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Machine Simulator


DavidB
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Well yeah, of course those solutions are great. They are also expensive. And require someone to learn a new interface, and keep up with another different software package. I'm hoping for a solution from MW that would work with Mastercam.

One of my biggest gripes about Vericut is their "modeling" tools. You either build with primitives, or try and use their atrocious "sketcher". I'm not sure what kind of modeling tools NC Simul has, but I hope it is better than Vericut's.

For me, and this is just my opinion, I would love to see another "low cost" Simulation solution on the market. If you pay to integrate MW Machine Simulation into your Post, the cost is 5-10 times less than the cost of Vericut for a "single machine", depending on the modules purchased. For many people, it is a better solution for their problems. Not that Vericut isn't amazing software, because it is. 

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Colin CAV is a tool and sorry NCSIMUL is not a CAD just like Vericut isn't. MW is not a CAD software either so if we compare apples to apples then it falls into the same arena all CAV does in that regard. Agree MW is good and like I have said many times before the 1st CAM that integrates ISO into their internal Verification wins a huge victory for the industry as a whole. I don't see any of the majors every doing this. They will always focus what they focus on and CAV is not a care for them. Why CAV was created in the 1st place was to support all the majors in CAM and then all the CAV had to lower themselves to what they consider the minor CAM. Mastercam is still considered by many in different parts of Manufacturing a lesser CAM and amazing how many times you have to prove your not stupid for using Mastercam to companies. 

Yes really a pain only some are considered good enough to integrate MW into posts. Trust me is still cost a good bit getting a post tied to MW. Cheaper yes, but it is not the same and until is goes to the extent others do then not the same as CAV. Great tool and I use it all the time for stuff, but where I need a final authority CAV is still that.

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2 hours ago, Colin Gilchrist said:

I really wish there was simply a "Machine Simulation"  license that couldbe added to a Hasp. ...

... Setting up accurate Machine Simulation is not a trivial task. 

There you go - every day is a school day. My assumption (dangerous to arse-u-me I know...) was that module works was licenced by CNC, which is why it is included with mcam.

Just like cimco. And the HS and 5ax toolpaths. And the verify.

I frequent both this and the "real" websites and never knew that Moduleworks had to be involved at all. I just thought it was a back-burner type enhancement - one that was there but was to maybe be perhaps possibly implemented sometime in the near or far future... you know :rolleyes:

If it was a hasp licence with available support, then I would have thought this would be a good earner for CNC.

Although yes - I can understand the huge time involved in getting the machines dialled in = resource.

 

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1 hour ago, newbeeee said:

There you go - every day is a school day. My assumption (dangerous to arse-u-me I know...) was that module works was licenced by CNC, which is why it is included with mcam.

Just like cimco. And the HS and 5ax toolpaths. And the verify.

I frequent both this and the "real" websites and never knew that Moduleworks had to be involved at all. I just thought it was a back-burner type enhancement - one that was there but was to maybe be perhaps possibly implemented sometime in the near or far future... you know :rolleyes:

If it was a hasp licence with available support, then I would have thought this would be a good earner for CNC.

Although yes - I can understand the huge time involved in getting the machines dialled in = resource.

 

 

Keep in mind that all the ancillary services were always intended to go through the Reseller, and provide an income stream for them.

ModuleWorks is licensed by CNC Software, for inclusion into Mastercam. This is the "Base Simulation", that everyone gets "for free" inside Mastercam. It runs NCI data, not G-code.

There has been the "ability" to tie a Post to Machine Simulation since about X7. You just had to pay someone who "knows how", and has an agreement with MW, so that they share the money. The customization that is available is pretty amazing. I remember seeing a 6 Axis Gantry that used a big saw cutter for some specialized application. It was fully simulated in the Machine Simulation from ModuleWorks, and the same Post that generated the NC Code from the NCI data, would also write the exact same data to the MWCL file. (move for move). Bottom line was it was successful, and worked for the customer.

Many of the service providers that offer these services are either in Canada or Germany. I do believe that several Resellers from the USA have also been trained in how to tie a Post to the Simulation, but I'm not sure which ones...

 

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1 hour ago, Colin Gilchrist said:

 

Keep in mind that all the ancillary services were always intended to go through the Reseller, and provide an income stream for them.

ModuleWorks is licensed by CNC Software, for inclusion into Mastercam. This is the "Base Simulation", that everyone gets "for free" inside Mastercam. It runs NCI data, not G-code.

There has been the "ability" to tie a Post to Machine Simulation since about X7. You just had to pay someone who "knows how", and has an agreement with MW, so that they share the money. The customization that is available is pretty amazing. I remember seeing a 6 Axis Gantry that used a big saw cutter for some specialized application. It was fully simulated in the Machine Simulation from ModuleWorks, and the same Post that generated the NC Code from the NCI data, would also write the exact same data to the MWCL file. (move for move). Bottom line was it was successful, and worked for the customer.

Many of the service providers that offer these services are either in Canada or Germany. I do believe that several Resellers from the USA have also been trained in how to tie a Post to the Simulation, but I'm not sure which ones...

 

I think that really goes all the back to V9 with what Germany was doing part of what brought about Moduleworks to being with.

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2 hours ago, Colin Gilchrist said:

 

Keep in mind that all the ancillary services were always intended to go through the Reseller, and provide an income stream for them.

ModuleWorks is licensed by CNC Software, for inclusion into Mastercam. This is the "Base Simulation", that everyone gets "for free" inside Mastercam. It runs NCI data, not G-code.

There has been the "ability" to tie a Post to Machine Simulation since about X7. You just had to pay someone who "knows how", and has an agreement with MW, so that they share the money. The customization that is available is pretty amazing. I remember seeing a 6 Axis Gantry that used a big saw cutter for some specialized application. It was fully simulated in the Machine Simulation from ModuleWorks, and the same Post that generated the NC Code from the NCI data, would also write the exact same data to the MWCL file. (move for move). Bottom line was it was successful, and worked for the customer.

Many of the service providers that offer these services are either in Canada or Germany. I do believe that several Resellers from the USA have also been trained in how to tie a Post to the Simulation, but I'm not sure which ones...

 

How does out of country resources balance with ITAR and other customer or government mandates?

But the real deal killer for us is competitive advantage. Us having things that only we have. We make a lot of our money thru IP. The fact that we must have somebody else give us permission to integrate a custom process makes it a no go. We no longer send any of our proprietary info out for support. We learned the hard way, after PartMaker put videos on YouTube of a simulation session for a file we sent to them for support purposes. Less than 30 days after they signed an NDA. It was not pretty.

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3 minutes ago, Zoober said:

How does out of country resources balance with ITAR and other customer or government mandates?

But the real deal killer for us is competitive advantage. Us having things that only we have. We make a lot of our money thru IP. The fact that we must have somebody else give us permission to integrate a custom process makes it a no go. We no longer send any of our proprietary info out for support. We learned the hard way, after PartMaker put videos on YouTube of a simulation session for a file we sent to them for support purposes. Less than 30 days after they signed an NDA. It was not pretty.

There is a big difference between sending someone a Part File from a customer, and having them customize your software. I've never needed any proprietary data to setup Machine Simulation. I could see there being an issue if you were having problems with a particular part, and needed their help to debug the issue perhaps.

I dealt with some of those issues with CGTech, and their position is that they will sign NDA's with their customers, but will not "certify" their software as being ITAR compliant. They had to setup a completely separate server for dealing with some customers that needed the ITAR assurances. (They do it for "big" players, but not for the average shop. They'll just tell you "Lol, nope, sorry".)

That isn't to say that they won't protect your NDA data, because they certainly will. They just can't guarantee that a "non-US Person" won't have access, since CGTech has employees all over the world, and they generally help each other. Just something to be aware of...

 

 

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12 minutes ago, Zoober said:

How does out of country resources balance with ITAR and other customer or government mandates?

But the real deal killer for us is competitive advantage. Us having things that only we have. We make a lot of our money thru IP. The fact that we must have somebody else give us permission to integrate a custom process makes it a no go. We no longer send any of our proprietary info out for support. We learned the hard way, after PartMaker put videos on YouTube of a simulation session for a file we sent to them for support purposes. Less than 30 days after they signed an NDA. It was not pretty.

Hopefully you got some expensive lawyers involved and sued their bullocks off?

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Most support calls for cam software goes like this:

Support: send us a Z2G (or whatever format) with the problem files and issues documented. 

Us: sorry, we can't do that. IP reasons. 

Support: TRUST us, we signed an NDA. 

Us: sorry, been there done that. Can we have YOUR source code? We have the resources and an NDA...

Support: .....................click. 

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4 minutes ago, Colin Gilchrist said:

Hopefully you got some expensive lawyers involved and sued their bullocks off?

Don't know the final extent of it. My last communications were with Hannan Fishman, PartMaker's CEO before it was handed off to higher pay grades than mine. 

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By the way, we actually have integrated thing into our Swiss machines that Star actually now offers as options (with permission and still our IP). There is simply no post or machine sim in existence that handles that. But we can. Again, because our software supports user configurations via nethook, post,  or whatever means. That is not possible in psb or other locked stuff. 

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This was all well before he left. in 2013. But I'm pretty sure he didn't direct the individual to save the sim session and upload to You tube.

But who is Partmaker's CEO (or AD's now), makes no difference. The policy is set.

We do not allow any proprietary info out the door for support purposes.


 

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12 minutes ago, Zoober said:

This was all well before he left. in 2013. But I'm pretty sure he didn't direct the individual to save the sim session and upload to You tube.

 

Oh, no doubt, way below people he would be dealing with.....

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14 hours ago, Colin Gilchrist said:

There has been the "ability" to tie a Post to Machine Simulation since about X7. You just had to pay someone who "knows how", and has an agreement with MW, so that they share the money. The customization that is available is pretty amazing. I remember seeing a 6 Axis Gantry that used a big saw cutter for some specialized application. It was fully simulated in the Machine Simulation from ModuleWorks, and the same Post that generated the NC Code from the NCI data, would also write the exact same data to the MWCL file. (move for move). Bottom line was it was successful, and worked for the customer.

Many of the service providers that offer these services are either in Canada or Germany. I do believe that several Resellers from the USA have also been trained in how to tie a Post to the Simulation, but I'm not sure which ones...

For additional axes, they use preprocessor.py written on the python and fille .mps scheme with the axes.

You can write [email protected] and they will tell how it works your dealer, but not to you ....... Why are there no descriptions of these procedures in the documentation

from math import *


class Preprocessor(object):
 
    
    VERSION = 1
    TYPE = "move"
    AXIS = ["X" , "Y" , "Z" , "C" , "B" , "WREAL", "ZREAL" ]  
    
    def ProcessMove(self, environment, operation, move): 
        if move["axisValue"]["Z"] < 30:
            # Move entirely on the ZREAL axis
            move["axisValue"]["ZREAL"] = move["axisValue"]["Z"]
        else:
            # Move 40 in the ZREAL axis, and the remaining in the
            # WREAL axis
            move["axisValue"]["ZREAL"] = 30
            move["axisValue"]["WREAL"] = move["axisValue"]["Z"] - 30

preprocessor = Preprocessor()

 

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5 hours ago, AC3 said:

Why are there no descriptions of these procedures in the documentation

You obviously didn't read my or Colin's postings...

From page 2 in this very thread

This technology is licensed from them......you need to $$$

 

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4 hours ago, DavidJP said:

Hi guys!

Does anyone have a instruction on how to set everything up for the machine simulator. I have downloaded the machine step files from Haas website. 

This is new for me!

Greetings from Sweden!

Take a base machine close to what your wanting and just swap out the components. Then from there adjust the travel limits. I will normally copy the old machine and rename it to the new this has to be done correctly using the Machinesim edit process. Once you get the hang of it pretty straight forward from there. 

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Just to jump into this.

 

Last year we started using machine simulation a LOT. We had POSTABILITY link up the post they made for our 5axis machine, but we also had our reseller make a couple of basic, custom models of our 3axis machines that are NOT linked up to the post. Those only cost us $200 a piece. Not sure what the postability one cost us. But they've all been extremely helpful...other than they keep getting 'broken' from time to time...little glitches. Dealing with one right now.

We also spent a ton of time customizing our tool and holder libraries to take full advantage of machine simulation and learning how to use mastercam's stand alone library to build 'assemblies' as we often have to build tool-extension-holders that end up being 15-20" long and tooling clearance as well as machine limits can be an issue for us from time to time. It took us a couple of months to do all the customization plus lots of help from our reseller and even pulled CNC Software in a few times to address issues, but now I look at what we do today with machine simulation and what we did 18 months ago and it's like coming out of the dark ages where we made programs, crossed our fingers and hoped the operators could find a way to make them work. Now we provide them a detailed tool build sheet thru Jim Varco (Varco Reports) that directly interfaces with Mastercam and after having put it thru verify and machine simulate (they each check different things) I can 99% guarantee to my operators that my programs will run, without crashes, and using much shorter tooling than I might have suggested in the past.

(We are a mill/turn only shop doing prototype work mostly for the automotive industry)

Scott

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am I missing something with Machine Simulation and Verify? There seems to be no collision detection between tool HOLDER and fixture/machine (only holder and stock) ?

Then something is not working correctly and should be checked out.  Under the "Info" tab, check to make sure that "Machine Components Collision Detection" is "Enabled"

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