Thanks guys.

bump

I am wondering how I can get angular information about planes. I have a fairly complex solid, mostly facets. This is for a horizontal with a Haas indexer using it's own controller, not true 5 axis, 3+2?. Getting a plane by selecting a solid face is a breeze. But so far, the only information that I can get Mastercam to give me about the work offset is a matrix, which I am unable to interpret into A and B coordinates . I can post the program and see where I am at after the fact,and then go back and comment in the information for the setup guy, but this is not at all linear. Does anyone out there know a function that will give me what I desire? BTW this is for a horizontal with a separate indexer

My bad, I get g110-g125 from my post so I just assumed.. you know. My post is modified from a generic haas 4x. I double checked the pwcs block against the generic haas 4x post in X4 and they are identical.

In Mastercam's views, -1 = next available work offset, 1 = G54 2 = G55, etc. So for G110 use Work offset 7. If you are using transform for multiple parts you can easily get to the g110- g125 workshifts by going to work offset numbering, assign new and start at 7, increment by 1.

If the chip wraps around the drill it can prevent the coolant from getting to the part. You can spin the drill backwards to clear the chips between holes.

I strongly dislike it. I am having to break myself of the double click to trim two entities that I was happily using because it screws up all the time now, and with no handy undo you have to back out of the function, undo and then trim all over again. Not what I would call efficient.

Maybe stating the obvious here, but why not just update the generic 5 axis post from X3.

You can chain from a solid, just select the upper left box (Solid) instead of the default(Wireframe) in the chaining dialogue windows

I was just shown another way of changing op defaults that I will share. First rename the extension of the op defaults file to .mcx, Open the file in mastercam, make the edits, save, and then rename the file back to .defaults.

Look at the folder that you are loading the post from. When you migrate from one version to another a Lot of the config settings will point to the previous versions directory.

I was pretty thorough looking at paths. I will try turning down Hardware acceleration. I am also thinking of dumping my old default files and editing new ones, it's just the time it would take. I have little enough free time as it is, hardly even time to come to Emastercam's excellent forum.

"Are you using an OP defaults file from a previous version that you updated or an X4 defaults file that you edited?" Yes, I am using an updated op defaults file. This leads directly into another thing that I have had happen. I use 2 posts for 95% of my programming, I had things pretty well configured for my tastes, and thought that I had migrated both successfully. Last week, I try to select the post that I use for my horizontals, and get a "no valid axis combination" error, and it will not load. Somehow, my machine definition file got blown away. I managed to re migrate from X3 which I still have loaded(just in case) But things are just not quite right. Settings that I have in the op defaults file (coolant settings for example) aren't in the toolpath settings. If I start in X3, go far enough to load a machine type and then reopen in X4 everything works fine. You know that I won't do that garbage for very long. I also get a LOT of crashes in X4 that I never got before, things like selecting lead in/out, or tip comp.

I don't really care for it, but I'm sure that I will get used to it. I did suggest that the planes field be moved towards the top of the tree. Since it affects the linking parameters values it should be before, not after it. Another observation, probably a minor bug, if I set the lead in/out values, set other things, and then go back to the lead in/out field, all of the values reset to defaults.

I just find it hard to believe that a bug that locks up Mastercam when setting the drill break thru wasn't found and fixed months ago. I mean don't you beta testers use drills anymore?

My big glitch is opening the break thru field for a drill cycle and having Mastercam freeze. Four times now in three days. A couple of times I noticed that the top of stock and Z depth were wrong even though the plane was set correctly, it took a half a dozen tries to get the right number into the field.

I have had X4 installed for one whole day with 2 random crashes so I just figured that I would kick this subject off. I was looking at a boring bar cycle in Mastercam to see if the break thru issue the has been around since FOREVER had been resolved, no dice. While investigating this I happened to go to edit tool, and discovered that the silhouette of a Ø.090 boring bar is about the size of a hair, completely useless. So I looked at other tool types, if the tool is 1/4 or larger you can most likely see what you need to, but for small tools you had better get a magnifying glass.

Got it.

"edit" I should have said update op defaults, they don't seen to exist in the posts that I have updated so far.

Hey John, Thanks for the info. I did notice that the update machine definition and control definition fields are greyed out. How would I go about updating those as well.

Dell precision 490 Intel Xeon 2.66ghz 2 gig ram Xp pro 5:42 X3 Mu1 2:25.936 X4 ,Cool!

WCS = top, t/cplane = front, side etc

Could you break the program into subs and use incremental(g91)to get the extra rotations that you need?

Dell precision 490 Intel Xeon 2.66ghz 2 gig ram Xp pro Nvidia nv285(go figure) 6:56 X2 Mr2 With new video card, the nv285 died(yay) Geforce 9800 GTX 5:42 X3 Mu1

I think that you should try something like this... unedited example pindex if mi1$ > one, absinc$ = zero pcan1, pbld, n$, *sgcode, *sgabsinc, pwcs, pfxout, pfyout, pfcout, edited change pfcout, to "M21("pfcout")", This will need to be changed in multiple places. Remember always copy the original post before you start making changes, you can revert to what you had when you do something boneheaded.