BTW, I did contact our dealer already and they are writing a new post but its not a priority. Dave

Doug, Does your post output canned drill cycles? We have a TL-1 and just have the educational post from Mastercam's website and are looking for a better post. Thanks, Dave

I can't believe working on work at home, even sensitive, is discouraged at all. I work for a guy that is as protective of proprietary information as anyone and he got me a M90(on top of the workstation at the shop) just so I COULD take work home. Its a great back-up computer and I can get work done while the kid is playing or whatnot. Also, along the lines of printing the topics from here, I like to print out the pdf files that come with the software as well as the help files, and keep them in my bathroom. I always learn new stuff in there! Plus the .pdf that comes with Mastercam is often times better and more complete than other books.

"Guy cam in and ground it on the machine now we can not even see it move with a 50 millionth's indicator" Ron, who did this? Thanks, Dave

We bought a new VM3 around Thanksgiving 2006 and do not have glass scales with no z accuracy problems. It almost never gets a day off and the only problems we have are with the control software and coolant spraying out the top of the machine. That being said, the last machine we got was a DMG and we plan to get more DMG's. You certainly shouldn't have to tolerate that, because you can't, they should stay right on it and fix it or replace it. Saying you should have gotten scales is 20/20 hindsight bull**** and has nothing to do with fixing whats wrong with the machine. Dave

"Is Mastercam comparable to Solidworks for creating solids" No, its not. "or should I spend the extra time to learn Solidworks" If you do very much solid modeling, it will be well worth learning Solidworks. Mastercam plays nice with Solidworks so file translation is not a problem. I can't remember the last time a Solidworks part came in with even a small problem. Mastercam Solids will certainly work, I use it for small changes and such, but not for any significant amount of work. Dave

Its the reason we convert to surfaces when machining complex models. With surfaces, it does turn a completely different color. We start with solids but convert them when there are more than just a few faces to machine. Thats one thing I like better about Hypermill, I can see the selection when working with solids. Dave

Are you saying you are still using or want to use V9 Colin? :-)

Asking for no splines would be impossible, unless your tolerance is very loose For instance, if your part is a piece of round bar stock, your edge curves are on the ends. If the end is cut at 90 degrees, the curve would be an arc, if it is at any angle, you'll get a spline. No way around it.

What is the norm with contract 5 axis work as far as posts go? If you bought a seat of Mastercam to do contract work, do you do the programming then post it out at their shop? I would think they would want the nc file but that seems very dangerous with 5 axis work.

This may not help on your part, but for me, a way to get perfect tangencies is to use the old wireframe toolpath. If its a simple radius, it always works great. For some reason, I can use the same curves to make a surface, then when I machine the surface, it leaves material at the top or bottom.

Do you have a big monitor? On my computer with a 30 inch monitor, the Mastercam editor won't open. Any other editor does though.

I found last years codes on an older computer, ran it, now back to normal. I need to treat the codes like gold...thanks everyone

I couldn't find the earlier code, must be on an older computer. I tested the hasp and it says the maintenance ran out 3/15/08 but we just paid 1/28/08. I thought when maintenance ran out you could still use Mastercam, just without new updates. This SIM was on V8 for a couple years when it wasn't being used but it would at least still run V8.

I might still have an earlier code somewhere...I'll try that. Thanks so much, I didn't think of that.

Hi, I'm in Orange County CA and we have Mastercam X2 MR2 SP1 Mill Level 3 with Solids, Lathe, and maintenance. We had an evaluation on the 5-axis module for a couple weeks and that ran out today, now I have NO MASTERCAM. Is there anything that can be done to get through until Monday? What do people do during emergencies like this? Thanks, Dave

There's a patch to add that allows you to directly open Solidworks 2008 files.

I think at a certain point it becomes overkill to get the really expensive ones. I've used an FX5500 and it wasn't any better than an FX3500 running Mastercam X2, Solidworks, or Alias Studiotools.

I open solidworks 2007 files with X MR2 all day

Re-installing the software fixed that for us. We had a new computer with X and one guy wanted V9 as well so it was installed after X was already installed then the level magager had that error.