Can I machine 2d sketches ins Mcam for Solidworks?

[rsbeadle]

I am trying to implement SolidWorks in the engineering department at my company. We have Mastercam and Solidworks on the same computers. I would like to be able to send one Solidworks part file to the CNC programming department for them to use for machining. The issue is I want to have text imported from Solidworks that can be easily machined in Mastercam. I can import the text as a DXF or slddrw file, but as I said I would like to send only one file with the model and the text. If anyone knows a good way to do this please let me know. Thanks

[Guest]

What exactly are you asking, it's confusing

 

Are you using MC4SW's? Becasue that's what the title says, then you seem to be asking about transferring files into the standalone MCAM

 

But yes you can do a text in MC4SW's using the Create Letters function if MC4SW

 

As far as I know, outputting letters I don't think they will come out of SW's and into MCAM as anything useable

[rsbeadle]

I am sorry for the confusion. I am running Mcam X5 and SolidWorks but not MC4SW. I would like to know if we can cut SolidWorks sketch text in Mastercam without MC4SW of if we need it. Currently we can't even bring in the SolidWorks tree because we are running 32 bit Mcam and 64 bit SW. I need to convince the bosses we need to upgrade to X7 and add MC4SW to be more efficient between engineering and CNC programming.

 

Thanks.

[Guest]

I tried creating a sketch of letter and saved along with the solid model

 

When I opened the sldprt file in MCAM, the letters sketch did not come in

 

So I am not sure it can be made to

 

I know in the distant past, I always had to create the lettering geometry in MCAM

[mdean]

If you have SW on the same system as MC, you can save as a .slddrw file and then open the file in MC and choose the file type to open.

As long as SW is on the same system, MC can retreive the data. If You bring the file to another system that doesn't have SW on it, you

will get a blank screen. This came up in Tech Support recently where i could open the drw file but the customer could not because SW

was not on his system. The file was a blueprint drawing that they were using the 2d lines for drive geometry.

[rsbeadle]

Thanks for the help guys.