We are looking into what it would take to make it larger. I can't promise anything because i don't know what the technical implication are, i do know that it's more work than just making it bigger.

Guess what! The data collector thingie didn't record anyones input from when it was posted yesterday until now. The problem is now fixed. So if it isn't too much trouble, please redo survey so we know what you said. Sorry for the inconvienience... This is embarassing.

We have been concerned about color blindness when making bitmaps and icons to make sure we don't create something that can't be deciphered.

Now that Mastercam X has been out for several months, we’d like to get your feedback on the new user interface. We want to make sure that our ongoing development continues to meet your needs. The following link takes you to a short online survey. Please fill out the survey once only. We appreciate your time and input. The link will be active until Friday, December 23rd. https://secure.mastercam.com/xsurvey/default.aspx

Edit common parameters was changed to only allow the user to see and edit those parameters that are truely common between all operations. In previous versions there were many cases where users thought they were editing something but in fact they were not. Are all of the operations you are trying to edit the same type? If that is the case we did not build that into ECP for X.

Scott - Open the Only dialog, go to the level tab, check the level or levels you want to use (In V-9 you could only mask one level at a time) or exclude(the + and - control this), check the "Maintain Only Mask" option at the bottom. Then go ahead and dimension.

Uncle... OK, OK, we hear you. When we created X we dropped or changed a few things that we did not think would be necessary. We figured that you, the users would be the final judge. It looks to me that you all have made it pretty clear that we need the old F2 = Previous Zoom / .5 Unzoom back. I will see about getting the ball rolling to add it back in. It won't make MR1 but i will see about getting it into MR2.

The Mastercam Exe did not change so it is still listed as SP1, just a few DLL's were modified. Backplot.DLL Backplotbnci.Dll BackplotRes.Dll MCPost.Dll MCEditorres.Dll MCDXFDXF.Dll MCIGES.DLL MCXstart.EXE

To All Mastercam X SP1 users... We have just released a patch to update Mastercam X SP1. It will only work on Mastercam X SP1 (Not on the original Mastercam X or on the MR1 Beta which already contains these fixes.) This release will fix a number of issues in SP1 and is available to all users, including those not on Maintenance. The patch is available via the update manager, which can be accessed from either Help -> Update Mastercam or from the Programs Menu -> Mastercam X -> Update Manager. Without going into a lot of details the bug fixes are listed as follows: - A problem in MP has been fixed with the breaking of arcs and arc moves. This is a very important correction. - A part file can now be exported as a *.DXF. The file type previously defaulted to *.DWG. - A part file can now be exported as an *.IGES. The file extensions after the file type previously interfered with the export. - Several problems with system crashes and hangs in Backplot have been fixed. - Mastercam editor will now be able to read and write translated *.nc files. File extensions were previously added to the resource *.dll that have since been removed. Thank you for your patience in these issues,

We struggled for many, many, hours with what Escape should do. Not just in Xform, but in every function that uses Live Entities. For the sake of consistency we opted for this approach. Sometimes you never know how something is going to be accepted by a large group of people until you actually give it to a large group of people. We had already decided to revisit this for X2, i do not guarantee a change without knowing all of the technical implications.

Interesting ideas, i grabbed them and we will consider them for future development. BTW the alternating colors was my idea, it makes my eyes feel better. But an option would make the most sense.

We have had this show up in a number of computers, especially with V-9 and some ATI cards. In V-9 it is generally solved by experimenting with the Mouse and Graphics settings. Don't use Mouse trails, turn off shadows, fading menus etc until you find the trick that works for your card. These things work on many cards but not all. In V-9 you may have to resort to turning down the graphics hardware acceleration. We have improved the reliability and speed of OpenGL considerably in X, but there are still issues that crop up. At least in X we can turn off graphics acceleration for Mastercam only without affecting the whole system. I don't want to sound like i am making excuses, but graphics are difficult to stay up on. So much depends on the graphics driver, the OS, and the hardware. The card to buy for the best price performance changes from week to week sometimes.

Thad - Yep, that's an area that requires more work on our part. We have made some progress on the printing bugs. We had many complaints in V-9 that if you changed the zoom in one window more than once it would change the zoom in all of the others too. That's why each viewport operates independently of the other. I added the print option to my right-mouse button so i could put the focus in the viewport i wanted to print and then right-click to pick print, i then get the viewport i want instead of having it move to the last one i drag my mouse thru on the way to the ribbon bar.

Sorry... The intent of the alternating colors was to make it easier to read across the rows and not get colums on the left mixed up with columns on the right. We can't show All of the levels like we did in V-9 because it would probably take hours, if not days to open almost 2 billion levels in the level manager.

Eventually there could be more in-depth support for Macros for Toolbars and Hot-Keys. I wouldn't try and predict when it might appear though.

We don't do short-cuts for macros yet... Quickest way to do what you want is to Select the All button in the General Selection Dialog Box, Then the All entities button, then the Xform translate button. 3 mouse picks and you are there using pre-selection.

Yes, i think it's a small design flaw. I guess we were assuming that users would be selecting more than one chain for the surface. I guess instead we should be rolling the interaction back to the point of picking the surface. For those that are going to use the same surface more than once it might mean selecting it again. I'll be looking into this for a future release.

This fillet was designed for the Wood industry. As far as i know it works as it should. Rich may have some plans to address this already. How much clearance do you want?

Colin - It is intentional that a selection override stays active until you reset the system back to General Selection. It would be painful if all you wanted to do was select chains and had to set the chain override after every selection. But i am not sure that is the problem here. There should be no difference between a solid and wireframe.

There is no way to change the default behaviour of pre-selection short of turning it off. Which i would not recommend. On the occasion i do hit a stray mouse click i just click again quickly to clear it or hit escape. The rules for Pre-selection are if you pick... - On the screen Window selection starts - On the screen with Shift held down the system assumes you are doing an Area selection - On an entity it picks the entity - On an Entity with the Shift Key held down it is assuming you are doing a chain select. - On the screen with Alt held down and you start Vector selection.

I'm running a pre-Beta of the MR1 release and it's been addressed in the Save function. You will be given an option save all solids, if you say no you choose which ones to save. The Save Some option only save MCX files.

Brian - Yes there is a Readme.htm file in the documentation directory under McamX. We fixed a lot, but we did not get everything. To those who are Dealers or Beta Sites... If you grabbed a version on the 15th when we announced it to you there is no need to grab it again. It is the same thing, we used you as test rodents...

One important thing to know... The SP1 release is only for systems in English. Other languages will not be supported until SP1 has been translated into your language. Please contact your Dealer for availability of the translated SP1.

We are pleased to announce to all Mastercam X customers that SP1 is available for all users to download and install immediately. SP1 is intended for everyone, even those without active maintenance. There are 3 methods for performing the update depending on if your computer has a highspeed internet connection or not. The SP1 update is about 125 megabytes in size and could require a long time on a dial-up connection. The actual speed of the download will depend on the number of systems asking for the update at the same time. Mastercam X computer with a Highspeed internet connection: 1. - Go to the Help drop-down menu and select Update Mastercam. Mastercam will automatically use your internet connection to go to the update service website and check for updates. 2. - If updates are found the Mastercam Update Manager dialog box will appear with the names of the available updates. 3. - Check the Mastercam X Service Pack 1 option and then select OK. 4. - You will be prompted to close Mastercam, at which time the Update Manager will remain open and perform the update. If you have more than one computer running Mastercam X you may want to follow the instructions in the Mastercam X computer with a slow internet connection to reduce the total time it takes to update all of your systems. Otherwise repeat the above steps on every one of your computers. check the Save files to Update Another Computer option. This will download the update and save it on your system which will speed up the update process on other computers in your shop by eliminating the download process. Make sure you save the update file to it's own directory with no other files present. 5. - When downloading the file for doing the update you will be prompted to shutdown Mastercam for the process to continue. It is very important that you place the update file in it's own directory before executing it. No other files can be present for the update to work correctly. Mastercam X computer with a slow internet connection: 1. - On any computer with a highspeed connection use this link to go to the update service and download the update file. http://updates.mastercam.com/x/sp1/servicepack001.exe 2. - Copy the downloaded file to USB memory stick, a CD, or a place on your network. 3. - If you have a slow internet connection you will want to execute the service pack directly by double-clicking on the servicepack001.exe. 4. - The process will run silently. The only indication it is running will be a process called... running on your task bar. As soon as the process is completed you will be ready to run Mastercam SP1. Mastercam X computer with no internet connection: 1. - On any computer with a highspeed connection use this link to go to the update service and download the update file. http://updates.mastercam.com/x/sp1/servicepack001.exe 2. - Copy the downloaded file to USB memory stick, a CD, or a place on your network. 3. - Go to the Help drop-down and select Update Mastercam. The software will detect that you do not have an internet connection and prompt you for the location of the update. Browse to the directory where you have servicepack001.exe located and select it. 4. - You will be prompted to close Mastercam, at which time the Update Manager will remain open and perform the update.

X is sensitive to where the cursor is. Watch the focus change from the graphics area to the Toolpath Manager as you move it in and out. In V-9 the Toolpath manager was a "modal" dialog box, which means when it was open it had complete control over everything so it knew what to do with every keystroke. In X it is a "modeless" style, which allows it to be open all of the time and forces it to share keystrokes and know when it has the focus. Pay attention to the cursor location when you hit the delete key.