I just spent a while figuring this out, so I thought I'd share. If you have multiple WCS's and are using different machine groups with their own WCS's, To get an STL of one op as the stock for the next op takes a bit of a trick.... For the first operation, you must make sure the RED ARROW in the ops manager is in the correct toolpath group when you start verify. Describe your initial stock, run and save the STL. When returning to Mastercam, the red arrow will always jump to the bottom of your toolpaths (doesn't happen in backplot, just verify and when you open the part). Put the arrow back in the FIRST toolpath group, then select the second operations toolpaths, verify, select the first op's STL file as stock, run and save new STL (ops 1 and 2). For the third and susequent ops, make sure the arrow is always in the FIRST toolpath group when you start verify so that the STL model will get mapped to the correct place. Wacky, Huh? If you don't use toolpath groups, I think verify takes the WCS of the operastion directly above it so adjust the instructions accordingly. I've sent this to QC so hopefully that isn't how it's spec'ed out to work and a future release will fix this.

The default setting for the contour toolpath in X2 MR1 is OSCILLATE which is going to start from the programmed Z value then go DOWN .5 inches. I did the install off of the .iso cd set, so the web update might have a different defaults file, but I doubt it. Also, I did not run the migrate utility, so that may override the issue as well, but I couldn't hazard a guess as to what will really happen.

Have you looked at pro-drill from moldplus.com? I'm pretty sure it'll do exactly what you're looking for.

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Often times something is corrupted that doesn't show up upon any kind of inspection. The best way to make sure stuff is really clean is to import the operations with their geometry into a new clean file. That usually will tell you what the deal is. You said that ALL of the operation came back dirty? I would try regenning them one at a time and saving/reopening the file to see where the problem lies. Are any of the operations tied to a solid? Mastercam occasioanlly will try to regenerate a solid in a different order than how if was created causing much grief.

Since each toolpath can have it's own WCS I don't see a machine group default WCS in the future. Also if it did show up I see more hassle in changing the WCS back to whatever you really want after accidentally click on a specific toolpath. Verify is a whole other deal. I've found that verify and WCS don't really play well together and I tend to use C-planes whenever possible. [RANT] WCS was added to Mastercam for ONE purpose only - the ability to do rotations/vector toolpaths on parts that are oriented differently than they lie on the machine. Basically Boeing said you could not move the part out of airplane space and we had no solution for that if you were doing rotary/multi-axis work. Any use of WCS other than this is not the best way of doing things. [/RANT] As far as the bottom not letting you do it, are you getting the "you don't have true solids 5 axis verify" message? Are you trying to use true solid turbo? Glenn

I don't look at the mpmaster posts much, but from the look of the code you posted you should be comparing to sav_coolant instead of prv_coolant$ John, the "prv_" variables are automatically created/updated whenever you output a variable to allow modality checking (e.g., coolant$ and prv_coolant$).

It pretty difficult to program a CMM directly from Mastercam without an additional third party product (Verisurf, Metrolosys). You'd have to either edit the toolpath with canned text or something to tell the post when your are looking for a "hit" or when you're just moving from one position to the next or you have to do ALL of the actual hit commands inside the post and use drill routines with a bunch of parameters to describe a start position vs all of the hits (say a 5-point hole where the toolpath goes to the center at a certain depth and the post builds in all of the other motion - or calls a macro to do such).

Slepydremr and CNC Guy: The alternating shades in v9 was a bug in the registry reading and should never have been there. MR1 "solves" the issue and returns dialog control back to v9 (which has no option for alternating shades).

If you add a fourth variable to the string select table for the cutter comp, it'll call it with the last feed move of each cut instead of the end of tool stuff. So find your G40, G41, G42 table and add say: sg140 G40 to the end of the list. If you're in X, make sure you change the 3 to a 4 in the fstrsel line to allow for the extra option.

Something else you might want to try is a free utility called "speedfan". I have it installed on all of my laptops and it eliminated heat based crashes across the board. Google for "speedfan" and check it out.

Lesson time The problem is almost always the inability of the control to keep up with the code. Say for instance you are trying to cut at 600 mm/min. Making a 30mm move takes 3 seconds, but if you're cutting around a corner, the tip of the tool may only move .001 mm whereas the rotary might have to move 90 degrees in say 10 steps. That means each move is theoretically .0001 mm. At 600 mm/min each move would have to be processed in .00001 seconds. Not to many controls can process 100,000 blocks per second. I always liked the Fadal control because it showed you all the lines of code that were in the buffer, say 12 lines on the screen. When the code was too fast for the control, you could see the buffer get smaller to the point that there was only 1 line of code on the screen at a time. It flashed and changed faster than you could read it, but if you turned down the feedrate until you had at least 2 lines on the screen at once, you got a constant feedrate through the whole program.

Use a point toolpath and select the different XYZ points changing between rapid and feed.

When running the post updater, DON'T copy your old post into a new directory. The updater does that for you. Just tell it what kind of post it is (it automatically sets the target directory for you), and pick your old post out of your old directory. It doesn't touch your old post except to copy it into the target directory and rename it to XXX.PST_V9 (in the target directory).

Bug lists are not available to the general public. Dealers now have access to a list of issues that are currently being worked on and what is planned to be dealt with in the next few releases. It would not be good business practice to give your competitors a list of faults in your product.