actually sort of the opposite . First of all pencil unlimited is better than scallop as it will follow your mold topography . scallop will only offset from the outer border of your mold/wireframe boundary. and that has nothing to do with your mold topography. Chatter will develop when your endmill will have more than two contact points . 1.So I would first go in with a pencil toolpath with stock to leave > 0 and say 5 to 6 cuts from center and a tool smaller than your big primary finisih tool. 2 Now the primary finish tool (scallop / parallel if possible / pencil unlimited) 3 the pencil toolpath again but this time it's for real Gracjan

Anywho, back to the core matter. 1.Groups are quite dandy as there are no limitations to the number of groups an element can belong to. 2. Result is a group. But it has it's own QM... , so why do I mention ? Just had to 3 Any time you merge a file into your main file, all the elements of the merged file become a group , WHICH YOU CAN pick with one click from the group window . (QC , anything copied/pasted from another Mcam file should also become a group....by pure analogy to merge ) 4. There was a quick mask for Named Groups in X9 , alas it has disappeared from 2017. (QC, care to comment ? ) . I would have dumped curves on surfaces if somebody had to leave the island... Gracjan

1. As I could not turn off the new QMs . I made them invisible. My QMs are on the Quick access bar. Besides , Named groups is missing and I have yet to encounter a curve on a surface ...with a 32" screen the QM stuff is just in my blind spot.... 2 A lot of toolpaths were missing so Toolpaths were turned off and I created new tabs : 2d , 3d , and 5ax . The rest of the stuff is very superficial so I won't mention it. 3. The word Xform has been totally burnt into my brains, Transform had to go 4. As the QAT is so small , I had to increase the Windows font size... to 149 % . use the 150% and everything else on your machine becomes really ugly. 5. My first day with 2017 and I had the attributes panel at the bottom of the screen ...of couse! It's been there forever...and then I bid it a farewell. Unnecessary clinging to the past. Gracjan

Thanx Mr 11621. That clears a lot I thought for a while that it was a really cheap shot from someone as Colin who I have had the deepest respect until now ...and still do . Whacky coincidence. Gracjan

I mean that thing about a pic being more than 1024 words is still viable Gracjan

screenshot plz Gracjan

Basically this is a re-run on the gem thread pertaining to X9 , only now we are talking Mastercam 2017. it will take some time to gather all my stuff into an answer here, so I'll do it later myself , but here is the heart of the matter. For all of us old timers ( me Mastercam v3 when .ge3 was a thing ) we have had to adapt to 2017. How did You do it ? . A few screen shots documenting the general outlook (QAT + RMB) and some explanatory text . Gracjan (TBO)

could someone list what's new in v8 , apart from FTP program transfer ? The help in V8 seemed to be a copy paste from V7. Gracjan TBO (The Bannned One )

could someone do a video on this? Newbee , you sound like you know your stuff ? Gracjan

BTW , pertaining to the Matter there was a QM in X9 called Named Groups . I am going to miss it QC. The Banned One

Colin ,Mr 5349 and this is how You contribute to the matter at hand ? At least someone is keeping tabs on me. Gracjan

I use pencil , old school style not the high speed one and the unlimited option in number of passes. You will end up having a toolpath which will run parallel to all internal fillets. Hybrid will be good for the core side or the same pencil works here too. A scallop finish could run orthogonal to an internal fillet and then you will end up with pock marks. Gracjan

You can have one element belong to two groups , but you cannot place something on two levels. That can be handy... For example you can create two groups for a mold , the cavity half and the core half and then you can add the part to both groups. Gracjan

My main point was about the destruction potentials of serving rotate incremental as a "new worflow " for the previous create planes by rotate function . It is not a new worflow if both functions were in X9 and now there is only one of them present. It's an old functions that's beem left in place. Gracjan A chaque oisean son nid est beau.

Rotate Incremental is the totally wrong way to go about. I have looked at this in depth and also as a result been banned from communicating with QC forever and ever amen. I have also been an avid user of this function and when I could not find it I was told to use rotate incremental. THIS IS NOT A NEW WORK FLOW. This function has been there before and my guess that you have like I never used before as there was no need , create "Planes by rotate" was there and that was it. ROTATE INCREMENTAL rotates an already created plane , which BTW has been put in place and utilized in some fashion. So by rotating in this fashion you are inviting a major screwup , just like I did. My lesson here cost me two hours in welding + remachining as I rotated a WCS without realizing this. In my opinion it's an omission and the workaround for it is to install Verisurf Tools and use the WCS XYZ-ABC command , which does exactly what Rotate Planes does. (Creates a NEW plane by rotations) Couple this info with the fact that you can now map keyboard shortcuts which are letters only (this is really great ) , you can map this Verisurf command as say "R" for rotate and you are better off then before. Map "S" for solid face , "N" for normal to line etc... and fast just got quicker. A small warning here with these single letter shortcuts . Take care as to not use letters which are used in Autocursor functions like M - midpoint , C - center. You are not warned that they are "in use" Gracjan

I machine my taps out (HSS just to make sure ) on the same same machine the stuff is made. That is the fastest way . An example : M8 - I use a 6 mm end mill , revs about 4000 and now the most important thing , a small ramp motion of about 0.05mm/rev - feed maybe 200-400 mm/min . Should take about 3-6 min. If you are faster on the EDM + setup , EDM is the way to go Gracjan

15 sessions is a wow for me. But as a mold maker I too have a barrage of files open... 4 seems to be a minimum , 10 was the most I could handle. Copying geometry between sessions is not always consistent in Mastercam, but it can be done.... If the warning upon opening another session of Mcam had any validity in the world, I would be among the first to scream murder, for multitasking is the very essence of CAM work for me.... Gracjan

I have 500+ mold designs on Mastercam under my belt. The worklow is usually like this: 1 divide the part into core/cavity / sliders using Moldplus. 2 create solids. Most of the time , the surface model will have to exported outside for waterproofing. This is to save time.. 3 After that it's downhill... Gracjan

We have no crack problem in Finland as far as I know . I think there is an off topic section somewhere else..... But back to the initial Q & A . It has been some 15-20 yrs since I tried this other software but I remember drawing a rectangle and getting NC code for machining and I remember changing the NC code and going back to the graphical interface and seeing a change in the shape. Same went for canned cycles. Gracjan

You should never say never! Somebody said here that there isn't a cam system on the planet that can do it (the feature is bi-directionality). Well there is . it's called WINCAM . http://www.camtek.fi/en/wincam-software/postprocessors-and-simulators Gracjan

I have also run into it. The thing is that if you have a toolpath that machines solids , a dirty machining op will also not allow you to save the file., So look also for dirty toolpath tabs in the solids tree. Gracjan

I did it outside of Mcam . It could be done within Mastercam , but in the past it has taken up to two days to "debug" a surf model. It is a little masochistic of me to design molds within Mastercam , but it can be done and the reward that I have a "live" model where I machine is great. G

Send me your e-mail and I'll send you the corrected file. G

You have poorly connected edges 14 pcs and over used edges 3 pcs .... etc. Solution 1 : create surfaces from your sheet solid ( a sheet solid is not watertight ) and machine them. The mold half looks fine . Solution 2 : Get hold of either CADfix or Elysium CAD to rectify your sheet into a solid. You could try Solidworks, but I doubt it will solve all your problems. Gracjan

I would break that up into 2 subjects : drilling and machining. I once had a jig which had small air holes facing in 230 different directions. I fired up Pro-drill and 20 minutes later I had a drilling program. 15 minutes of that went into figuring out how it works as it was the first time I was using it If you don't have it FBM drill will also create drilling in different tool planes. As the part seems symmetrical along the X axis , I would batlle it out 2+3 on one half and then you get the other half machining for free using Transform : Method : Toolplane . Gracjan