I have a Radeon9200/128MBddr card and while it does work better than the 32MB card I had before it does have some ANNOYING glitches. I have a nVidia on my laptop and the performance MUCH better. If you have a choice, get the nVidia, the ATI works but works like a car that the wheels keep falling off of...it will get you there, but the problems might be frustrating.

I have found that if you press "ctrl" and "A" you can select everything but that would not work for individual features as I think that you are wanting to do. I have re-mapped some keys but have not found a way to program several steps (selecting all or only from the toolbars then enter) but I am working on it. My brother is a programmer and as soon as he has a few minutes he is going to write a program for me to do just that, when I get it, I will post it here.

Mill Crasher- ...and make sure the assign tool numbers sequentialy box is not checked that should fix it.... I did that when I first saw the problem, I would not normally change that setting so I looked to see if I had or an evil twin was "messing" with me and checked the box behind my back. Not that anyone here would do that in retaliation for anything that they might have thought that I did to them in the past...no I would never do some of the things that I have been accused of...at least not admit to it in an open forum.

Is the problem that I am seeing unique to my computer is this part of the time/space continuum?

I would normally not get involved in such a large flaming topic, but I cannot resist...I have to assume that you are a machinist because if you were a toolmaker, you would know the difference.

Has anyone had a problem with the tool numbers suddenly changing? I have a series of pockets and instead of programing all of them, I program one and simply copy the step over and change my containment boundries. I previous select all the surfaces as the drive surfaces. The numbers change in sequential order, even if that number is already being used by another program step. i.e., tool #6 is a 3/8" ball nose, it is used for all of the steps, but MCAM changed each sequential tool number up by one, the next step is suddenly using tool #7, the next one is using #8 (even though that tool is called out as a 1/2" ball nose and is used by another step). Was this a glitch that was taken care of with the service packs? I uninstalled them because the problems they had were worse than the ones that I had without them installed.

maybe my dog had your cat as a snack on the way to toolman's house, it was a bit of a hike from Texas to Kentucky

That's okay, at least my dog still likes me... but then again, I have not seen my dog yet today.

okay, I might try that, I just got finished rotating the toolpath geometery around the part so that I can regen the roughing toolpaths that won't transform/rotate.

Matt, it is missing one pocket, there are 14 pockets arrayed in a uniform pattern around the perimeter.

so what you are saying, is that it does not like me...

I have a series of pockets that repeat 13 times around a circular part, I used three steps to create the pocket, (rough pocket, finish contour, finish shallow). I would normally just use the toolpath rotation but it will only work 12 times, if I put in the number "13" MCAMX will crash. I tried separating out the three individual steps and it has nothing to do with it, it is the number 13...

click on "settings" then "customize" pull the two toolbars down (where it is and where you want it to be) drag it from one to the other or just rebuild the toolbars, be sure to save the configuration or it might revert back to the current state.

In previous versions of Mcam, you could select all of a particular feature, (lines, arcs, surfaces, points, etc) by pressing a single key. Is there any way to program the series of keystrokes that would be necessary to do that in X? i.e. clicking on "all" then on "entities" then on "lines"?

how about vacuum clamping?

Have you checked the manufacturer of the mouse? I know that there are some input devices that allow you to program specific functions into the particular buttons and even some that are program specific, i.e. the middle button would do one thing in MCAMX and something different in another program. I had a trackball that would allow you to do that.

I had the same thing happen and I had to load a different toolbar state and then modify that one to what I wanted. It is the autocursor and it does not come back once you delete it, but it does show up when you start to create geometry, I tried to just live with it like that, but just could not get used to having it that way. Why is there not an option to replace the auto cursor tool bar? There are options for the buttons of it but not the whole bar...

After doing all of the above (thanks for the help but none of it worked), I went through the configuration settings between my laptop and my desktop, (a pain to do with only one SIMM), and found that the only real difference was in the "shading" section. My desktop, where I was having the problem, had "select color" defaulted as opposed to "entity color". Once I changed that everything works the way it is supposed to. The model immediately showed up with all the various colors that I had tried to change it to before, quite funny looking but I was easily able to change it. I appreciate the wealth of information here and I thank everyone that tried to help...Unfortunately, I will probably be back

Thanks for the help and quick response, as well as the welcome to the forums. I do not have the surfaces locked to any color, that feature of the attributes manager is not active. I checked the attributes of the surface by selecting it and then right clicking the attributes, but is shows up there as being my default graphics color, which is what I want it to be. I even tried changing it there but to no avail...

I almost forgot

I cannnot find a way to change the default color of surfaces that I create or import. The default color is unchangeable. I cannot find a setting anywhere and there is no combination of keystrokes that will allow me to change the color, (i.e. select all surfaces, or all entities). The color does not even show up as a selectable color (the color is the basic blue). This occurs when ever I create a new surface or when I import a drawing that has surfaces on it. I am using SP2...Does anyone know how to fix this?