Lets say I have ONE contour line and I want to cut it with two steps over and two steps down...thats 4 passes total. Is there some way to change the order so it cuts the outside passes down 1st then moves to the inside passes. It appears to me Mastercam always cuts from the top down all passes. That is all passes are made at the first peck depth and then it moves to the next depth. In addition by contour and by depth only pertains to when you have multiple chains controlling wheather it jumps between chains while cutting. Is this a new idea or have they left something out? Version X MR2

Hmmm...amazing how things work out. My method was not quite right. You must also check the dia. and length offset boxes and enter the new number also there also. Operator almost had a crash today.

Robert You're right. We have 3 shifts running and programming each job and everyone likes to use different speeds and feeds. That's been the problem. Change the tool number as you descibe and they all go back to the parameters page settings from the tool manager. Bellyup Your right too. After talking to my counter part on dayshift he seems to think that if you set the speeds and feeds to come "From tool" BEFORE doing ANY programming then it seems to work correctly.

Heres one for you all. At the shop I work in we have 16 machines running MCX. We run a lot of one off parts but do get re-run parts also. However the job is usually NOT run at the same machine. Many times this requires changing the tool numbers. Changing the number in the tool manager initiates the "Update tool and all opps" window. Selecting OK does update all tool numbers but also all feeds and speeds from the tool paramters page.(We use "From tool" for speeds and feeds) I just want the tool number to change. To get around this problem we use the "Edit common parameters" feature by selecting all opps that use that tool number from the opps manager > R -click on one of the opps > click "Edit selected operations" > Edit common parameters. Check the tool number and enter the new one. Personally I would prefer it simply from the tool manager...then maybe an added question or check box "Tool number only"? Hope CNC reads this.