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Best way to using views in 4-axis milling?


SlaveCam
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Having used Mastercam for 3-axis milling for ages, I never get used to the view system in tombstone programming. I'm used to setting Wcs AND construction plane the same plane so that left, right etc. are always relative to top. The problem is that whenever creating ops, Wcs is assigned a wrong value and it should be the same for every op. I have added a post warning if Wcs changes, but it doesn't help when posting single ops (many times).

Btw, are there other NC file comparators like the one in Cimco, that would be more robust? It should be able to ignore line numbers and comments as an option (Winmerge doesn't do that).

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The old automatic workoffset has bitten you sir. You must go into the planes manager as a habit and define all the work offsets. If you don't then you will see exactly what your seeing. If you going ot be doing a lot of this then you should make a template file that is set like you want and then go from there.

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Sorry for not expressing myself clearly. It's not about work offset. In my setup TOP is the plane from above the pallet - it is always the WCS. To get rotations I just change the toolplane. I'd love if it was possible for left/right/back etc. planes to be relative to the active construction plane, NOT the WCS, when setting the GView.

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20 minutes ago, SlaveCam said:

Sorry for not expressing myself clearly. It's not about work offset. In my setup TOP is the plane from above the pallet - it is always the WCS. To get rotations I just change the toolplane. I'd love if it was possible for left/right/back etc. planes to be relative to the active construction plane, NOT the WCS, when setting the GView.

Okay that is an easy answer. Go to the Main WCS you have defined for Top. Right click on it and click on the Create relative planes to

image.png.29a454f8519a259cb1a575ce3fa95ab7.pngimage.png.6fd72951a3e3972fde0b3a5758088fda.png

If you have defined the work offset then you can have it carry over.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 1/14/2019 at 11:49 PM, SlaveCam said:

Having used Mastercam for 3-axis milling for ages, I never get used to the view system in tombstone programming. I'm used to setting Wcs AND construction plane the same plane so that left, right etc. are always relative to top. The problem is that whenever creating ops, Wcs is assigned a wrong value and it should be the same for every op. I have added a post warning if Wcs changes, but it doesn't help when posting single ops (many times).

Btw, are there other NC file comparators like the one in Cimco, that would be more robust? It should be able to ignore line numbers and comments as an option (Winmerge doesn't do that).

So, you want a check inside the Post to detect if the WCS you are using, matches the System Top WCS Plane?

If that is certainly easy to do if you know how. Each Plane in Mastercam is represented by a 9 variable Matrix. The first 3 numbers represent the endpoint of a Unit Vector, which represents the X axis of the Coordinate System. Variables 4, 5, and 6, represent the Y Axis Unit Vector, and variables 7, 8, and 9, represent the Z Axis Unit Vector.

So System Top View should always look like this:

X1 : 1

X2 : 0

X3 : 0

Y1 : 0

Y2 : 1

Y3 : 0

Z1 : 0

Z2 : 0

Z3 : 1

So, if you want to see if your WCS matches "Top", you should check if "variable 9" of the Matrix for WCS = 1.

I know there is a predefined variable for all 9 matrix values for the WCS, T Plane, and C Plane. (27 different values). I just don't remember the names offhand. 

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2 hours ago, SlaveCam said:

Sorry it took a while. Actually it has nothing to do with posts but what Gview is relative to:

image.png.56dc901e7b55e8ca14e1af49fa6f96c8.png

I want to lock the WCS in place and use views only relative to current construction plane. Can it be done?

Planes manager is now you best process. We use to have this ability and David Colin from France wrote a chook to allow user that were use to it to have that ability. I leaves the planes manger on the 3RD screen sometimes. I fought and fought against Veiwsheets for the longest time and now I use them all the time for things like this to a point. I have to stop at about 20 view sheets. Any more than that and the process is not conducive to efficient programming methods I have come to use. We have gotten all types of manager and tools to help us and understand what you looking for, but about X7 what you are asking for went away and I missed it till I got my brain wrapped around the planes manager. Wish the Automatic workoffets had some intelligence build into, but to me it is just a crash waiting to happen for anyone who does anything past 3 axis work. 

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