very cool!

quote: Having 2 billion levels available is way overkill methinks. I'm all for progress and am real happy to have more than 255, but an upper limit of several thousand and an option to display them all seems much more sensible to me than having way more than anyone could possibly use and reducing functionality because of it.+100!

quote: I still to this day can not stand the icons on top of mastercam 8. Least I can remove that barwhy would you want to remove that bar???? the big advantage of the icon bar in versions 7-9 is this: while in the middle of any function/command, you can hit one of those icons to jump to the new command, finish it, and be right in the middle of your last command/function where you left off (this also worked with any assigned hotkey command). "Big deal" you're probably all saying...well try this: In v8/9 pop open your wcs manager and create a new wcs relative to a bounding box on your part, the way you want it positioned on your machine. The new WCS is now created, and your WCS manager pops back up. OK now you want to select the zero for your new wcs on a point or at the midpoint/end point of a line so it will be associative (wherever you move that geo, your wcs will move with it and update any operations tied to it)so hit the select zero button and the manager disappears waiting for your selection of the new point from your geometry...but wait, that geometry doesnt exist....NP, just hit the icon on the bar for create line or create point or whatever else you desire, and bang, off you go creating geo wherever you want, when your done hit esc to jump out of the create command and your right where you left off with the WCS manager waiting for you to select your zero point. or try this: your Operations Manager is active, you've selected to do a finish shallow toolpath on your surfaces, you select the needed surfaces and get to your parameters dialog. Now you decide you want to contain this shallow with a boundry, for whatever reason, so you hit the containment boundry select button and go to select your boundry...but wait...it doesnt exist yet..NP!!!! just hit whichever button you'd like on the toolbar up top...create/offset/offset contour...whatever...and your off making your containment boundry all nice and perdy like, hit esc once or twice when your done to exit out of the create function, and again, your right back where you were with MC waiting for you to select your new boundry for your shallow toolpath...select it and youre on your way. Now, try doing this with X. Youll get an error telling you you must exit the current function or command first before executing another....WHAT!?!?!?!?!?! Man, you've just slowed down my workflow gobs and gobs. Now I must exit out of the current function, execute my new function, go back to the old function and get back to where I need to select my new geometry. THIS SUCKS!!! When I heard about the detatchable/dockable toolbars for the "New" MC I creamed myself...."oh this is gonna be awesome" I thought to myself. Then I installed it and get a nice big slap in the face. Every icon has just made effectively null and void because I can hit a couple of hotkeys 10x faster than searching for that one right little hiroglyphic(?) to execute what I need and they've lost all the advantage that they had in previous versions...I might as well kill everything but the MRU bar. This is one of my 2 or 3 biggest compliants with the new MC...like I said before, this is a big workflow jammer...now I must make sure I have all the relative geometry for a part that I could possibly imagine needing before I even jump into the WCS Manager, let alone the Ops Manager, before I start actually "programming" my part to get to the machine...or else I get half way through a WCS or Toolpathing process, figure out I need new geo to accomplish what I want, back all the way out, create my new geo and start right back at the beginning where I was before.....bummer

quote: Dug into the X trench about 4 weeks ago and havent used 9 since. Yes, the first week was mostly unproductive, but now its become pretty fluent.Same here. Im still configuring stuff little by litte, but I can easily program just as fast as I could with 9 I'd say

rhinoceros should be able to open those obj files. you can get a free trial version (good for 30 file saves) at www.rhino3d.com. you can export them as igs or something similar MC will read from there....

or try using v9 cvtold chook thru mcx...?

I have the same mouse, and the way I do it is to assign specific keystrokes to the extra buttons using the Intellipoint software that came with the mouse, and then assigning those keystrokes to the desired commands in MC. for example, I set the small thumb button to be alt+n in the Intellipoint setup, and then assign alt+n to the view manager in MC, so when I hit the small thumb button th eview manager pops up. If you dont have the Intellipoint install disk, it can be downloaded here HTH

quote: It would be nice to see CNC Software listed on that page+100000

yup, locks it up here too

Been using X for almost 2 weeks now and I think I'm pretty much up to the same speed toolpathing with X as I was in 9. I think there are a lot of improvements to the toolpathing side in this version that are getting overlooked because of the brand new interface slowing everyone that was used to earlier versions of MC down. Anyone tried the new edit common parameters manager yet? Freakin slick... the little bit Ive used it so far it seems to actually work now unlike v9. It's much more than we were asking for I think. Awesome addition that was sorely needed for a long time. Most toolpaths seem to crunch a little faster too, which is very nice. I know I had one leftover path on a particular part that took over 3 hours to generate in v9 that generated in about 25 minutes in X. I love the new Toolpath Manager, it's how wish it had been for a long time now.....besides a couple of things you could do in 9 that got left out for some reason (which Im guessing will be fixed soon). Only drawback for me is the fact that its always there on the left of the screen taking up valuable space on my monitor. I'd rather be able to turn it off and on like before..but I can live with it. Like a lot of others though, I'm not liking the new interface at all with the loss of single button hotkeys. The new selection ribbon bar thing stinks IMHO...the whole thing is a big PITA that slows down workflow considerably. I find myself having to click more instead of less to get things done now. Also, some of the functionality that used to be there is now gone.....In older versions of MC you were never limited to what menu command you wanted to use if you had it assigned to a hotkey or toolbar icon, except for not being able to delete while the toolpath manager was active. You could use any menu command you wanted to while the Toolpath or WCS Managers were active. Now you need to exit out of either to create/edit/xform/modify/etc...big setback IMO. Overall, I think we did get a better product with X....but I am missing v9 already

quote: Speckles are still there. [Head Scratch] So what is Edit/Simplify for? those "speckles ar e your arc centerpoints being displayed as Allan said. You can turn them off in Settings/Config/CAD Settings. Edit/Simplify will rebuild splines with less control points within your desired tolorence

try what Ernie did in this thread I can vaugely remember having this same problem myself at one time....and Im pretty sure this is what fixed it.

kind of hard to say without seeing the file...can you put it up on the ftp so we can have a look?

You'll probably need to remap the key combo in your config

bump.....

Jim, you might want to check your tool feeds/speeds again and make sure you have them set correctly. Ive found the time MCX gives for each toolpath to run is pretty much dead-on with tht etime it takes on the machine...more so than v9 was in fact...

I can at least confirm this...I havent found a way to get it to display the coordinates relative to the WCS yet though...

hello??? am I the only one having this problem or.... Im using an Nvidia Quadro FX 1300..... tried messing with hardware acceleration and all that jazz with no results...

quote: there are 2 billion layers available now. Showing them all would be a bit much.lol...oh, well then I guess it makes more sense to show just used levels and not 2 billion!!

while I dont really mind the new striped look of the level manager, Im not too keen on the fact that I can only see levels with entities on them....Id really like to be able to see all levels whether they are being used or not..not too sure why they changed it this way...

I feel your pain man, I really do. I think the problem is that not enough people were using hotkeys in MC before, not even the software programmers themselves. I think we traded our extrememly versitile DOS program for a flashy yet less versitile Winblows program just so the developers could stop getting bashed for being DOS based. And so sales guys would have something new and flashy to show possible customers. I'll tell you what, that DOS based program with the weird looking interface outperformed any Windows based CAM program Ive ever seen or tried. Seems like when people speak up about this issue 10 guys will reply back and say "hey man you can assign any hotkeys you want!!! have you tried alt+this or alt+that or ctrl+thisthatandtheother???duhh!!!" This is NOT what we are talking about.... Hotkeys in older MCs took a while to learn, but after a while you could get to any command you wanted in about half a second with a few quick swipes of the fingers TO SINGLE KEYS on your left hand while your right was moving the mouse. GENIOUS!! This 2 handed methodd GREATLY increased programming speed for those that were willing to sit down and learn the hotkeys....now all that time has gone to waste basicly...(not really, seeing as it improved your productivity while using it, but it REALLYsucks not being able to 2 hand it anymore ) Anywho...that being said, I dont think any of us have had enough time with our brand new software we've just been handed to start putting it down yet. I know the 1st day I installed and started trying to put out code with X, I was extrememly pissed, didnt like it at all what they had done with it. But Im forcing myself to rely solely on X to get my parts to the machine now, so I can get back in the swing of things as quickly as possible with the new software, and Im liking it more daily. I dont think any of us knows enough about this program yet to say its worse or less productive than older versions. Are we the users less productive with it for the moment? Absolutely....but thats just it, its only for the moment. Give it some time to settle in and get to know the ins and outs of the program and I think you might not think quite so harshly against it. I see people posting that its full of bugs and bosses are screaming and yada yada yada...oh please...we were all told since day 1 that this would be a complete re-write and we'd have a totally different package on our hands. Anyone who thinks theyd be up to speed 100% on day 1 or even week 1 with a brand new software package is out of their mind

OK, I was wrong.... I got it to work the way I wanted by doing what you suggested Jimmy....I changed the relevant parts of the psof and peof sections of my post from this: code: psg00, zh$,e$ " ", xh$, yh$,e$ to this: code: psg00, zh," Z 0.0000"e$ " ", xh," X 0.0000" yh," Y 0.0000"e$ Id still like to know if there was a way to get MCX to post this home move correctly like it did in past versions though.....you know, in case in the future I need those moves to be calculated correctly to something other than 0,0,0 anyone?

Yeah, I was thinking of doing that, but the incorrect move to home position would still be getting posted, wouldnt it? and I'd still have to go back and edit the incorrect move to home position out of every program.....Id rather it just post out correctly like it used to in 9

I use the WCS with all my parts in MC. The first and last moves in all my posted programs is this: code: Rapid Z 0.0000 X 0.0000 Y 0.0000 Which brings my tool to home position above my part before the toolpath starts. The problem Im having with X is that when I post any of my toolpaths, this move to home position gets posted as my wcs' position relative to the world origin, ie something like this : code: Rapid Z 10.5986 X -9.3512 Y 18.9564 Now I know this is easily fixed by a manual edit to my posted program, but this becomes a large pain in the arse when I have to do this to every toolpath I post. I've tried turning several different settings on/off, like using work offsets, enabling origin and any other setting I can find that even sounds remotely close to maybe helping me fix this to no avail...is there something Im missing or am I stuck manually editing the beginning and end of all my programs?

In v9, with the correct backplot display settings on/off, you could keep your toolpath on screen in backplot while dynamicly rotating your part on screen....awesome feature. It still works in X...kinda. The problem is that if you have a large toolpath, while rotating your part on screen, parts of the backplot disappear and dont show back up until you stop rotating. Is there a way to avoid this? I'm pretty sure the answer for this will be no, and the reason for this is that MCX sees your backplotted toolpath as actuall geometry entities now and we are limited to only seeing 32767 (the maximum amount allowed by the screen/config settings) entities on screen while rotating. But Im hoping someone here will chime in and tell me Im wrong and theres just some silly button Im not pressing.... [ 08-18-2005, 12:01 PM: Message edited by: Zero ]