system resources Mastercam uses per session but nothing like in V9, which was limited anyway as bhuss suggested. I'm not sure if it was a software or system limitation but any way you look at it, X2 runs much better than V9.

HTH