MasterCam 7 and the moldbase c-hook

[chris graf]

We are currently using an old WIN98 SE PC and running Mastercam V7 so that we can continue to use an old c-hook called moldbase that could project machining operations down through several plates based on the type of feature it is accomodating ie. a leader pin hole in the first plate might be a 1.001" PF with a c'bore, in the second plate the same feature might be a larger through bore and c'bore for a bushing etc. It gets harder and harder to keep these old PCs working and even harder still to keep them in communication with the newer server software.

What function is incorporated in the latest versions of Mastercam that approximates this functionality? Thanks!

[Jayson Kramer]

I forgot who made that tool was this from Moldplus?

[Aaron Eberhard]

Chris - I'm not familiar with MoldBase, but your example sounds like something that could be done with FBM?

[robk]

I have used the moldbase option in the past. It was an awesome tool. Not many people are familiar with it. I believe that V8 might have been the last version to support it.

FYI, the person that created moldbase worked for the same company I did @ that time. He did end up going to work for CNC Software. His name might have been Ray, but it's been too many years for me to be sure.

[Ray Culver]

I'm not dead yet!

 

Ah, the glory days. Moldbase worked well but was too much of a niche product so it was discontinued. I still have a brochure of it on my office wall. Would be really cool to get it working again with solids instead of wire frame. Assembly mode and components, standard pocket styles, automatic dimensioning, etc.

 

The closest thing you have to Moldbase now is FBM, but you'd have to draw each plate individually in solids and then run FBM drilling and FBM milling on it and even then all you'd get is just the toolpath operations (hopefully in the order you'd want to machine them).

 

Definitely not as automated as it was before.

 

Sorry.

[chris graf]

Thanks everyone. I played a bit with Feature Based Machining today. It looks like it will take some setting up and editing of our tool library and a good deal of attention to the operations manager after running the drill and mill FBMs. All of our frames are drawn in solids so this feature may work for us eventually. Now I have foreseen another related problem. A good deal of our frame work is repeat business or variations on previous work. If (when) we loss the ability to run the moldbase c-hook we will lose all of these operations and will have to rely on earlier posted intermediate files or reload the geometry and re-do all the work. Without an updated and backwards compatible version of the c-hook this looks unavoidable.

[pip]

I thought V7 wouldn't even load on anything less than win7.

[cadman2112]

V7 pip, not X7

Circa 1997'ish

[robk]

^^

Yup... Late 90's... We're talking a long time ago here when it comes to CAD/CAM software.

[cadman2112]

Talking a long time ago in software in general

 

But point taken

[Aaron Eberhard]

Chris - This in no way mitigates your pain from having to redo work, but if you do go forward using FBM to do it, look into using Change Recognition to if the parts are similar, but just different dimensions and minor features. Look it up in the help system for an example, it's pretty smooth for doing repetitive parts.

 

And I can't be the only one who sees a car for sale, says "Oh hey, that's from 2000. It's practically new!" before realizing it's 13 years old, right?

[Jayson Kramer]

Started beta testing V7 in 1997 the year my older son was born. that was fun. doing molds with V6.1A and moldplus it rocked then.

[chris graf]

My first Mastercam experience was with I believe V3.5 running on an IBM XT with a 20 meg hdd and a 5.25" floppy. Thanks again for all the suggestions and comments. I will look at "change recognition". While we do do similar jobs, mold making is not exactly a production environment so we don't knock out hundreds of the same details so we'll see how it goes.

[robk]

I also started on V3... Somewhere I still have V5 brand new in box.

[Matthew Hajicek - Singularity]

Mmm. Thinking back to my first solid model...