I'm trying to like Cimco

[Mick]

That's a great photo

[Mick]

I wish we had got a photo when Hardmill, Ron, Gcode and I caught up at the last VUE.

 

There have been rumours of a photo or two of me in SoCal with Hardmill, TK32, gcode and Foghorn.... But they're just rumours LOL

[Newbeeee™]

 

There have been rumours of a photo or two of me in SoCal with Hardmill, TK32, gcode and Foghorn.... But they're just rumours LOL

I've seen some photos...

[Jayson Kramer]

Ok, Thanks to BenK we have our list of who's who. as I messed that up. lucky I remember who I am. lol
Ben please double check this .

[#Rekd™]

I forgot who we ask to add this this Sub form for Simulation and DNC? I am a mod but cannot create new forums here.

Did anybody follow up on requesting a sub forum?

[jlw™]

Alright, when backspacing and it gets to the beginning of a line it will not go up to the next line... is there a way to make it keep going?

[Watcher]

Yes. Go to settings... There's an option there related to backspace merging lines...

 

Can't tell exactly which name as I use it in Portuguese and I'm out of the office now...

[SlaveCam]

IIRC there used to be a view which shows the axis min-max values for the open program file, but I can't find it anywhere any longer! Has it been removed?

[Mick]

Alright, when backspacing and it gets to the beginning of a line it will not go up to the next line... is there a way to make it keep going?

 

Global Setup -> General -> Editor Uncheck "Disable Backspace at start of line"

 

IIRC there used to be a view which shows the axis min-max values for the open program file, but I can't find it anywhere any longer! Has it been removed?

 

NC Functions -> Toolpath Statistics. That shows the Min-Max values

 

This is for Cimco V8

[SlaveCam]

Global Setup -> General -> Editor Uncheck "Disable Backspace at start of line"

 

 

NC Functions -> Toolpath Statistics. That shows the Min-Max values

 

This is for Cimco V8

 

This function doesn't seem to exist in V7 and I also seem to have misrecalled, the min-max view was in the Mastercam code editor, not Cimco.

 

Our lathe PC has been nagging about low disk space for a while and finally did something about it and then launched Cimco (7) and voila, all the machine DNC settings were gone! There were only a list of BLANK entries in the DNC setup list (see picture). Hopefully this is fixed in V8.

[SlaveCam]

What on earth is going on here? I went back to Cimco 5 which still had the proper DNC machine settings configured, tried to transfer from machine to PC, the transfer was incomplete (no error message or anything, only partial program was transferred) and got the message "Unable to open port". Restarted PC, re-started Cimco 5 and now the machine settings for the machine I previously used is BLANKED as well!

[Watcher]

This function doesn't seem to exist in V7 and I also seem to have misrecalled, the min-max view was in the Mastercam code editor, not Cimco.

 

Our lathe PC has been nagging about low disk space for a while and finally did something about it and then launched Cimco (7) and voila, all the machine DNC settings were gone! There were only a list of BLANK entries in the DNC setup list (see picture). Hopefully this is fixed in V8.

Not sure if this is a bug from V7. Cimco store settings on AppData folder, in the user profile... Depending how you did the cleansing on your PC you deleted the files...

[Watcher]

What on earth is going on here? I went back to Cimco 5 which still had the proper DNC machine settings configured, tried to transfer from machine to PC, the transfer was incomplete (no error message or anything, only partial program was transferred) and got the message "Unable to open port". Restarted PC, re-started Cimco 5 and now the machine settings for the machine I previously used is BLANKED as well!

Unable to open the port means a few things:

 

The port is being used by an application... That could be Cimco edit itself...

 

The port is damaged or non functional (Drivers, eletricaly damaged...)

 

The port is not being recognized by the O/S

[SlaveCam]

Unable to open the port means a few things:

 

The port is being used by an application... That could be Cimco edit itself...

 

The port is damaged or non functional (Drivers, eletricaly damaged...)

 

The port is not being recognized by the O/S

 

There are some problems with the wires right now (we are cleaning the house and moving stuff around etc.) so I'm pretty sure the transfer failed due to electrical reasons. But it seems off that Cimco's settings become corrupted when the transfer failed quietly. The cleaning operation on the PC was just removing some big temporary installation files.

[jlw™]

How do I find the extents of an NC file in Cimco?

[Guest]

NC Functions >> Tool Path Statistics????

[Jayson Kramer]

As john said but must be in the Professional version.

[jlw™]

OH COME ON!  I am using free version.

 

[Jayson Kramer]

Sorry sir. you can download it and it will run for 30 days and you check what you need.

[jlw™]

Thanks Jay, I've already burnt the 30 days!

 

It's on the list of things to buy but keeps getting deprioritized.

[Jayson Kramer]

Remember to tell you reseller you are a Mastercam customer to get the OEM upgrade.

[Mick from CNC Software Inc.]

BenK,

 

We use Beyond Compare in house, to ignore block numbers just add a regular expression to filter them out and set ignore minor differences if you want them completely hidden.

 

 

 

 

That's what I use as well. Its a great compare tool but it still needs a few things in my opinion. I'm still trying to figure out how to have it ignore block numbers. 

 

 

 

 

I agree that Cimco could use a little work on the compare function. It has trouble when you get a lot of differences and basically gives up and marks everything as different. I still use it for the simple compares but when it gets more complex I move to Beyond compare. With that said I could understand if this wasn't their focus and it wouldn't bother me one bit if they didn't touch it. When I run across some specific issues I will send them to you. 

Edited December 2, 2016 by Mick from CNC Software Inc.

[Newbeeee™]

^^^ +1 to Beyond Compare.

 

It's excellent and cheap as chips.

 

[Watcher]

The current comparison engine in CIMCO Edit got its latest major review in V5.

 

Considering V5 was innitialy released in early 2006 and its last release was in the end of 2010, that gives us 10 years since the major review and 6 years of maintenance of this major review.

 

Of course minor bugs were fixed in the past releases (V6 / V7 / V8), but that's what they were: bugs - not enhancements.

 

I follow the change log of this product since V5, and I localized it to Portuguese. I'd remember about major improvements in the comparison functions.

 

Definitely this part of the product needs more attention. Also, the list I put together a few posts back seems to be a distant dream.

 

/rant on

 

I like the product quite a bit and in the whole context DNC-Max, Ncbase and Editor are unbeatable. But as an editor only it hurts to have a one man company providing a technically superior editor: NC-Plot.

 

It seems Scott is able to focus more on what makes the difference for the programmers these days. Cimco Edit is an excellent product for generic purposes, but its inability to better handle code for angle heads, sophisticated transformations and axis swapping, arc and coordinate conversions (Abs/Inc) is just frustrating. Machine tools evolved in the past decade, new possibilities and optionals, and the editor did not evolved at the same pace considering string/coordinate handling and transformation. Angle heads are not so rare anymore. Turning includes ID machining. What's the point of loading a STL model if you can't see the ID operation unless you go to a 3D cad system and section the model yourself?

 

We license 40 seats of editor, 10 are Pro. We waste 10-12 hours per month, considering all programmers, sectioning CAD models to plot turning paths and see ID machining. Don't understand why is not there yet.

 

/rant off

 

However, I'm one that cannot complain much about the development of things because in the past 10 years cimco developed more than a 100 new functionalities and another hundreds of bug fixes upon my request, considering all modules.

 

I spotted alone more than 70 issues on V8 beta testing and most of them were solved.

 

So personally I can't complain. But my points above are referring to the fact that I have to see the things objectively and fight for what my team needs, and hopefully this is a never ending job.

 

I vote for cimco putting more focus on editor functions and have what their competitors are offering.

 

Sometimes I wish they were smaller so they could focus more on having unique differentials.

 

JM2C

[Newbeeee™]

 

Sometimes I wish they were smaller so they could focus more on having unique differentials.

 

+ another 1 on NCPlot.

And we like unique differentials. We don't like everything the same...