MCAM 2018 - Not loading/Print issue

[SMONTI]

First post! 

Hello Folks!

Amateur programmer here only using mastercam for about 3 years now. A lot of the older guys like to have me do all the research on issues with their software. 

Let me get straight to the point. We have about 8/9 PCs around the shop running mcam, and 5 of which are full time including myself. Recently with the install with 2018 being released I installed it on all of our machines. Some programmers are not so quick to jump into the new release as others. 

Myself, I jumped right in. I encountered an issue with printing from and through phone calls back and forth, sessions with our re seller we were unable to come up with a solution or reason for the issue. Basically it would only print the top maybe 10% of the page and cut off the rest. Long story short I just resulted to printing to a PDF and then printing from there. Short work around, but work around none the less. I was the only one having the issue until a second machine started having the same issue.

After some use and a few weeks went by one of our machines had encountered an issue where we would open MCAM 2018 and nothing would happen. No splash screen, nothing. Yet after some investigation opening the task manager mastercam would still show up in processes but nothing would be open. After working with our reseller and going back and forth with them attempting to fix the issue for days they were unable to figure out the issue or why this was happening. The reseller even got CNC Software involved and they couldnt figure it out. Our short term solution was to choose a system restore point previous to the issue. It has since happened three other times. Once more with the same machine and twice on another. Now this time the system restore point has not worked. These are just happening at random times upon closing/opening or on restart. 

 

Wanted to post here to maybe see if anyone else is having similar issue or may have suggests of us.

 

Much appreciated!

Sam

[Guest]

I'd be interested in knowing the spec's on those machines first...especially video card/cards in use

There is a Windows update, the last one that messes up Mastercam, that can be gotten around for the time being by rolling back the Windows update...

For the printer, I would suggest making sure you have the absolute latest drivers installed for the printer..

Edited November 13, 2017 by Guest

[SMONTI]

Attached are specs of my PC. According to our our tech guy in house he says that the "devices and printers" are not even available to access. Having issues with the service Print Spooler. Not sure if they may be related or not. Verified that all of our video card, printer drivers are up to date. He was here for 3 hours after hours trying to get the PC to run Mcam and was unable to. 

We have been running MCAM on most of these machines for years with no issue until version 2018. Again not sure if that is related or not just trying to come up with a solution. 

[Guest]

Spec's aren't great but you've been running with them so they're working for you....

If you can't even access the printers and they are network printers, the issue their lies on that side.....

How about this...go into

C:\Users\<user name>\Documents\my mcam2018\CONFIG and remove the config file...restart Mastercam, it will build a fresh new one.....see if it runs then

Iff it does, I would suspect config files were copied between versions, that is never good....

...the ONLY thing I can think of and I find it strange it would happen on multiple machines at once....would be the .netframework going corrupt...that would require starting with one machine and having IT rip out the .net framework and reinstalling all ...then testing

[SMONTI]

The issue is (well was now) mastercam wont even start at all.

Currently has turned into a whole other issue now. Devices and Printers wont load what so ever. Have uninstalled all versions of mcam and cleaned out all documents/reg/files. Still nothing on the devices and printer issue. 

The config file being copied kind of throw up a flag because when we install new vesions of mcam typicalled we have the same settings from PC to PC. So I or who ever sets/installs mcam we copy of a set of mymcam2018/sharedmcam2018 folders into correct locations after install so settings stay standard throughout the shop. This may or may not have been why we were having the mcam issue. 

Now unfortunatly were having the devices and printers issue with windows. 

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, SMONTI said:

we copy of a set of mymcam2018

That is as bad a policy as you will find

[SMONTI]

5 hours ago, JParis said:

That is as bad a policy as you will find

This is what out re-seller has instructed us to do in the past. 

Mastercam issue seems to be affecting windows and creating the devices and printer disappearing issue.

 

Will update if we get any more information on this on why. It does seem that the only common thing between the machines affected are that they had copied my mcam folders. 

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, SMONTI said:

This is what out re-seller has instructed us to do in the past. 

Not saying they didn't but they SHOULD know better

 

Because of your location I would LOVE to know who it is but I am not going to throw them under the bus

Edited November 14, 2017 by Guest

[Newbeeee™]

5 hours ago, JParis said:

That is as bad a policy as you will find

Hmmm, bad juju...

Last time this worked was X5???

[KGN]

 We have 8 seats of MCAM 2018 and we are having the same issues. Reseller says they never heard of this problem. No fix even in the update 3. Some of the shop uses the print feature quite a bit because they use MCAM to unfold a sheet-metal part and then program it on the waterjet or laser so the job packet has several pieces of printed veiws the the operator knows what or how to set up the machine. Yes I know we can do the PDF route but we never had to do this before. We never copy config files so that can't be it. 

[gcode]

I have the "shared Mcam2018" folder on a network drive.

For reasons I don't understand and IT can't/won't fix, about 50% on the time, my machine fails to log onto the network

the first time I start it in the morning.

If my machine cannot see the network, Mastercam fails to launch. ......  because it can't find the "shared Mcam2018" folder

the splash screen spins a while then just goes away ..  no Mastercam .. no warning or messages .. nothing

If you are having failure to launch issues, make sure your computer can see the "shared Mcam2018" folder.

 

edit ....

also, If you have the shared data folder in a non default location, make sure it is properly set in

System Config/Files/Data Paths/Shared Data folder