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Pitch in your little gems that make mcam life easier


jlw™
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I am trying to copy from an open MC to another open MC I get an error message when I CTRL V

 

"Choose any attributes to set to the current user setting hit enter or ESC to continue"

 

When I press enter nothing happens.

 

Thanks

 

Jim

 

Edit,  I made it work but still do not understand message

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  • 2 weeks later...

When you're working on a post and you want to find a parameter, do a parameter dump.  Set field you're looking for with a unique number value, ex 1.2345, that will be easy to find.

 

In post:

 

pparameter$      #Information from parameters
      #"pwrttparam", ~prmcode$, ~sparameter$, e$

 

Get rid of the red hashtag and re-post.  Use you're editor to find the unique number you set.

 

pwrttparamprmcode$ 10031.1.2345

 

Find the value (blue), the parameter will be the number before the first decimal point (red)

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I imagine most of y'all already know this, but when you have the "Analyze Entities Properties" dialog open, you can quickly change many of the properties. For instance you can change a line's endpoints by clicking the "+1" or "+2" buttons, then selecting any point. Or for a circle, the same thing can be done to select a new center.

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When creating a line, if you select an arc as the first endpoint it throws the line tangent to the arc. 2 arcs, can create a line tangent to both just by selecting the 2 arcs instead of endpoints.

 

I change normals on surfaces with analyze dynamic. click on the surface and if the normal is the wrong direction use the double ended arrow button in the popup box that happens right after you click on the surface.

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Sometimes geometry created in other CAD systems is created with weird planes. If you analyze the Arc (F4), you will see the start and end angles are something wacky like 247.882 and 607.882. So it is a sweep of 360, but random placement of the start/end.

Use the Analyze Entities dialog to enter new angles to fix the start. Enter 0 for the start and 360 for the end.

 

If you have to change the entry location on a hole or when contouring a boss, use Xform Rotate, and pick the arc center. Then rotate 90 or 180 to move the entry/exit point.

 

Also, the default lead in/out method has "enter and exit at the midpoint for closed contours" enabled. So be aware of that when observing the lead motion. (You might just need to uncheck that box instead of rotating the Arc.)

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Many "Power Users" get used to using the "Hide" command (ALT + E).

 

When using "Hide", if you have any geometry selected on the screen, this becomes your "displayed" geometry, and everything else is temporarily hidden. Pressing ALT + E again, un-hides everything.

 

Thanks for the tip. This shortcut is great, I often get a little confused what line is what sometimes. Normally I just color code the drawing before I start creating geometry.

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Toolpath editor is something I use quite a bit. I am on operation 440 of a big project. Over 40 operation have been edited using the toolpath editor. I still use flowline for a lot of surface machining. I will sometime get movement I don't want. I will just go in and delete the points or passes to clean it up and good to go. Yellow are the rapid moves and red and feed moves. Also each one can be changed. You want to add a comment, or change a feed rate and change from a rapid move to a feed rate you can. Right Click and operation and at the bottom is toolpath editor. Give it a try and see how powerful it is. 

 

I like Vector lines for my 5 Axis toolpaths. Little trick is to take a surface and offset it 1.00. Then create edge curves on it. Now create edge curves on the original surface. Create/points/segments and make an equal number of points on each. Then make Vector lines using line. Trick is to make the lines all the same going in the same direction then you can window them all and they will be facing the correct direction. Right click on the Auto cursor for point and now you have locked point as your only selection method. Create the lines away. My wife and kids call it connecting the dots and always want to come play when I am doing it.

 

Want to have your surfaces flowline a certain way, but the original surfaces flowlines are not correct. Recreate them. Takes a little bit of CAD experience, but once you have captured the curves from a surface you can use them to recreate just about any original surface. Trick is to have enough chains to define them. Once you play around with net, sweep and some other surface creation tools you will see how to make surfaces give you the results you were looking for that the toolpath just couldn't get to. Also points projects onto a surface can be used in NET as well. Use create point dynamic to create some extra points or do a grid of points normal to a view and then use Xform project to project them on to the surface you want to recreate. Morph between 2 curves really helps this a lot, but you must have 5 Axis to use this extremely powerful toolpath in Mastercam.

 

Create Point Dynamic with Line and Distance. This is a quick and easy way to create Vector lines on surfaces.

 

Doing 5 Axis programming and want to have your view be the view you machine from. C-Plane = Gview will create a Plane to use for 3+2 or even 5 Axis operations.

 

Doing Multi Axis programming. Put all your standard views on your right click.

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Thanks for the tip. This shortcut is great, I often get a little confused what line is what sometimes. Normally I just color code the drawing before I start creating geometry.

 

 

Yep, how did I live with out that?

 

Here's what I did:

 

new_mouse_config.png

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Many "Power Users" get used to using the "Hide" command (ALT + E).

 

When using "Hide", if you have any geometry selected on the screen, this becomes your "displayed" geometry, and everything else is temporarily hidden. Pressing ALT + E again, un-hides everything.

 

There are a couple useful commands that go along with "Hide", but they are not in the Screen menu by default. (OK, X9 gave us "unhide some" in the main menu at least).

 

So along with the normal "Hide" command (ALT + E), Mastercam also has "Un-hide some", and "Hide More Entities". Both of these commands I find to be extremely useful, so I map them to the F11 and F12 keys on my keyboard. I also customize my Right Mouse Button Menu, and add them to my "Screen" fly-out menu. I use these commands a lot...

 

Another way to hide more entities (faster for me) is to select what you want displayed  and then (ALT+E) twice. The first will bring back the hidden entities and the second will display the last selection.

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This one come in handy when I need to jam a job in when another is all set up. Especially with Haas carousel type tool changers. When you do a renumber of your tools you can use a negative number  for your increment. So if I am using tools 1-7 for the job running and want to use maybe 20-15 for the slide in job I will renumber with starting tool as 20 and increment of -1. This will renumber my tools 20-15.

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Get a 3D mouse from 3DConnexion. It lets you rotate the part any which way you could imagine with one hand. I bought the basic one for my self but have used the ones with the key boards. You can map key strokes to it that make things like chaining and drawing a breeze. I love my little mouse.

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This one might be sooooo obvious but if you are not using dynamic xform daily you are missing out on the one best feature of any release. It in my opinion is the single most useful drafting function in Mastercam and has replaced about every other move function except for mirror for me. Play with it, embrace it, you will end up loving it.

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This one might be sooooo obvious but if you are not using dynamic xform daily you are missing out on the one best feature of any release. It in my opinion is the single most useful drafting function in Mastercam and has replaced about every other move function except for mirror for me. Play with it, embrace it, you will end up loving it.

 

 

Agreed.  I wish I had an analytics tool to tell what features I use the most.  That'd be probably #2 or #3 easily.

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