MasterCam 9 Mill and FX 580???

[Lawsonmh15]

I have a client using MCAM 9 Mill whose old IT guy sold them typical biz workstations for CAM use... I told them they would see a vast improvemnt by moving from the onboard graphics, to a Quadro FX 580 and now when he goes through the drawing stages, he swears it's lifetimes slower than without a card whatsoever. I have AA at 8 and anisotropic filtering on but I just can't believe that it would be so much slower than with onboard video. He's only got a Q8200, 2GB of ram and running XP pro.

 

My question is this:

 

For him to make use of the graphical improvements at a higher speed, does he need to upgrade to X3 or X4? (Noticed that X4 is threading optimized) or does it boil down to the card not having enough juice to rip through the drawings and he needs an FX 1800? TIA

[Cad-Camr]

Thats the card we use and no major problems. It must be something in the settings. Welcome to the forum.

[Jayson Kramer]

Did they turn of the the onboard graphics in the Bios. maybe it is fighting between the two.

[Lawsonmh15]

I set the boot device to PEG, but I'll need to verify that the onboard is actually disabled if that's an option. I went into the configuration, Screen, attributes and changed the memory allocation... WAS set to 105MB. Either way, for the drawings this company's doing, a new machine, beefier card and newer version seems in order. I pulled what the artist rated a 7 out of 10 regarding intricacy and boy did it tax the card. Any suggestions on optimizing the program and the driver are greatly appreciated.

[Verndog]

quote:

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For him to make use of the graphical improvements at a higher speed, does he need to upgrade to X3 or X4?

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So, you would suggest your client change to X4 to make use of the graphics card you advised...and spend thousands to upgrade and go thru a learning curve to make use of a $150.00 card??

 

Tough sale IMO.

 

I've run V9 and X3 X4 under XP and a Quadro 570 and 580, and graphics were plenty fast. When I went to Win 7 V9 had bigtime issues with loosing curser, and you cannot disable hardware acceleration in win 7 with that card.

 

Other then that, I say there is another bottleneck. possibly V9 doesn't have open GL enabled in config from previous video?

[Colin Gilchrist]

Almost all Quadro cards have settings you can tweak. Are you running a 'Graphics profile' on that card?

 

All Quadro cards will perform very well with Mastercam when set to the "Solidworks" profile...

[gcode]

If a programmer wants to stay at V9, he's

pretty much stuck with XP Pro for an OS.

V9 can run on Vista and some guys can get it

running on Win7. but XP Pro is the last

supported OS for V9.

V9 has issues with both Vista and Win7 and these

isues will never be adressed.

V9 will sunset with the release of X5 this summer and will no longer be supported by

CNC Software.

[Lawsonmh15]

I created a new profile to point to Mill9.exe and configured it from there... Nonetheless, after I left yesterday, the programmer decided to uninstall and reinstall the driver and since then, it's in a boot loop... Going to end up having to go back out there, but hoping that the boot loop is in some way associated to his UPS as he heard beeps coming from below his desk and his workstation is on top of his desk.

[Lawsonmh15]

Will X3 utilize all four cores on his processor, and the threading optimization on the video card, or is X4 the only version that will make use of the optimized threading and multiple cores?

[gcode]

quote:

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boot loop

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It might have something to do

with adding a video card to a computer

with an onboard video proceesor.

Something in the BIOS is not set right

and the machine doen't know what to do.

The "IT professional" who sold them

a "CAD-CAM machine" with an on board

video card ought to get sued.

I wouldn't waste my time on this box.

It will never perform.

You don't say what the OS is... if they

are detirmenined to stay at V9 it should

be running XP Pro..

If its got Vista or Win7 on it, you

will be out there on a daily basis.

 

 

No version of Mastercam supports

multicores yet.. X4 can support

multithreading while regenning

some of the newer toolpaths..

 

If you want 1 good reason to upgrade,

check out the Benchmark thread.

We all run the same sample file

to test our comupter's crunch times

 

 

The thread was started in early X days

Average times were 12-15 minutes

Hot machines were sub 10 minutes..

Slow machines were over 20 minutes

 

In the latest release, X4 MU3,

$500 laptops are crunching this same file

in under 2 minutes..

 

I had a high speed waterline toolpath

I did in X3 (12-14 minutes) go to

under 3 minutes in X4 on the same

computer/OS.. CNC Software has

put a lot of work into getting crunch

times down.. and it shows

[Lawsonmh15]

quote:

---

It might have something to do

with adding a video card to a computer

with an onboard video proceesor.

Something in the BIOS is not set right

and the machine doen't know what to do.

The "IT professional" who sold them

a "CAD-CAM machine" with an on board

video card ought to get sued.

I wouldn't waste my time on this box.

It will never perform.

You don't say what the OS is... if they

are detirmenined to stay at V9 it should

be running XP Pro..

If its got Vista or Win7 on it, you

will be out there on a daily basis.

 

 

No version of Mastercam supports

multicores yet.. X4 can support

multithreading while regenning

some of the newer toolpaths..

 

If you want 1 good reason to upgrade,

check out the Benchmark thread.

We all run the same sample file

to test our comupter's crunch times

 

 

The thread was started in early X days

Average times were 12-15 minutes

Hot machines were sub 10 minutes..

Slow machines were over 20 minutes

 

In the latest release, X4 MU3,

$500 laptops are crunching this same file

in under 2 minutes..

 

I had a high speed waterline toolpath

I did in X3 (12-14 minutes) go to

under 3 minutes in X4 on the same

computer/OS.. CNC Software has

put a lot of work into getting crunch

times down.. and it shows

---

Now THIS is the type of reply I was looking for!!!

 

I will be forwarding this thread to the owner of the company and I think it will make him re-assess purchasing X4. He said he was considering holding off on X4, but considering the horrid hardware config for a CAM machine, this may go in the new office that's being built, or replace one of the P4 based boxes they have. Does anyone know if MC plans on adding the ability to utilize a multi-core processor in the near future? Wondering if an i7 would be overkill and I should look at building them an i5 based machine and overclocking to 4Ghz+ for the best performance and bang for the buck. I've been building high-end rendering and capture boxes for about 10 years but it was mainly in the CAD, production and post prod. realms.

 

Next big question, I read a thread on optimizing MC and it went way off track regarding graphics quality... Not my concern. Mine is whether or not the software will eventually make use of CUDA, C, or any GPU computing based language. If so, will a standard Quadro be able to make use of it, or will I need to add a TESLA card to make it worthwhile?

[Lawsonmh15]

quote:

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Other then that, I say there is another bottleneck. possibly V9 doesn't have open GL enabled in config from previous video?

---

Where in the config would I go to check that??? I went through the Screen->config options thoroughly and didn't find the option.

[MotorCityMinion]

"Mine is whether or not the software will eventually make use of CUDA, C, or any GPU computing based language. If so, will a standard Quadro be able to make use of it, or will I need to add a TESLA card to make it worthwhile?"

 

Quadros do not necessarily run any faster than their street level counter parts and won't make MC any faster. As for the CUDA compatibility:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CUDA

 

As far as CUDA or the Tesla card with regards to MC, never say never but I think that's not even on the back burner. Sure would be nice to be able to Verify 3d paths as fast as you can back plot them.

 

"but considering the horrid hardware config for a CAM machine"

 

Is he talking about cost here or compatibility issues? You can build a machine for under 2k that will handle almost anything that MC can throw at it. Yes, those beastly Comps in the benchmark sure are nice, 100% required? Definitely not. MC seems to get along fine with most standard hardware. Other software, goofy MC configs or a corrupted OS are the usual suspects when things start going awry.

 

My 1/2 cent.

[Lawsonmh15]

quote:

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Other software, goofy MC configs or a corrupted OS are the usual suspects when things start going awry.

---

By "other software", are you referring to Antivirus or what types of software may be causing problems?

[gcode]

Check out the Benchmark thread.

It starts in 2007. The most recent pages have quite a few 7i machines listed..

If I were building a machine to run X4, X5

and Solidworks it would be a Win 7 x64

with 8 or 12 meg..and a 7i proccessor.

Mastercam can't use the extra memory but it makes the whole machine run better.

I'd run an Quadro FX-1800 video card (3800 if the budget

will stand it) and a WD Raptor 300 meg hard drive

[Lawsonmh15]

quote:

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I'd run an Quadro FX-1800 video card (3800 if the budget

---

How big is the benefit of moving to the 1800? Also, I just realized I can score a 930 for $200 down at microcenter so I guess it's not terribly cost effective to go the i5 route. Both will easily OC to 4GHz+ so I'll probably just go that route. I'd love to be able to save the owner some $$$, but time is $ in their racket so I guess I'll just set them up with an i7 and 6GB to start. Not sure if I'll hit a wall OC'ing going to 12GB. As far as the drives go, I probably won't go with the 300GB velociraptor as it benches lower than a standard barracuda. The new raptor however, may be worth the investment. Have to see what the owner wants to do. Going out again tomorrow morning as his machine is flipping out as there is somehow to program file folders in the root and he can't rename the original. No clue how that happened, but these guys continually have really strange issues...

[Lawsonmh15]

Also, what's the max amount of RAM MC will use and do I want to allocate it more toward toolpath or database? I'm assuming toolpath but would love to hear any config tips you guys may have.

[Verndog]

quote:

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How big is the benefit of moving to the 1800?

---

Well if you believe the Win 7 video benchmark the FX580 will get you 6.4 and for 2.5 x the price the FX1800 will get you to 6.7 ($160.00 vs $400.00)

 

If your recommending a budget build the FX580 should be more then ample for 90% of Mastercam users (IMO). The 580 is faster then then old FX 1700 was...by a good margin.

 

As far as building a $2,000 PC, you can build a very fast i7 with an 1156 socket 860, Asus P7P55D-E-Pro MB with Sata 6gb USB 3.0, Quadro FX580, 4 gigs G.Skill DDR3 1333 ram (to start), and good quality Corsair 650HX 650W PS, for under $1100.00. (I've built 2 now). Take the extra $$ and buy a new sata 6gb (Sata III) SSD (that are on their way) with 350 MB/s reads and 250 MB/s writes and you'll load MC in about 2 secs and read 50 meg files in near a blink.

[Mark H]

quote:

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boot loop

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One possible cause...

McAfee antivirus program goes berserk

quote:

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Computers in companies, hospitals and schools around the world got stuck repeatedly rebooting themselves Wednesday after an antivirus program identified a normal Windows file as a virus...

---

 

[ 04-22-2010, 09:21 AM: Message edited by: Mark H ]

[Lawsonmh15]

I appreciate the replies. I'm at the shop now, and noticing that the "Enable OpenGL" option is GRAYED OUT!!! If I switch over to the Mill 9 Metric however, it is selectable... I'm assuming this is because there's another option somewhere that's different, but no clue where.

 

Any Ideas???

[gcode]

quote:

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"Enable OpenGL" option is GRAYED OUT!!!

---

there is a trick to this, but I don't remember what it was.

Try closing V9

open the config file in a text editor

and setting Question 1278 to "Y" by hand

[Mark H]

quote:

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there is a trick to this, but I don't remember what it was.

---

The trick is that shading must be turned off in order to set "Enable OpenGL"

[Lawsonmh15]

quote:

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The trick is that shading must be turned off in order to set "Enable OpenGL"

---

I noticed that it was unchecked in the metric config, but when I did it in the english config, then went back, it was still grayed out... Do I need to save the config, then re-open it and then it will be selectable?

[Mark H]

I did a quick test... started V9 and shading was on. I looked at screen, configure, screen (tab) and "enable OpenGL drawing" was not selectable. I exited out of screen config... toggled off shading (Alt-S), then went back in to screen, config and now "enable OpenGL drawing" is selectable. When it is selectable, change your setting and save the config file.