More and more I'm seeing computers come with embedded graphics. I beleve that all of Dell's current Optiplex and Dimension lines are so afflicted. While it's a cost-effective solution for mainstream computers, it sucks for those of us who need good performance. As Tom put it in his recent overview of them, what do you expect for $5.00 (the cost of intergrated vs. non-intergrated chipsets). Tom's take: Tom's Hardware Guide on intergrated graphics As for the loss of shading converting the model to wireframe: I've not seen that particualr problem before. I have seen a loss of shading make the model appear to be a wireframe model with the solid unselectable, but rebuilding the display after turing shading off 'recovered' the model. Did you perchance save the file so I could take a look at it?

quote: thanks for the response but I belive the spine has already been broken into lines? Is there a way to reverse this?Not completly. You can, however, generate a new spline using the broken elipse as the source. Select Create|Spline|Curves and chain the line segments that make up the elipse. Note that the default tolerance for this is set to .001. After you have the elipse converted to a spline, you can either Modify|Break|Splines to Arcs to get the spline converted into arc segments, or you can filter the toolpath. Depending on the size of the resulting arcs, you might also want to check your post to see if arccheck is turned on. If it is, check the atol and ltol values.

quote: Have you tried to increase the linearization tolerance for your tool path. This will increase the number of points that the tool will follow.I beleve that the way to generate more points is to reduce the linerazation tolerance. Making the linerazation tolerance larger would generate fewer lines and produce more noticeable facets.

Shop Floor Automations has a wireless DNC setup that will work with those CNCs, even if you don't want to drip feed. Shop Floor Automations

Shop Floor Automations has a wireless DNC setup that will work with those CNCs, even if you don't want to drip feed.

If you are engraving single-stroke style letters with comp turned on you'll get strange looking letters with the kerning all farged up. If you are trying to engrave outline-style letters, a pocket toolpath might be a better option, or the Engrave C-hook if you are doing this kind of stuff a lot.

quote: if I select a solid face for a chain for facing, all is well if there are no holes. if there's a hole it wants to island it. no good. then I have to chain the outer boundry. any simple solutions?Turn Edge and Loop on and turn Face and Solid off. That will let you chain the edge without selecting the hole.

quote: And very easily in any *nix OS .Easy on Windows, too. The registry can be a magical place. If you know the right spells, you can accomplish quite a bit.

I've been hearing stories about PTC doing stuff like this from other Autodesk Mechanical resellers for ~9 years now. FWIW, PTC treats thier dealers no better. They have a history of taking largish multi-seat sales in-house by undercutting their own resellers. It has a nasty tendency to backfire on them when the engineer they are trying to get fired is well respected internally.

quote: I have see them setting there computer in different spots around the shop like a cell phone user walking around to get the best signal. So for realibilty I would go with (or keep) a cat5 network in your manufacturing area.This is why setting up a wireless network should involve a site survey. Most wireless client adaptor software comes with the tools you need to survey your site. One of the most handy tools I use for such things is my iPaq with a Wi-Fi CF card loaded into it. Any Wi-Fi capible notebook should work though, as would a PC with a long extention cord on a cart. That lets you easily map out the dead zones and try different locaitons for the access point(s) to eliminate them.

quote: Just out of curiosity, we have a lot of EDM equipment is a wireless network capable of running in that type of enviroment?I don't think it would be a problem. Wireless networks work in the microwave range - 2.4GHz. I have a wireless network set up next to a welding shop, and I've noticed no problems with the signal when they are welding.

+1 on the vaccume. Wood dust can be explosive under the right curcumstances. If you'll be doing a lot of it you'll want to invest in some ventalation.

If they are rebooting Windows constantly, the problem may well not be MasterCAM related. I'd try a fresh install of Windows, or restoring the machines from the image if you are using disk imaging. FWIW, I haven't had any trouble with SP2 on any of the machines I've tried it on.

If you have Microsoft Office, you may be able to track your work using the journal feature in outlook. Microsoft KB article 298746 describes how to associate a file with a particular contact. I know it works with Office documents, though I'm not certan how well it works with non-office documents.

The cost isn't too bad, actually. Wireless network cards cost about 50-75% more than wired cards, and the access points cost about the same as a good switch. The costs are easily made up by the physical wires you don't have to pay for. The real issues you'll likely have are performance and signal strength. Performance will be an issue becasue even the fastest current wireless networks are less than half as fast as a wired 100Mbit network. Further, all the clients attached to a particular access point will be sharing what badwidth is avalible. Wired networks with switches handle that sort of thing differently, giving much better throughput. Leavign the servers on a wired network that your access points connect to will boost performance quite a bit. I don't think signal strength in the shop won't be too much of an issue, as it's walls that slow things down. You'll likely not get much signal through the walls of a shop though. You could work around this with more access points connected to the wired portion of your network, but if there are a lot of seperate offices and such that can get expensive really fast.

I'm useing similar boards in my systems at school without any issues. I'll check the driver version this evnining when I get into school, and have a look at the driver settings. In the meantime, try this: - In a new MasterCAM session (i.e. exit MasterCAM, start it back up again) select Screen|Configure go to the screen tab and make sure that Enable OpenGL is on. Save your settings. - Exit MasterCAM and right click on the desktop. Select Settings, then click on the Advanced button. - If you have a single NVIDIA tab, click on that tab. You'll see a white window open on the side with some explorer-looking stuff in it. If you have more than one NVIDIA tab the same options I'll outline below are there, they are just located on a tab rather than as an item in the list. - Select OpenGL Settings. Click on Restore Defaults, then Apply. - Do the same for each settigns tab/list item. - Restart the computer and try MasterCAM again.

quote: our dnc system is down and i have to manually put a program into the machine. I was just hoping to shorten the program up without having to redo the toolpath.I'd plug the serial cable into another computer and DNC from there. Gotta-get-this-job-running time is not the best time to debug anything. Sorting out canned cycle support in your post is likely going to be more work than sorting DNC out on a different computer will be. Less useful in the long run, too. [ 12-01-2003, 05:26 PM: Message edited by: Rick Damiani ]

quote: I do have one more question, what is teh??teh is one of the three ways to misspell 'the', and is the most common missspelling becasue of the way folks type. I'm not entirely sure why it's become popular, but in some circles it's replaced the common spelling.

C-hooks are generally written in the C programming language. If you have used C and are familar with it, it shouldn't be too difficult to figure it out. If not, it will probably be easier to use the VBS support that is included with V9.1 and later. I'm not sure how to add items to the screen menus. The menu text comes from mill9.txt, but it looks like all that does is change the text associated with a particular hard-coded menu position. You can add c-hooks to the toolbar though. Select Screen|Confugure and click on the Toolbar tab.

Try the following and see if it helps: - In Windows select Start|Programs|MasterCAM 8|CNC Reg. - In the CNC Reg program, select V8 Mill from the drop-down list box at the top of the window and set the File Get Dialog to Standard Windows. - Select Reset. - Select Apply. - Do the same for each MasterCAM product you have installed. This will set MasterCAM to use the standard Windows dialog box for opening files, rather than the MasterCAM dialog. Let me know if that helps.

No. Or at least none that I am aware of. What are you trying to do?

One approach to this would have been to turn it into a solid, get rid of all the useless clutter, and generate the few entities actually required for the move. Solids|Next Menu|From Surfaces works fine on this file. Look for 3000_OPT1-SOLID.MC9. I would have suggusted that, but I didn't know if you had solids on your lathe seat. Given the messy nature of this file (lots and lots of edges, even as a solid), I'd still create the slicing curve and do the toolpathing from there though. [ 11-29-2003, 01:29 AM: Message edited by: Rick Damiani ]

It's not *entirely* false. My notebook burns through it's batery charge when MasterCAM is running, even if MasterCAM is just sitting there. MasterCAM polls the keyboard/mouse continually when it is running, which messes up any power management the system is trying to do.

Look in the MC9_Files folder for 3000_opt1-rick.mc9 Apperently, I don't understand the WCS well enough to use it the way I'd like to for this job, so I used Xform|Between Views to position it after turning one of the green NURBS curves into an arc so I could find the center of the ring. Source plane was the converted arc (with Z pointing away from the part), destinaiton plane was the Side plane. The resulting profile was about .0004 behind Z-zero, so I used Create|Line|Vertical to project the midpoint of the resulting arc at the tip to X zero, then used Xform|Translate|Between points to bring it up to Z zero. Hope that helps.

I'd do the following: - Create a WCS that located the part correctly for turning on a lathe/move the part so it is located correctly (whichever is easeir for you). My first couple of attempts are close, but not quite there. I'll fiddel with it a little more and upload it if you need it. - Use Create|Curve|Slice to generate the cross section. When I did this, I noticed a sizeable undercut in the part. How are you going to cut that? I ask becasue noting is coming immideatly to mind when I look at it.