Hey guys, thanks for the many varying veiws. I have used Solidworks before. But mainly to try and learn it. Never to the extreme that I know ACAD. And in fairness, ACAD has a lot of its own design flaws. To be honest I never thought about Mastercam as only a CAM tool. So I guess you guys are right in that respect. I just wish some of these things would have been fixed in McamX. I was talking to my boss about the whole printing thing. And we couldn't understand how after having over 64,000 seats installed. No one has had to print up a toolpath for the higher ups. My boss is pretty knowledgeable about running our CNC and he always wants a print out of the G-Code and the toolpath to go in the clients file. This helps him out in the future if he needs to make another piece. For the particular job I am working on now. We wanted to send a copy of what the peice would look like to the client. And in order to do that. I would have to manually draw in the toolpath thickness in ACAD. Then print it out fullsize. The amount of time something like that would take was unacceptable. So we settled for a screenshot of the toolpath backplot in MCAM.

There more I use this program, the more I realize is that it isn't really meant for CAD. This is pretty sad considering all the wonderful things that can be done in MCX. I just can't understand why there is no easy way to print a backplot view, or verify view. Now I know that it can be done with the save as geometry thing. But that is not what I need. I want to see a print of exactly what my backplot looks like. And be able to print it to scale. And I don't mean the whole print to 50% or 63% thing. I mean an actual universally understood scale. Like 1" = 1', or for the metric folks 1:16. I can do this from our UNIX based CNC machine. But not from MCam Another thing I still can't understand. Is why can't I simply drag and drop an endpoint of a line? Why do I have to go through a 10 step process? This should be made much much simpler. For CAD guys like me, speed is key. And I can't stand having to use the trim feature to make a line longer. Especially if it’s only and arbitrary line in the first place. And then try and move something. Another ten step process. On top of the super cool "Xform" name. I think it’s sad that after purchasing a program such as this. I still have to rely on AutoCAD to do our drawings. Not because MCam is a pain to use. But because of the lack of thought out features. Now I understand that I am not as experienced as most on this forum. As well as the fact that the toolpathing that can be done is fantastic. But if Mastercam would simply work on making drawing things easier and quicker. Instead of coming up with some cool new toolpath. I think they would have a real winner on there hands. As of yet, I am not impressed whatsoever. Things just don't seem very common sense to me. Granted McamX is a far cry for the V8 and V9 days. I have other bones with the program. But most of those I am working with our local reseller to get straightened out. Please before you reply, I am not trying to start a flame fest. If that is your intention. Take a deep breath first.

Every so often I get line displays like that. But my main problem was that after I would verify, wierd things would happen. Like if I scrolled over the toolpaths, the main window would flip back and forth from the verified part, to the wireframe toolpath. Now, granted I am not using straight from Nvidia drivers. But these work great in everything else I use in Vista. Solidworks, 3DS Max, Maya, ACAD 02, and 07 and Rhino. Never had any problems like this in those programs. I also never had to disable some of Vista's features to get them to run correctly.

I would love it if Nvidia came out with drivers that were made for Vista that supported my 7900GS mobile. But I am stuck with either Dell's which were pretty bad, or modded ones from others. Craig, you say the latest, could you tell me exactly what ver. you are running.

Running X2 MR1, and disabling the desktop composition did nothing for me. Running Inhell Core 2, Nvidia 7900 and Vista Ultimate. Perhaps some of you guys could share what Vista drivers are approved for use with MR1. I would greatly appreciate it as the only way I can get rid of graphics issues right now is to disable Mastercam from even using the graphics card.