you can still define it as a tapered tool, then use a custom profile for backplot/verify so you can tell if the actual profile will cause any issues. HTH

create associative plane via dynamic plane has been submitted and logged. This would be a nice addition, and make it a little more obvious on how to create an associative plane. That being said, how I currently do this takes about 15 seconds more and is available now by using dynamic xform. HTH

doing as rob g britt, the surface toolpath will simply compensate to the diameter of specify with the corner radius you specify, essentially a bull nose or ball endmill. Define it as a tapered endmill if you want the surface toolpath to compensate to the taper. HTH

surface toolpaths will not compensate to an undefined tool. Create a "tapered" tool type with the correct angles, diameter, and corner radius and mastercam will compensate to the surfaces. Regards,

to use dynamic to be normal to a surface or solid face click on the arrowhead (Z axis), then as you hover over different faces the selected axis will be normal to that surface. You will need to move the origin, and you more than likely will need to orientate the x axis but it works well. Mastercam has a LOT of tools to make everyones life easy, if you have a problem the answer is there, you (and I) just may not know the answer. HTH

leigh, you are absolutely correct it is still creating a plane by geometry, X line, then Y line. But, using dynamic xform to orientate the merged in gnomon means ZERO geometry creation. Having a nice thick red/green/blue gnomon is very visual and makes editing the gnomon dirt simple, especially if you use dynamic xform.

should be fine, as long as you didn't create an "undefined" tool. Create a tapered tool with a "full" corner radius.

I'm sure I've sent in the enhancement request for "create associate plane" via the dynamic plane dialog, but I just sent it in again for good measure. Then it would be one stop shopping, dynamic plane, orientate, check the box for associative plane, and hit the green check and you have a plane tied to the gnomon which could be edited.

what do you mean by carrying the new views? my system only creates the planes I want, no "temporary" planes. I used to use file merge pattern to import the gnomon which required temporary planes. xform dynamic mitigates that.

this is what I do: 1. file -> merge pattern a "gnomon.mcx" file. which contains 3 1" long "THICK" lines at the origin which are red, green, and blue for X, Y, and Z respectively, I have mine on level 10,000. 2. use xform dynamic (copy) to place the merged gnomon at the location and orientation I want to create my new plane. 3. create my new plane using the freshly xformed geometry. 4. I now have a plane that is correct, editable in origin, editable in orientation. Problem Solved. I suggest you use a standardized naming scheme with a standardized level list so you can easily reference the planes. It really doesn't get much simpler, The only thing that could make this easier is if they add a "create associative plane" button the dynamic plane dialog which would automatically create the gnomon for me along with my plane. I've been meaning to send this in as an enhancement, this thread has prompted me to. Regards,

thank you scott, I hope it works out well. I've spoken to a couple of others with 570's and they had the latest drivers set to solidworks, I think he may just have a bad card.

when I try to lookup 6.14.11.9166 I don't find anything on nvidia's website. Is there another number you can access that I can search for, for example they driver versions 191.66 or 191.93, etc... Or even if you can give me the driver date I can see which it corresponds to. Thank you,

what do you have for a profile selected, solidworks, proe, base profile, etc...? hardware acceleration? back depth buffer? Thank you,

Interesting, I've never tried setting one to catia. Let me know how it works out. Thank you,

I have a customer who is having issues with this card. When running at full hardware acceleration you get random "pauses" for 15 seconds to up to a minute where everything just stops. If you turn down the hardware acceleration enough the pauses go away but it becomes unuseably slow. This is with the latest drivers downloaded yesterday, I tried running mastercam having it set to solidworks, and to base profile turning off the unified back depth buffer all with the same (bad) results. Can anyone who is running this card "successfully" tell me what driver version they are running and what their 3d settings are set to? thank you,

late to conversation but... 1. make the choice yourself, there are advantages/disadvantages to both. 2. if you want to use many work offsets it's silly to pick them up manually, in comes the G10 list. 3. you have your fixture in mastercam. you have your parts in Mastercam. You setup your planes in Mastercam. so... just have the post output the "correct" G10 locations for you. 4. If interested, there is a post on the ftp site that outputs a sequential G10 list at the top of the nc file based on your Mastercam work offset and origin values. This gives you your G10 list as programmed at the top of the file. This may be V9 post, or X machine def, it will need to be updated to X4. It can be re-posted as a X4 machine def if needed. HTH

Moldplus has some extremely useful tools. It will split your model, including splitting surfaces that straddle the parting line. Create Curve parting line just isn't functional for many parts. HTH

parting - When selection my cutoff point I use relative to the corner of the part and punch in Z-.025 or whatever I want. grooving, both the roughing and the finishing portion of grooving has an option for outputing retract moves as a feedrate which you can specify. The only rapid moves are then transitions from one finish pass to the next. Unless I'm not understanding what your looking for. The majority of geometry creation can be avoided by using the extend contour feature in lead in/lead out and by using the adjust stock function. Don't forget you can dynamically slide your start and end points of your chain. But yeah, sometimes you just need to draw a little geometry. And having two tools that are identical so you can have CW and CCW rotation is a limitation of the tool types we have available, until we get a a single tool that can be used for drilling, ID turning, and OD turning it's a pain. Definately send in examples so they can see what and why you are looking for different functionality. JM2C

check the prompt box in the config file.

A couple guesses: the max feedrate in your machine def somehow was changed to 5ipm. adjust feed on arc move somehow was checked and set to 5ipm, this would of course only output F5 on arc moves. Highfeed has to be manually ran on each toolpath or group of toolpaths it does not automatically modify a toolpath.

In the Tolerance distribution section: cut tolerance + arc tolerance = total tolerance you have: cut tol (95%) + arc tol (5%) = total tol (100%) move the slider bar (or type in different values) between the cut tol and arc tol fields so they both say 50% and see what kind of results you get. Regards,

you have your slider set to 95% for cut tolerance, 5% for filter tolerance. your just not going to get any arcs with that tolerance setting. You need to make your filter tolerance at least 50% of your total tolerance, preferrably more. (2:1 ratio before toolpath refinement worked well)

multithreading is currently the HST paths only.

Ron will know more than any of us, but yes the moldplus catia translator has the distinct advantage over Mastercams catia translator of importing the MBD/GD&T info. The Verisurf MBD module is required to work with the MBD data. HTH

hey tyler what's up? FBM drill will create the "additional geometry" you need also. But I use hole axis all the time! there are other ways also, constant parameter curve, solids find features, etc... none are as easy as hole axis. Thanks Ernie!