This site

[jrykrl]

This is the greatest tool, all you guys are awesome and thanks for so much interesting reading.

I've made this my home page so I can try to keep up.

[Thad]

You're absolutely right, this place rocks!

 

Welcome to the board.

 

Thad

[Eric S.]

Welcocme!

[MetalMarvels]

Welcome to the best CAM software forum on the web!

 

[Keith Graydon]

OK, Now you want a post for ,,,what machine????

[jrykrl]

I can alter my own post!!

[Keith Graydon]

J/K ZT. It's the running joke aroound here

[JAMMAN]

"I'll take FADAL post for 400 Alex"

[Guest CNC Apps Guy 1]

You hit the daily double, how much of that would you like to wager?

 

[Marty A]

your right zt909 these guys and gals are awesome.

welcome to the forum

 

marty

[mayday]

The place is amazing

Makes me wonder. When this site originated, has it by far exceded its excpectations of cnc and emastercams idea's. I cant even remember the last time I had to call mt reseller for help I just hit my home page and you guys and gals are there. was the original intent to alieviate the help burden from the users of the software or just to have a means of interaction?

which ever it was. its gggGGGreat

[Simtech]

You'd have to ask Dave about that one, but I do beleive that in the beginning it was only a trial on the new web page of www.emastercam.com because before that, In-House only had there own web page.

 

Is this right guys? It's been a while...

 

Luc

[Allan Brown]

A brief history of the Forum:

 

Sometime around 1999, Paul Nelson from NSCC pointed out that Smartcam had a fairly active list server email list, and was asking if Mastercam had anything similar. We didn't. Thanks for the motivation Paul.

 

We set up the Canadian Discussion Forum on mastercam-canada.com / mastercam.ca as a trial to see if we could provide better service to our customers, potentially move some support away from the phone, and have a lasting online 'knowledge base'.

 

We found that limiting the membership to Canada only meant that there was insufficient critical mass to have members helping members. It was more of an 'ask In-House' forum, where everyone could see the responses. OK, but less than ideal. The forum engine software also sucked. The Registration process was also time consuming even at the low participation levels, which is why we handle how we do now.

 

At the time I had purchased a $99 Palm Pilot rip-off called the daVinci. Terrible support from the manufacturer, but good independent web forums helped me through plenty of support issues. They used UBB forum software.

 

We picked up UBB, and selected a suitably cheesy domain name for a new 'borderless' site. ("dude.com is taken". "What about edude.com?") Somewhere along the line CNC Software gave us their blessing. Initial invites went out to the Canadian Forum members.

 

It's been 3 1/2 years now. We're quite pleased with how things have worked out. It's a viable tech support option.

 

As far as registration numbers, we're only at about 10% of all SIMs in the market. Of course a portion of the totals are educational. I think we conservatively assumed we could get 10% participation. I suppose I'm slightly surprised that total number of members isn't higher. Language may be an issue for international users. I am however *totally* surprised by how prolific and passionate the participating Members are.

 

[ 11-18-2003, 09:41 AM: Message edited by: Dave Thomson ]

[mayday]

Thanks for the little history lesson Dave.

[chad fisher]

Nice history lesson Dave. You stated that participation level is only at 10%. I know at our facility we have 11 seats here and i am the only one that really posts. I wonder how many other places have multiple seats that might have only person who posts from that facility. Our reseller even encourages participation on this site. Thanks guys, it is a great site!

[robk]

quote:

---

I wonder how many other places have multiple seats that might have only person who posts from that facility.

---

5 Seats used in here, and I am the only one using the forum. I guess the other guys know it all.

 

Rob

[mold100]

No seats any longer for me but its still a great place to hang out and learn for someday I will Mastercam again!!

[Noel]

3 seats and I'm the only one.

 

 

Noel

[bryan314]

Ditto on what chad said. We have 3 seats of mill and 3 seats of Design. I'm the only one who is active in the forum. One other guy reads but he rarely posts. I'm betting the count is higher than 10% if you figured by company and not by seat. But 10% is higher than I would've guessed.

 

Bryan

[Midwest]

2 seats Mill

 

2 seats Design

 

I'm the only one getting tips from you guys and gals. I do share with them. Try to be helpful, but you all type and answer fast around here.

 

[Brendan P]

2 Seats here.

The other guy is too chicken sh!t to post with the Big Boys!

[mayday]

quote:

---

too chicken sh!t to post

---

proly read some of your replys bucket

 

for us, 4 seats but only 2 chairs

2 full time grammers 2 part time wannabees

 

the other full timer just joined but I dont think he posted yet.

 

maybe a poultry problem

[CNCGUY]

I too want to say thanks to all.

 

Several weeks ago I asked a question about C-Axis work. Someone here told me about the MI4 toggle (sorry cant find the original thread). We finally got our tooling and the program ran great.

 

The post changes I learned here and programming problems/tips discussed are awesome, not to mention the O/T discussions.

 

I only hope one day I can help as much as you all have helped me.

 

Thanks again.

[Guest CNC Apps Guy 1]

6 seats - 6 programmers and I'm the only one who posts. I'm the "In-House" Mastercam AE so they never really need to post I guess.

 

I used to hang out in the alt.machines.cnc NG, but I didn't really like it because it's almost all pirates in there and it used to really xxxx me off, seeing as at the time I worked for the local MC Reseller and the sight of pirates flaunting their stuff enraged me. Even though there are plenty of pirates in here, they are at least not flaunting it in our faces - if they do, they get the e-mail from Webby asking for their SIM# and that's the end of that. What drove me here also was the itch to do tech support. That's the side of business I really miss. Everything else can take a flying leap - I hate sales - but tech support... that's what I dig and that's whay I'm here - to support CNC Software because I would not be where I am today without them.

 

[ 11-18-2003, 01:01 PM: Message edited by: James Meyette ]

[CR]

one Seat Lathe Mill Design

 

Great forum Thank you to all

I had learned a lot of stuff from you all

from conf. my MC, how to run C-hooks

and post tweaking as well.

 

Thank you very much to ALL

 

Just started to learn MC

 

CR