Why does X3 shut Solidworks down?

[snarpee]

Hello all,

 

Question for ya?, When in X3, I go to open a Solidworks CAD model, X3 then opens Solidworks and reads in all the Solidworks feature manager data, then opens the Solidworks file in X3, as soon as the file is open in X3, X3 then shuts Solidworks down, what the heck??? Am I the only one this is happening too?. I need Solidworks open at all time for all of my design work. That means I am loading Solidworks liek 100 times a day (not kidding about that). I always have X3 open while programming, but must have Solidworks open too to measure and referance other parts.

 

Is this a bug in MasterCAM, is this because Mastercam and Solidworks have not figured out their relationship yet? I dont know but its costing me about 2 hours a day just in waiting for programs to open ( no I dont have a slow computer, I have a state of the are 4,500 system that rocks at everything).

 

Chime in with your experiance, I cant be the only one....

 

God please let it just be a simple little switch and Im jsut ignorant.....

 

Thanks all....

[Reverend Turk]

I just tried to recreate this and I did not have an issue. SW is still open.

 

I have tried to bring in a SW file and was told by MC that my computer did not have SW installed.

[Hitachi]

I have Solidworks and X3 open together on a regular/ daily basis, never have a problem

 

Elco1971

X3 MU1 Mill L3 Lathe L1 5X

SolidWorks 2007 SP3.1

Dell Xeon 2.80GHz 2GB Ram

NVidia Quadro FX4500

Windows XP Pro SP2

[Jack Neelands™]

I have Solidworks 9 and X3mu1 and no issues...sorry

[snarpee]

Thanks guys for the quick reply.

 

I'm running X3 MU1

Dell Precision T3400

Quadro FX card

Raid 15K SAS drives

bla, bla, bla.

 

Im starting to think that it my be because Im running Windows XP Pro 64 bit?

[Reverend Turk]

Well..I am running XP 64 bit

[Rob Dusenbury CAD/CAM CONSULTING]

If you choose to bring in the features from solidworks, Mastercam connects to solidworks to bring in the history. So if you have SW open you will see the part and the features being sucked out of it. Once the file is in MC that file goes away in SW. It should not shut SW down though. It may close down that page. Also If SW is not open, In mastercam you will see a message at the bottom of the screen saying "connecting to solidworks". You should be fine, just double check to make sure SW is not shutting down completly, I'm betting that it is not.

 

Hope this helps.

[Pete Rimkus from CNC Software Inc.]

If SW is not open when you use Mastercam to grab the feature data, it will open SW, open the part in SW, do its thing, close the part, and close down SW.

 

If SW is open when you use Mastercam to grab the feature data, it should not shut down SW when it's finished. It will open the part in SW and then close that part when it's finished. It doesn't look to see if that part is already open (because it might not be the same depending on when things are saved).

If you're trying to get the current SW part across to Mastercam you could use Mastercam Direct to launch MC from SW with the currently active part.

[snarpee]

Ok, again, Today I tried opening a SW file from X3 today in 2 different way. 1st With SW closed, then 2nd with SW already opened. Both methods shut SW down after X3 had opened it and sucked in all the SW model features.

 

any thoughts guy? Im out of ideas, and this really waste's lots of employee time to keep using X3 like this.

 

Thanks for all your help Guy's...!!!

[Rob Dusenbury CAD/CAM CONSULTING]

Do what Pete suggested and install the SW direct. That way you can launch the current part in SW to MC. You can find it at www.mastercam.com

[MotorCityMinion]

Save time and just save the file as a parasolid, then open it in MC. I know, it's a cheap fix, but it works.

[JNO]

Do you need to bring the feature tree into MC? If not go into Config/Converters and shut off Import Solids History. I run SW and MC on Dual monitors all the time and never have a problem with MC shutting down SW. Though, I rarely have a need to import the history. If I want to Suppress/Add something I usually just do it in SW and then import as SLDPRT. I don't like using SWDirect, since I have had it lose features in the past.

[bhayden10]

I have the same problem when opening a solidworks file it will shutdown solidworks. Did anyone figure this problem out?

Thanks

[snarpee]

Bhayden10,

 

Im both glad to hear that you have the same problem, and sorry that you have the same problem as me, because that puts us both in the "Im having aproblem" catagory.

 

I still have not solved this issue, and have tried everything suggested in the trail of ideads on thes thread including installing the MasterCAM to SW translator software too.

 

This problem is very frustrating and waste lots of expensive employee time cycling SW on and off, then on, then off, then on, then off...etc... all day long.

 

I can only hope that there are more of us out there, and that this will get the attention of the MasterCAM software engineers so they can do some testing and solve it ASAP.

[bhayden10]

Well i don't think we should hold our breath, if the guru's (no disrespect intended) ain't having a problem then it most likely won't be addressed. It will take someone having the problem to figure it out for us. I've got a brand new system with clean installs of both so i'm guessing its a vista or 64 bit problem with either x3 or solidworks. As more people get new systems i would think the problem will come up more. On my system if I don't bring in the history it won't shut solidworks down.

[bogusmill]

Different problem, same suspects. On my laptop when I open MCX3 a window comes up "XP is installing Solidworks" which I have to cancel out of so MC will finish loading.

[Pete Rimkus from CNC Software Inc.]

It does indeed sound like an operating system issue, since I don't see anyone reporting this in XP32. At least that narrows down my list of suspects which are causing this.

 

"...On my laptop when I open MCX3 a window comes up "XP is installing Solidworks..."

 

Bogusmill, are you just launching X3 when you see this, or is it happening when you're either opening a SLDPRT into Mastercam (or dropping one onto the desktop shortcut)? I can't think of a good reason why SW would need to be 'installed' when simply starting MC. Therefore, the more info you can give me, the better.

[Guest]

I just opened Sw2009, opening into X3 a .sldprt, I just got done with.

 

X3 queried SW, opened the part and SW2009 is still open as is X3 MU1

 

running Vista Ultimate x64