I very rarely get a crash now. I have to work pretty hard to get my system to lock up. Before these changes it would crash fairly often, 1-3 times per hour.

Yes they did.

Jim, The dell drivers for the M90 work great if you configure it properly. Right click on the desktop and go to the Nvidia display menu. Under the "Performance and Quality Settings" page, change the Active Profile to "Solidworks". Now under the Desktop Management section, Profiles page, select the CAD profile and press load. These settings cleared up all our graphics related problems on our new Dells. I'm running an M90 right now. HTH,

Degmc, It goes back and forth. I've gotten it to work for a short time in V9 (SP1 I think?), and it did work for a time in a version of X. Its stopped working for X2 apparently. I would send in a bug report if I used more face mills (hint, hint), but we don't run them on our parts. RMagnusson, How is work going in Mulilteo? I'm up here at Boeing Everett. I hope those Mazaks are treating you well. Thanks,

Doug, This is usually a result of having the X+ Utilities or AI utilities installed. Look in the customize dialog box in the category list for "AI solutions" or "X+" utilities. There is an option to configure the operation manager background color for both of these utilities. HTH,

This is a bug of sorts in Mastercam. If you need to see the face mill with the holder modeled correctly (I'm assuming that you want the insert teeth to stick slightly outside of the holder body), then define the face mill as a custom tool. Create a new Mastercam part file, draw half of the profile in the upper right quadrant (one half of the cutter), save the file in your C:mcamX2milltools folder. Now go into your part file, open the tool manager from the toolpaths menu, right click and create a new tool. Select "undefined" and then pick the custom file option. HTH,

Once you enable Level Sets, right click in the level set column for options to "turn all level set on" or "turn all level set off". BTW, You can also select a range of levels with the shift and control keys and then right click to turn all selected levels on or off. HTH,

David, Check your settings in the control definition. There is a section for "End point checks" located on the Arc topics page. There are three options available for Endpoint checks: 1. Round end point - break arc on failure 2. Round end point - arc to generated point on failure 3. No rounding - break arc on failure I haven't had to mess with these settings, but I suspect that they are the culprit. HTH,

See if you can go into the Nvidia display properties and select a "profile". I found one on my Nvidia card for Solidworks. This profile option really improved the performance of my card and virtually eliminated my graphics problems. HTH,

You can reach him directly through his website I believe...

That looks exactly right.

Hi Pip, Are you trying to get rotary output in your code by using WCS, or do you want to read a series of operations and just get the B and C angles to program those in manually? Most version X post processors automatically calculate and output the rotary angles as long as you set it up correctly. Typically in Version 9 you would use one WCS and then use different "Tool Planes" to force Mastercam to output the rotary move. Mastercam would calculate the angles between your current Tool plane, and the new Tool plane and output the correct angular move. In X, depending on how your post is setup, you can use multiple WCS planes, or multiple Tool planes to accomplish the same thing. It really depends on your post. If you give us a little more information about what you are trying to accomplish we can help you more specifically. Auf Wiedersehen!

Pip, You need to change the Table group so that there is an X axis, then the Mill Machine Table. Then put the B axis, and then the C axis after the table. The Table Group must end in a "work holding" component, so you will have to put a Mill Machine fixture component after the C axis. On your Mill Spindle Group you will need the Y axis, then the Z axis, and finally the Tool Spindle component. The reason you have A, B, and C axis components in your component tree, is because the update post utility read your post processor and saw language in the post that addressed all three rotary axes. Many posts are configured this way in a generic sense so that you can customize it for your application, think of two machines with the same control, but one is a horizontal and one is a vertical with a 4th axis. You would not need to different posts, you would simpily change one post to output "A" rotary moves, and the other to output "B" rotary moves. The programming methods would be different of course, but you could use the same post with a few modifications for either machine. Note that after you re-order your components, you will need to use the "Axis Combination" button to reset your axis combinations. Just make sure that your table group has the X axis, B axis, C axis, and Fixture component checked (uncheck the Mill Table component). Then dial in your Control Definition file and you should be good to go. HTH,

Greetings Chook Gurus, Is there a way to use the clipping planes of the current graphics view to select geometry from the Mastercam database? Here is what we are trying to accomplish: We would like to be able to perform a function like "save some", but take only the geometry that is displayed in the current graphics view. Basically we would like to query the Mastercam database, select "All visible entities", then un-select any entity that falls outside our current graphics view's clipping planes. Does anybody know of a method to do this in C++ or C#? Thanks in advance,

We also use "Beyond Compare" here at work. Great little utility.

Jim, I too have found some of the new coolant options to be a pain. There is a nice option though if your post was created by updating a V9 post. If you look in the Machine Definition Manager and click on the "General Machine Parameters" button, there is a tab in the dialog box that says "Coolant commands". At the top of the dialog box is a check box for "Support coolant using coolant value in post-processor (provides backward compatibility for old posts)". If you enable this check box, it changes the coolant options so that "mist" and "tool" aren't necessary any more. You will only have to use the "Flood" option and set it to On or Off. Very handy... In the same dialog box you can also enter a set of double quotes ("") in the mist and tool data entry fields to disable them in the toolpath parameters. BTW, You can use the "Edit Common Parameters" option from the right click menu in the Ops Manager to enable/eisable coolant on selected operations. I ususally wait till the end of a program to turn coolant on anyway. I select "All operation" and turn the coolant off on all of them. Then I select only the ops I want coolant to be turn on with the control key and enable the coolant trough the edit common parameters. Saves lots of time. HTH,

Hi Takashi, Still no luck on the texture Chook. I start Mastercam ok, then when I try and rotate dynamically, the graphic of the .jpg is displayed with the lower left hand corner of the picture at the screen center. When I pan/rotate/zoom my geometry, the picture stays fixed on the screen. I even tried using the Mastercam Default configuration settings without success. Thanks,

Here is another problem with X2, Curve 5 axis. We have had several part files that worked great in MR2. We open the file in X2, replace the machine group with an updated Machine def, and regenerate the toolpaths. On some of the chains we are noticing that the tool will gouge into the chain. It looks like it is having a problem with the tangency condition at the endpoints of the spline. When we look at the chains in the chain manager, some of the red "end" arrows are not tangent to the end of the spline. Watch your Curve 5 axis toolpaths carefully. The only solution we have found is to re-build the splines in X2 and re-chain the new splines. To do this we use: Create - Point - Segment, and set the segment lenght to .03 and lock in that .03 value. Then we click on all the splines to generate the points along the entities. Next we run Create - Point - Endpoints to create point entities at the endpoints of all the splines. Next we Delete Duplicates. Then we use the Create - Spline - Automatic and select our points (first, next, last) to generate a new spline from the points. These new splines will have a ton of node points. Our final step is to use the RMnodes.dll Chook to simplify the splines. HTH,

Hi Takashi, I tried your texture chook and it put the .jpg file on the mastercam screen. The problem is that it covered my geometry unless I pan the geometry out of the way of the picture. I guess I'm not exactly sure what it is supposed to do. Thanks,

Go for the FX 540 or FX 560. Looks like you can get one for around $250. link HTH,

Ocean, In the Mastercam X editor: Go to Tools - Options. On the "Editor" tab enter "EIA" in the "additional extentions to recognize as NC code" section. Do not include the decimal point, just the three letters. HTH,

Make sure you modify your machine definition through the "Machine Definition Manager", not through the machine group properties. Then do a "Replace" on your machine definition. HTH,

Run RAM Saver often. I run it about every 15 minutes. It makes the crash problems and the memory leak performance drain go away...

Thad, Nope, Save Some only saves to .MCX or .EMCX file format.

I have been working with Pete Rimkus on this very issue. We have been testing a Chook that Pete wrote to do this very process. There are still some problems with the Chook, so it is not quite ready yet. Pete mentioned that this feature will be incorporated into Mastercam some time in the future. Please don't bug Pete about this, he is working hard on it already (Thanks Pete!). HTH,