Thanks for the responses. The video helped clear up how MasterCam deals with multi-path controls. I haven't seen many posts about it on here so I was curious what everyone was doing to program these machines. I program in both GibbsCAM and MasterCam, and although I believe that GibbsCAM does some things better, overall I prefer MasterCam.

Could someone explain to me how MasterCam handles Multi-Path Controls? We have a DMG-Mori NZX2000SY2 Twin-Spindle Lathe with two-turrets including live tooling and also a Mori-Seiki NT1000WZM with a Milling tool spindle and a lathe turret. Both of these machines have dual-path controls that require a separate G-code program for each head or turret. The two programs run simultaneously and coordination between the programs is done with synchronization codes. We are currently programming these two machines plus a few lathes using GibbsCAM. We use MasterCam to program the vertical and horizontal mills. We are considering MasterCam for the dual-path controls but I would like a better understanding of how MasterCam works with them. With GibbsCAM, a single Gibbs file will post both g-code programs simultaneously. Thanks in advance for any input. Jim

Since you can't force long-code from a custom cycle I think your idea of creating a custom drill cycle to replace the G83 might be the way to go.

I believe what the OP is looking for is to have drilling start at Z-1.0, but have the drill retract to say Z+.25 between EACH peck. G98/G99 typically only controls the clearance plane between each hole coordinate.

Unfortunately, most of the machines I've dealt with do not have a canned cycle that allows a retract -Z- that differs from the start -Z- for drilling. My workaround is to disable the peck-drill cycle in the control definition on jobs that require this. This forces long code drilling which can give you what you want but there are downsides. Besides producing a lot of code, there may be other drill cycles within the same part program where you would prefer to use G83 but all peck drill ops within that machine group will now output long code. If anyone have a more elegant solution I've love to know it!

You can use a mac running Windows to run Mastercam, Solidworks, Pro/e or whatever you want to run and that works fine. Unfortunately there is very little cad/cam software available that will run natively under macOS.

Many machines rapid in this fashion; each axis runs at full speed during a rapid move resulting in a 45° move that lasts until the axis with the shorter distance to travel arrives at it's destination. The axis with the longer distance just continues it's path. I ran Monarch VMC-75's years ago that behaved this way. The downside to this type of rapid motion is that Mastercam does not verify this way resulting in an occasional crash with a clamp or other fixture hardware. Some controls can be configured with parameters to switch to "straight-line" rapid moves.

I was wondering what other users are using for programs to load their CNC's. We are currently using the old windows terminal program for both loading entire programs and also for drip-feed on large programs. I would like to try the Mastercam editor for this task. Does anyone know if the editor can be installed by itself, without installing all of mastercam? Are there any licensing issues in respect to this?

Yeah, my format is exact, spaces and all. I just wrote a couple of batch files to launch mcx to the two configurations I use, and they work fine. I just can't have a shortcut that directly starts mcx that has any switches. Strange, but tolerable with this workaround. Thanks for all the help.

New discovery. I can get mcx to respond to the command line switches if I launch mcx from a "command prompt", and not from a shortcut. This will get me by for now, but I still want to figure out why I can't add switches to a shortcut.

Pete, Thanks for the quick reply. I've tried just what you've suggested. I have available licenses for both M1 and Solids. If I launch the Nhasp program on another PC, the computer in question always grabs the level 3 license (unless there's none available), and never grabs one of the available Solids licenses.

I'm running MCX MR2 on a freshly formatted workstation.(XP Pro, SP2) We use a network hasp on a server. On this one workstation only, all command line switches that I put on the mastercam.exe shortcut seem to be ignored. I'm trying to use the /S switch to enable solids, and the /M1 switch to prevent tying up the level 3 licenses when I don't need one, and it always starts in level 3 with no solids. If I select "Solids", "Solid Extrude" from the menu, I'm greeted with "Solids option not available. Contact your Mastercam dealer". Any ideas?