Peter, Yes this is definitely more frequent with drafting in the file. Sure I'll send it. Thanks for taking a look at this.

That is great Thad. I just went to config and selected (Associate dim. with geo. selected during their creation). Maybe it was just a setting as I stated. I'll give that a try.

Terry, I just had 2 lockups and it happened translating geometry. It seems associated with drafting dimensions I was in 2D top view not 3D. I deleted the drafting entities since I didn't need them and the problem went away. It could be a setting I have have that's not correct. Is there something I'm doing wrong?

Thank you Roger

wildcat, You can also try using a smaller carbide ballmill, and maybe even alter the W just a tad. You can get carbide ballmills as small as .015 dia. It all depends on the circumstances for each situation.

I agree G-Code but sometimes lockups still happen.

Yep, It happens so I hit Ctrl/Alt/Delete and task manager will show it's not responding so I close it from task man. & restart mastercam. It happens with pro-e and esprit also. I have 1GB of memory. I don't have a solution as sometimes it just happens as the programs don't like certain things at times.

I think for starters your talking about maybe machining the top and sides of a block of steel? Then redefining the steel size for another piece of steel? If your machining a contour or a side shape and it's just flat on top you don't need surfaces to do this. So if that's the case create a rectangle and overlap your 2d toolpath. I believe it's face milling. Use your rectangle as a boundry and then redefine your boundry for other steel sizes. You can make the cutter overlap the boundry with the options they give you. I don't use mill but that's the direction I think you are needed to take.

Thank you Roger as that's exactly what I needed for no core wirepaths.

Master, You are a master! It does delete blank entities. I will need to see if it doesn't blank entities that are associated with geometry that's needed. As far as I can see it's a great job you did. Thank you.

We have a Mikron that is very, very quick compared to the Bostomatic we used to have. The Bostomatic was awesome I thought as it had a 30000 speed spindle, great accuracy, and a great dust collection. the Bosto is now in Texas. We can use the Mikron for hard milling steel and still be very accurate. The spindle runs 40000 rpm. It also has a pallet changer and you can run 4 electrodes on one pallet. It is a time saver compared to the Bosto. One person programming can not keep the machine running. If you're trying to be competitive it's a good choice as we have personally witnessed.

+1000 I agree with Calnet. I find his way the easiest.

Colin, This will get you to some of what you are asking; With mastercam running on your visible screen hit AltV/click the hasp button/ then click on active licenses. This shows how many are active, the max # of licenses, how many are now available, and finally the product name. If you need to know who is running those various licences at that time will need to probably see your systems person as where I work only they have that for viewing. Otherwise go with Johns solution and see who jumps up!

Stingray, Watch your verify closely before you post it so it looks good there.

Dcapps, Your right I did a search and this was the answer; hold shift key (to activate chain selection), click first entity (selects whole chain) and then select last entity (now you have partial chain)... Thanks to Mark Bana in January. Thanks for your reply Dcapps as the mystery is solved!

dcapps, Do you get a chaining dialog box for general selections? I'll do a search also. Thanks

For general selection you have the chain option in the toolbar. I don't get a dialog box like I do when chaining a toolpath. As a result the option for partial or wait etc... is not there. Am I missing something or is that just the way it is supposed to be. Thank you

John, Now that I'm getting a little hooked on this forum, I'm noticing little things like "AFAIK". Took me a minute to figure that one out but nice shortcut anyways.

Bruce, Wow that's a real of ops and programs in one file. I couldn't imagine not breaking that up in at least several files that are placed in a folder. But that's cool as we all work the best way we feel. I just never had my files that big. I broke them up as tools making electrodes in millv9. It kept the confusion down for me. I'm certainly not knocking your way of doing things as the situation may call for your method. But if posting is a problem maybe you do need to break some of it up. Just a thought.

I don't use MillX but to answer your question you could do it with 2 operations. The 1st one to cut the full undercut circle and the 2nd to ramp to your final depth. It would be nice to do it in 1 toolpath though.

Stan, Welcome to the forum! +1 to copy and paste. We had our printer updated recently and I tried to print a shaded part today and it came up as a wire frame. I didn't really need it shaded, but I wanted to see the result. If in a hurry and only wish to spend a minute trying to make it print shaded, I will just resort to hitting that print screen button and pasting it in Microsoft office document imaging. It prints real nice and big and it's fast and easy. I click on the shortcut for it at the bottom of my screen.

There is a bug with optimize. I use wire and some of my programs would not be accepted by my Fanucs. The same geometry would run just fine with another cad program, but I am trying to make MCAMX work 100% of the time. This bug was sent in to mastercam on Friday and I just got word that it is fixed in X2. Our mastercam reseller verified this with me first as we stepped though it. In backplot you can step the operation and there were very small linear moves in there that should have been part of an arc move with optimize checked. Maybe optimize gives those linear moves with mill at times. I'm really hoping all those zero arc lengths you get and those linear moves I mention really go away with X2. But for now I will not optimize. I just had to add all this since it may be all related. No problems since.

Welcome to the forum Robert. If you are using wire, the backplot clock isn't there. My reseller verified this for me.

For updating posts to X (refering to the Transition Guide book) there is only the mentioning of V9 posts to update at the beginning of the topic. In the book section 3.1.3 Converting a V9 post:Example, it is mentioned in the 1st sentence of "Version 9 or earlier". You can always ask your reseller to be sure.

Are you sure you can update going from 8 to X omitting 9?