Steve, I take that back. I was looking at it in a build of MR1. It works there, but after testing it in SP1, I see that it does keep the entity selected. So, the truth is you found a bug, but we've already corrected it for MR1.

Steve, Can you clarify a little bit? I'm not sure what "turn the selection mode off while using Alt+X" means. Are you saying that the entity remains selected after using Alt-X? I don't see that happening.

Shawn, If you e-mail me ([email protected]) one of the IGES files I can take a look at it for you. Do you know what CAD product is outputting them?

X SP1 imports SolidWorks 2006 .SLDPrt files. The original release of X did not because SW2006 had not yet been released when X was released. There is a MastercamDirect X for SW 2005/2006 on our websiter. I don't know if RandleXX is pulling our chain when he says... ------------------ "From SW to X and back and forth with complete solid history" ------------------ ...because we certainly cannot pass our solids history tree to SolidWorks, though MCDirect will read theirs.

It looks like good data to me. V9 did not handle full hardware acceleration very well, and many customers have found that unexplainable problems go away when you turn it down. I don’t quite understand this one, but hopefully you’ll be better off now.

Sounds like you've got some bad geometry - maybe something out in space. Can you send me ([email protected]) an IGES file that causes this to happen?

?????

Joe, ----------- "1) When I mirror some edge curves, it corrupts the splines???" ----------- Can you explain this in more detail?

To do what you want, you only need to learn File/Open and File/SaveAs. But maybe then you'll be hooked....

Gcode, Bryan, I'll check it out, but it all depends on what they make available in their API for working with SW files outside of SolidWorks.

gcode, ------------- "...I've been begging CNC Software to include this in their SW export utility for years..." ------------- I think you mean "import", but that's not important. What is important is how you would envision it being implemented? As a post-import part of the File/Open process (i.e. read the SLDPRT and then prompt for orientation)?

DDRSS-10, Unfortunately (for you) this is a known problem in V9, involving AutoCAD files, but only those that contain solids. There's no real work around either, other than making sure to shut down Mastercam in between. This might or might not help, but it has been corrected in X. If you get updated to X, you could read them in there and save the geometry to an MC9 file and then open that in V9.

We do not currently plan on releasing a SW2006 patch for V9

What function or functions to you find yourself in when you see the operations turn 'dirty'? Can it be expressed more simply (make a rectangle, throw a contour or surface toolpath on it, do something(?) and the toolpath turns dirty)?

My 1st recommendation (knowing how busy our QC people are) is that you try to narrow down the problem if at all possible, which could mean a smaller .MCX file.

Bullines pointed me back to this thread, and I verified that AskForEntity() works in SP1.

There is no UNDO of any functionality involving a Solid. We're working on it for the future, though.

File/Edit-OpenExternal has it's own "Most Recently Used" file & folder tracking. After clicking on "File/Edit-Open External", click on the white space in the 'Open' dialog. There are flyouts for MRU Files and MRU folders.

The V7Colors C-Hook will be part of X in the upcoming Maintenance Release (X MR1). Thanks for bringing this to our attention.

Jim, We never rebuilt that for X - (maybe we were just waiting to see if anyone wanted it!). I'll see what we can do.

Bruce, Sorry - that's just not possible with DLLs. They aren't just files (like STEP, MC9, etc) they're executable program and they rely heavily on the EXE that they're run from. As you know, there are huge differences between the V9 and X executables, and huge differences in their software architecture as well. From the software side, even if we could build a converter to convert the C-Hook's source code to what X wants (and on very simple C-Hooks it might be possible), but the DLL would still need to be rebuilt. Also, any C-hook that uses the old-style menus would need a serious rewrite, since those don't even exist anymore.

This is because some features of solids, including revolutions, fillets and some primitive shapes are based on circular shapes, which are not so circular anymore after being stretched in one direction. We probably could make it a little smarter and only prevent those solids which have these types of features from being non-uniformly scaled. Gotta save something for the future...

Murlin, I got the file. Can you explain a little more about how I'm supposed to set this up for testing? I see that the file has a non-visible main level, but what should the level structure look like in the file I'm merging it into? Does it hang for you or crash? And if so, how can I reproduce it? BTW, I'm not tired of complaints yet - we know there are lots of little things that still need fixing.

Murlin, Send me ([email protected]) the 2 files. Are you running X Service Pack 1? Do the files come in file via 'File/Open'?

You're not missing anything. There's a bug in X Service Pack 1 which affected our DWG/DXF output. Our QC guys are testing a patch for it. Stay tuned...