if the tool #'s that are "heavy" will be changing every program you would need to buffer this info out, then check next_tool$ against your buffered info. HTH

The milltronics does require that the position be forced out on the cycle callout line. The centurion 6 machine def for X2 does this, contact your reseller. HTH

mcuser99, It is really pretty easy to break up parts that are larger than your sheet size, we have customers that do it every day. Then nesting takes over. file merge. break at intersections. use area chaining to "save some" to different files or move to different levels. nest. you cannot completely automate this via vb script in mastercam (at least you couldn't in V9), but you can make it so you are basically selecting your geometry to break and your geometry to save to different files. You may be able to more in X2 to have even less interaction. HTH

I have seen this "lag" you speak of, but do not have it at all on any of our pc's here. The pc that had the lag was quite similar to one right next to it that did not have it. Unfortunately I did not get to investigate other than they were both running X2mr1sp1 and they both had quadro 2500 video cards, I do not know who made the nvidia cards or if they were different. I did not get to check anything else. Very strange...

Pete, make it so you can select your tool first, then have it shade where the selected tool will remove material and you've got it nailed. And, it's associative to the created points! JM2C

Rickster, I completely disagree with you on that. So you don't want any connection between the geometry and the toolpath? Might as well use version 6. The way mastercam deals with paths eliminates SOOO many headaches. There is certainly a use for this, it is a quick and handy function. But, if it's not tied to geometry I would not use it. Maybe a peice of "reference geometry" that could control the depth/location/rotation of the toolpath? JM2C

If it was associative to geometry I'm all for it. If not, no thanks. I have used a freehand toolpath, it was nice and easy to create. But if you need to fixture your part differently now you have a toolpath that is not associated to anything which can cause a LOT of problems. JM2C

I setup a 200mb ramdisk(using super speeds software) on my M70 and pointed mastercams temp files and regen files to the ramdisk. My regeneration time did not change. My hard drive light was still coming on. I only have 1gb of ram on my laptop so it is possible I used too much of my ram for a ramdisk. Anyone else tried this? I was hoping for some improvement but my measely 1gb of ram may make it something that just doesn't apply to my laptop. Are there other files that need to be mapped to the ramdisk to make this more effective? Thoughts?

Interesting, that M70 is identical to mine but was about a minute and a half slower???????

my current Dell M70 has a 7200 rpm hard drive. When looking at the M90's I was suprised to see that was still the fastest, not even any 10k's. Do they make 10K 2.5" hard drives? It was brought up in the benchmark thread about the flash hard drives being very fast. Apparently you can get a 32gb flah hard drive for ~$700.00. I don't want to be the first to try it but that could make a big difference in a couple of years. Keith, I look forward to seeing your times. There has been quite a range of times in the benchmark thread. Some of which were very suprising, on both ends of the spectrum. Josh, it's more than likely the ATI graphics card, but people are getting them to work with X much, much better than version 9. Try searching for radeon, maybe something will pop up???

iowajim, that ramdisk says that it is for windows 2000, does it work with xp?

if only someone would make a dual xeon laptop.

Does anyone have A Dell M90 laptop, or equivelant, with the core 2 duo processor they can test? Were looking at getting one and I would like to know how it stacks up. thank you, Keith, I just re-read your post (you said you'd test your M90). My reading comprehension must not be to good today. Thanks!

Great response guys! I'd have to say that I'm suprised by some, not so suprised by others. Hopefully we can get some more AMD results and some more laptop results. This will be a wonderful tool for those looking at new workstations.

.0001" just re-tested. I set my tolerances to .005" and regened (to make the regen files unuseable for when i regen at .0001"), then set the tolerances to .0001" and regened at had a nearly identical time, within a few seconds. [ 05-23-2007, 12:42 PM: Message edited by: Roger Peterson ]

Anyone who is willing and has a few minutes, I started a "Benchmark" thread. Thanks,

9 minutes 48 seconds Dell M70 laptop Pentium M 2.00ghz XP professional 1gb RAM 2mb cache [ 05-23-2007, 11:56 AM: Message edited by: Roger Peterson ]

I know this has been brought up in the past and again in another active thread. To do some processing time benchmarks. Anyone who is willing I have selected one of the default sample files. This is a default sample file but it is only there if you have installed the sample files from disk #2. Maybe someone can post it on the ftp? I have problems uploading. 1. Open: C:mcamxmcxmillsamplesinchhigh speedHST-CORE-HORIZONTAL-RASTER.MCX 2. There are three operations in this file, they all have the filter set to off, with a total tolerance of .001". 3. Set the Total Tolerance to .0001" on all three operations. 4. Select all 5. Regenerate 6. Please post: Time to process laptop/desktop CPU & speed Operation System RAM & RAM speed I think this will be a useful tool for those looking at purchasing a new workstation. Also, if you have a pc that is older please test this also, it will give an idea to others with similar configurations on how much time can be saved by getting a new pc (may help with justification for new pc?). Thank you This post has been promoted to an article

yes, let one crunch, or verify, and actually be able to work in another session...

V9, NNNOOOOooooo...... It would be useful to be able to run two sessions effectively. This is something I cannot do with my Pentium M 2.00 ghz M70. In doing a little "light" reading, I don't think there is really any disparity between AMD and INTEL currently. If anything I think INTEL has the edge for now. But all the info I've found is for desktops, very little for laptop cpu's.

has anyone ever done any benchmarking with Mastercam? I have a tough time uploading to the ftp otherwise I'd throw something up there. It would be nice to see the differences between different laptop layouts as well as different desktop layouts. Anyone have a file they want to throw on the ftp siet? Something that takes at least 10 minutes to regen would be desireable. just a thought,

connormac, are you getting the HP with the 10 key? I'd love to have a ten key on my laptop those look really sweet. Thanks again Bogusmill, with my pentium M, if one session of mastercam is regening toolpaths it just takes up too much of the system to do anything in the other sessions. To get this to work do you have to set the processor affinity manually? Or does windows take care of it for you?

With the core 2 duo processor, can I legitimately run two sessions of mastercam concurrently? I do now, but mostly to just have several files that I'm working on. Can I let one session calculate a toolpath or do a verification and actually be able to use the other session?

John, I don't want this thread to get off track but I don't have a problem with speed. I was just hoping that 2 year newer hardware would have some significant advantages. Thanks bogusmill, I was looking at the 2.16 with the quadro 2500 myself.

That's interesting... The core 2 duo's go to 2.33 ghz on dells website. I know there's more to performance than just cpu speed so I was hoping there would be more of a difference. My M70 is two years old and I was hoping that something new would be a reasonable step up in toolpath calculation speed. Thank you!