TOOL MANAGER

[Bbeyer562]

Why is it not possible to create a tool assembly in Mastercam and back save it into a custom library. I will stay in the stand alone tool manager for an instance and then vanish.

[crazy^millman]

You must put a tool to the assembly to get it to show up. Then and only then will it work. What I have found is the best way it to make all the items you want as an assembly into one model and export out as a stp and then make that into a holder. then you not stuck with the clunky method that is currently used in Mastercam. Work only with holders and in doing do you avoid a lot of the wasted time dealing with the stand alone tool manager. Here are a couple I have built for an HSK-100A machine. 

 

 

[Bbeyer562]

The stand alone tool manager could be so much better.  I have all my holders done along with quite a few assemblies... Its just a pain in the but to go back and forth.  You would think we would be able to grab a holder that we already created in our library and throw a new tool in it assign all the proper fields and then save it back into the library without even opening the stand alone manager but no lol. I do make all my holders from .stp files. that is one other funny thing about the stand alone manager you can only import custom geometry from .dxf files. Its like the manager was an afterthought and it is less powerful than actually creating a tool in an instance of Mastercam.  Its a time vampire

[BSmith23]

I agree.  I like working in it for some things, but have had good and bad luck with it.  It is pretty vanilla I think, but I don't have anything to judge it against, so I guess I shouldn't.  

 

Brent