We use to order them to Kennametal through machining cloud software...

Good example of poor marketing. Nobody knew about it, so how can they expect it to be popular or known by users. If IHS has more nethooks that can expand MC functionality like that and they are kind of exclusive, they should market them in the forum just like they do with their training material. They could be making a serious money with it if you ask me... CAMAIX does this kind of marketing very well... CIMCO too..

+10000 on the Starrag for blades. But one needs to have in mind it's a specialized machine tool. A regular millturn can do nearly everything within its travel limits.

The Mori and the Multus are the best picks for an application similar to the one in the video hands down. I´d stay away from a Gildemeister CTX, but not too much

Change c9k to something unique and post again. You should confirm it, or not.

I checked. Around 2005 they switched from IMS Intellipost to their GPP2 post builder. Probably the "2" in their extensions come from that.

Out of curiosity: What post builder Cimatron is using these days? 15 years ago they used Intellipost if memory serves me correctly... Did they keep it?

Not a fair assessment IMO. The dynamic motto refers to the HSM algorithms. In regards the numeric fields being validated, this is essential to allow proper computation and proper functioning of the UI. Nobody find it useless when you type SQR(3*3.141592)*Sin(45) in there. Thanks to a very complex and robust function that works based on premises, this magic is possible. As James said, there are other ways to achieve things and just because our way is not how it works it doesn't mean is bad. Developers and UI designers have to trade off all the time in regards stability and functionality. You can do a million different things with an information entered by the user via UI, but only a handful solution are really robust for most users,and therefore these are usually the ones adopted by the development. JM2C

I think you found the sweetspot here. Specially about chamfering toolpaths...

I hear you. CNC probably coded it as an asynchronous function, that´s why you can work when it´s saving...

Not sure if that is perceived as a bug from the development standpoint. Latency may greatly vary from one environment to another. Lots of factors, from hardware to device drivers. According to your testimony, it's likely that CNC coded the function to execute in a separate thread, what we call asynchronous operation. This makes sense because if incremental backup is set to an interval, and this interval is set short, and the latency big, then MC would become unusable depending on the file size and the network load at the time of the saving. I may be wrong about this, but that's how I would design it to be as well. JM2C

Since many products neglect this as well, it makes me wonder if Gibbs has some sort of active patent on their solution since they pioneered it.

This is an example of how a greed executive can destroy a brand. Someone at Siemens was eager to close the deal with Matsuura and didn't warn them about the poor combination. I'm sure Matsuura would not risk their quality and post sales picking a bad solution in order to save money. Siemens support in Brazil is super B. How can it be great here and bad in the biggest technological and competitive market in the world? It doesn't make sense to me. But a bad choice like that can cause horrible impression on people, and an entire brand and product can be labeled bad because of a wrong decision.

When you compare Fanuc to other controls, the MTBF argument is always thrown in the table. I love it, but for me is like saying it's Mastercam V8, without a single bug, very reliable, but can't do what X9 does. Reliability is not everything in this industry. It is crucial and a very big part of it, but not the entire pie. As a matter of fact, we all take lots of risks testing and and playing with buggy cutting edge technology because quite often the benefits overweight the cons. Example: Mastercam dropping the rock solid Volumill to favor their own technology. In the beginning, it was shallow and immature. Look at it now. If you ask me I'd say Fanuc product management is VERY conservative.

Simple example of how Fanuc makes things way more difficult than they should. Cylindrical and polar machining requires your let's say X/Y axis to be called C, and you have to calculate the Cartesian coordinate as angle. Piece of cake for a CAM, PITA if done by hand. Sinumerik: Turn on TRACYL or TRANSMIT before your original cartesian coordinates and the control does the rest for you. Don't get me started on engraving macros...

True. But I've seen Siemens running for 10 years on complex 4 channel machines (WFL), two channels for cutting, and two for the tool changer mechanism. Not a single issue. That's a lot if you ask me. The amount of possibilities in a Siemens control, in the user level, just smokes the most modern Fanuc control out there. A 2003 Sinumerik 840d control has more functionality and programming flexibility than the most modern Fanuc these days. So if you ask me how many hours of programming could be reduced or how many cool resources a Fanuc control was unable to deliver to a regular user in 10 years, I would not trade for a MTBF rate I'd not even be alive to witness. Sinumerik 840d sl is by far the most powerful control out there. Fanuc can do a lot too, but certain stuff that are piece of cake in Sinumerik is a ladder or OEM macro in Fanuc. If it was just a small difference, I'd not even bother to mention, but there's a reason the most complex multitasking machines go with Sinumerik.

For long time I did disagree with CNC Software strategy to not pursue certain advanced functionality in Mastercam. Time proved I was wrong because they already broke a couple of years ago the barrier of 200k sold seats. I realized they were focusing in specific segments and were not trying to be everything to everyone. And that's a perfectly valid business strategy if you ask me now. But for some reason I still believe that a TMS falls perfectly in the niches CNC is trying to cover very well, that is production machining. Mastercam 2D capabilities are probably the best out there and a TMS could maximize it significantly for job shops looking for better machine utilization and faster programming. With this recent addition in Edgecam, the chances to see it in Mastercam just got slightly increased I think. Jm2c

Vero just added it to Edgecam 2017 as well...

Well, I'm fortunate to say that there's a lot of fun in my work as well. Going through a bad boss currently but that's circunstancial. Most things in life shall pass, but my love for this trade shall not.

Sadly I don´t have Mastercam Industrial version, only HLE, which does not support xHooks. The ideal solution would be a NetHook ran from within MC. This way it could grab the current file name automatically... My solution would require the user to inform it...

If you guys are interested, I could write a small executable that could monitor changes in a given file name... Or a folder... You inform the MCX file you want to monitor, and if the user who changed it is different than your user, it would issue a warning... I could not prevent someone else to change the file if he has permissions to do so... but I could warn you so if he did it you could overwrite his changes or save your current file as, before closing Mastercam. Would that be of help?

Yes... I meant NC files... not MC files... In theory CIMCO-Edit and Notepad++ would also warn about changes in MCX files... but they would have to be opened as garbled characters on the editors... Which does not make any sense... It´s technically possible to write a .bat file using command line tool Robocopy.exe with the /MON switch, the option to monitor directories. Then you could trigger an action when a file is changed... any type of file... Nerd stuff but it works...

In Notepad++ is native functionality, enabled by default. In CIMCO-Edit, go to Settings -> General -> Warn about access conflicts Since Edit V7, don´t recall the specific build, they also warn about who has the file opened and the computer name when this option is enabled. I don´t know if the CIMCO-Edit version shipped with MC is above the build number that got this enhancement. Not sure if I answered this one, but what will happen is that both software will tell you whenever a file has been changed externally, and if you want to reload the file. If you use the solution from the link in my previous post, one overwriting the other´s file can be avoided.

http://phabricator.cimco.com:51080/w/public/faq/two/

CIMCO-Edit or Notepad++ can detect external changes an warn people when a file is opened in multiple computers. CIMCO particularly can even inform which user and computer the file is opened on. If you use CIMCO-Edit, you can create a custom couple of .bat file that makes the file read-only or a copy of it and put these two .bat files as custom commands in the ribbon. Then you can click on them and alternate modes. There are options...