quote: It took *you* 5 months to find it.I just started using version X with any sort of regularity a week ago, so it took *me* 5 days to find it.

quote: Seriously though, there was a thread a week or two ago about CIMCO having a spelling error on one of their menus. It happens.No doubt it happens! I usually go very long periods of time, sometimes years, without screwing anything up and 95% of what I do is 3D mold work. About a month ago I totally hosed a big piece of stock while squaring it up. Grumble. I suppose I should submit a bug report, but since it's not a biggie it's more fun to complain here.

that decided to make "o" the hot key for *both* "_O_pen" and "Save S_o_me" in the File menu in version X? Seeing how Windows isn't CaSe SeNsItIvE like real Operating Systems are, Houston - we have a minor problem here. How does something this freaking simple slip past quality control anyway? Is there even a qc department at CNC Software?

quote: A nutty thought IMO Different strokes, different folks. :-) And I prefer key strokes over mouse clicks, therefore I passionatly hate the new MCX interface. It is highly customizeable though, so I'll eventually get it configured in a way that pleases me. quote: It would 2 clicks instead of just one, I don't think you could do just a single click. A double click is better than nothing. Thanks.

I'd like to eliminate the RMB menu in X completly and program it as the "Enter" key, just like I do in Cadkey. I couldn't find a way to do it, but I admit not spending much time looking. Is it even possible?

Do you have a firewall blocking UDP traffic? We were having similar problems with vX, and found it was using UDP despite our nethasp configuration (nethasp.ini) specifying the use of TCP. v9 uses TCP and we didn't have problems with it. Once our firewall was configured to allow UDP traffic on port 475 the problem went away. HTH

quote: I have a 4020 with the Fanuc 18i control. Have any options on it? Fadal is offering what they call "Mold 3" which is nano contour conrol, and "Mold 5" which has lots of goodies such as a RISC processor, HPCC, 3D cutter comp and a data server. The data server is available without either option, and as far as I'm concerned it's a must have for 3D work. I think both options are waste of money on a Fadal, but am open minded enough to be convinced otherwise.

I've got many thousands of hours of experiance programming and running Roku-Roku high speed mills (edm electrodes, hard milling, etc) with Fanuc 16i-M controls, and am familiar with all the various Fanuc options available. We aren't going to be buying another +1/4 million dollar mill any time in the near future but are looking to add another Fadal to the existing six we already have. And, no, nobody at the shop is expecting a Fadal to compete with the high performance mills (Roeders, Klink, Mikron, Makino, Roku-Roku, et al) despite what some Fadal salespeople have to say. What I'm looking for specificaly is opinions on Fanuc 18i-M vs Siemens 840D controls preferably from somebody who has experience with both, and better yet if they're on Fadal's. Personaly I'm leaning towards Fanuc as I always have, but I've heard good and bad things about the Siemens and wish to investigate them further.

Is anybody doing 3D work with a Fanuc 18i-M or Siemens 840D control on a Fadal, and have an opinion either good, bad, or indifferent about them? TIA

Lots of people use to light a feed rate when drilling it seems. 30000 RPM x 6 IPM is only .0002" feed per rev. I'd start at .001" per rev which is 30 IPM, and .1" pecks with full retract.

quote: CNC Software's Failure? Indeed. They obviously designed the software (vX)to make it more marketable at the expense of long time power users such as myself and many others I see posting here. I honestly thought I was pretty much alone regarding my feelings towards vX, and it's good to see lots of others feel pretty much the same way. It's kind of reassuring knowing I'm not some sort of a one of a kind freak. quote: If its a failure why are there several members here that use it exclusively to program? Lots of reasons. The main one probably being they feel obligated to themselves to use the software because of the large investment they have in it whether or not they think it's better than the previous version. You know, like not wanting to admit you shelled out $13K + training (=time) for sub-optimal software for example? quote: I would never have been using Mastercam to start with if there was something better. See above.

quote: So you have already accepted failure before you tried it? We've got 6 people on two shifts using 4 seats of Mastercam and the general consensous is that vX requires *more* work than v9 to get the same results. 4 of the 6 have been using vX full time since September, 1 falls back to v9 occasionally when under the gun, and like I said I've used vX enough to get a good grasp on machine / control definitions and the flow of the operations manager. The others have just accepted that since vX is the direction the software is going they're just going to have to get used to the extra work. I refuse to take that position on principle alone. So my question to you is, why should I accept CNC Software's failure to improve the efficency of Mastercam when I have viable, if not better alternatives at my disposal?

quote: i haven't done much more than play in I spent some time getting a good grasp on control and machine definitions and really like what was done there, but I haven't done any real work with X yet. And I will not use X for real work until picking points is once again sane, that is until I can key in e for endpoint, m for midpoint, etc instead of using pull down snaps from the ribbon bar. And no, autocursor is not acceptable for me. I've been using CAD software (mostly Cadkey) that offers autocursor for nearly a decade, and I never have nor will I ever like using it. I've got some other issues with X that mostly revolve around too much mouse clicking vs the keyboarding we were able to do in previous versions (I've been using Mastercam since v3 in 1992) but I'm not going to rehash that which others have already posted about. As it stands now, I'm interested in seeing what MR1 is going to offer, and if I don't like it as I suspect I won't, I'll be taking up my employers offer for Cimatron E 7.0 training.

quote: Mastercam X - User Interface SurveyThis is an extremely poor way to take a poll from which to base software design decisions on. That is, from a discussion forum that only a very small percentage of Mastercam users use where the results are likely to be very biased. Of course, that could be the whole idea behind this poll to begin with. Have a small group of users and beta testers tell you what you want to hear so you can say "according to our survey that's what you wanted" when there's complaints about the software. Why not send out a post card to all licensed X users informing them of the poll? That way, everybody who cares to respond has a voice, instead of just the few who frequent this forum.

quote: What if CNC made cars ?All our roads would look like a demolition derby crashed through them. quote: MCX is immensely more complicated than a car.No it's not. Nor is it as reliable. Not by a long shot.

Check your computers clock, the date and time is probably incorrect. That's usually a good indication that the CMOS battery on the mainboard is failing. Or. You set your clock back trying to defeat Mastercam's deadbeat timer. In that case, you're going to need to get new HASP codes from your reseller. You don't want to know how I know that.

quote: I agree. As i've just been discussing with Mark Bana, to break an entity into two pieces using a midpoint snap it now takes 6 mouse clicks. In V9 its 5 but the sub commands are within an inch of one another.In v9 and prior versions it took two mouse picks to break an entity at its midpoint. M,B,2,pick,M,pick If the option to use the keyboard only to select all commands, or having a "Classic" interface option like for example Cadkey / Key Creator does, isn't made available in v10+, I don't see a compelling reason to start using it since it'll only serve to slow things down.

Toolpaths -> Next -> Trim

quote: I hope Mastercam reads these forums, because this is a huge problem for me.Same here. And I'm not using version X until it offers the ability to use the keyboard for just about everything, as it was in all prior versions. (I started with MC v3 in '92) If they don't get it right in the next six months or so, I'm switching to Cimatron since I have to learn a whole new interface anyway.

He means surface. In version 9 you can pick the endpoint of a surface, I usually pick corners. If it is a trimmed surface it will find and pick the endpoint on the parent surface.

Hi Lynda, no, I left not long after it was sold. I've been happily working for Mike Jelfo since. Bullines, the NetHASP LM doesn't have needed functionality, but thanks for the link anyway.

Are there any (software) tools available for the NetHASP server that will list which particular computers have licenses checked out and is able to revoke a license from a particular computer / session? We've been having trouble with computers releasing thier licenses after Mastercam crashes. The problem has become much worse since v10 was installed as it is extremely unstable and crashes rather frequently. [insert rant about building houses on sand here] The current solution is to re-boot the offending workstation to release its hung license(s) which is obviously rather inconvenient therefore unacceptable.

Cool. I don't need to waste any more time on this for the time being. Thanks John.

In an effort to create a sane default configuration in Mastercam 10, I'd like to remap the colors in the dialog box as they used to be prior to version 8. That is, each color and its various shades were organized in columns instead of scattered around like they are by default now. For version 8 (which also worked in version 9, doesn't in version 10), there is a chook named v7colors.dll I got from, I'm pretty sure, our MC reseller, that remaped the colors in the default config file. I tried copying that color remaping info from mcam9.cfg to mcamx.config (required some manual syntax editing and renumbering), and got close, but not enough for joy. e.g. Color 0 and 2 are reversed, 0 is lt green, 2 is black, 16 is yellow which should be 14, etc. The colors are, for the most part, organized in columns though. I could spend a few hours manually tweaking it to get it they way it should be (so as not to have to re-memorize all the color numbers) but am hoping somebody has already written or has plans to write another chook that works with v10 instead. If this has already been done, nevermind replying, and please post a link. Thanks. :-)

Hi Frank, long time no see. One year to be exact in fact. :-) I've been running Mastercam on a test 64bit system with a 64bit OS, and it's *considerably* faster than the P4's though it doesn't help a whole heck of a lot with multi-tasking. Specs; ASUS A8N-E mainboard AMD FX55 CPU XP Pro x64 Edition (beta / evaluation copy) 3GB Corsair RAM SATA 10K RPM disks (RAID 0) GeForce FX5200 GPU Despite the hinkey graphics adaptor it also runs Solidworks rather well too. Be forwarned, that hardware ain't for cheapskates. ;-)