Perhaps I'm missing something here or don't understand the statement. Our Makino gage dia. and spindle nose are dead nuts. I can touch the spindle nose off any flat face, set the wpc z, pre-set the tools and go. Formerly ran Mazak HMC's for years, same set-up, 50 taper. Spindle nose to CL of rot is fixed (varied between machines a few thou). Tools were pre set off the machine, and usually good within a thou. Edit: Doug beat me to it and said it more betterer, lol.

'the exact number isn't really all that critical" Huh? The spindle nose (Flat ) is usually ground and is the Zero point / gage line for gage length's. Master gages in 40/50 taper can be purchased. If you already have a pre-setter in house, you can test with the master from that unit.

SwDocumentMgr.dll. Do a search for solidworks. Several links have been posted on how to apply this.

"Don't Backplot or Verify Ghosted Operations" is also on our list of 'Must Have' features. I really hope this is becomes an option with a switch because I verify with ghosted ops quite a bit. I very rarely use STL's and will program some dummy ops just to avoid the collision warnings or give me a better view of what's taking place.

"Bob, I urge you to learn what each function does and apply it accordingly, rather than make accusations about the software not working properly.' Bob had his underwear in a bunch that day and we've all been there. Still, 40% step over? Works just fine? 40% might be fine for a one off or a hairy situation, but not in a multi part run. I always calculate step overs for a floor based on the cutter diameter (minus the rad x 2 ) x .70 then tweak accordingly if I can reduce a few passes.

"There was a comment above regarding horizontal. Bullnose endmills work perfectly for these toolpaths. There is no need at all to program a sharp cornered tool." Perhaps this is the case in X5, but in previous versions, I know for a fact that in some cases I had to set a ridiculously low step over percentage in order to not leave cusps or bumps on a flat surface. Usually this occurred when using containment boundaries to avoid bolt heads. Others have stated their problems with bull nose emills not cleaning up as well. When I select a surface with no boundaries, I get a nice tool path with a bull nose Em.

Make sure your not using a bull nose EM on the Horizontal path as well. I think that having to use a sharp cornered EM on the floors is ignorant but the fact remains that this tool path is buggy with bull mills. Why the waterline path isn't machining those other bosses, IDK. Did you select the whole model? Using boundaries by any chance?

"1m 19.692s" That's actually a decent time. If you do actually have a Q9550 CPU in that machine, I'd leave it alone and wait for X6, 64 bit and see what happens. That's not a crappy CPU by any means and should do a good job in a true multi core, 64 bit environment..

Hey MC brethren, I came across this link in another forum and thought it was cool. Just to point out that this isn't a shameless plug, I haven''t tried their products and do not know them. Link provided to the website so browse the site and check out their products and services just as a courtesy for the freebies. Theses calculators come in a .XLS format so a spreadsheet application is required to run them. I tried the Surface Finish Calculator and it worked fine in Excell 2003. I haven't tried the others yet. Ball Nose Calculations Conversion Calculator Feed Correction - Inside Arc Feed Correction - Outside Arc Feed Correction - Straight Line Cut Surface Finish (Step Over) Calculator http://www.1helical....ol-calculations Their product catalog (.PDF) also has some technical data, cutter geometry, coatings, S&F and so on, in it.

Edit, simplify will work on some splines with minimal ill effects.

With surfaces, instead of Solids, it's easier to isolate individual faces, especially the small ones, and reduce tool path calculation time. 99% of the time, I keep the solid available just to make only the surfaces I need, but when I can, I'll tool path off the solid as this reduces gouges related to adjacent surfaces not being seen or selected. Added value for the solids package? That's a tough call to make as you already have SW. It is easier and faster to just create simple solids in MC and not have to deal with importing the model. Definitely worth the cost if your models are not to complex and you have no other CAD system to work with.

I wasn't ragging on you specifically as others have demonstrated frustration here as well. I just did not feel it was a true statement and did not want to see others get lead down the wrong road because of it. Mastercam was the first CAM package that I used and thankfully, most of these guys were tolerant with my whining when I first started posting here. The majority of the parts I deal with will require wire frame for chaining or for boundaries sooner or later, and as Neurosis stated, in time, you'll be able to spot when and where to apply those chains.

Any ideas? Call your retailer and tell him to get to the root of this issue ASAP. If the results are not to your satisfaction, let your wallet do the talking from then on. Welcome to the (buuurrraappp, 'scuse me) forum, MCM.

"However, with MC, using the 3D model to program is waste of time for the most part, and it appears as though the majority of your programs are created using wireframe that is created from the 3D model, either in surface or solid form. My best suggestion to you is to not select the entire model and create wire as it just makes it too confusing. Try creating wireframe only as you need it, and put all different operations on seperate levels, otherwise your screen is going to get too clutered up with overlapping lines etc., which can make for a real pain in the behind." Simply put, this is wrong. With only the solid, no lines or other entities present, you can rough and finish the entire model, no problem. Using depth limits, check surfaces, and limiting angles will assist on controlling where the tool touches the part. Complexity of the model and it's size will dictate whether or not to create surfaces. Calculation time reduction is one good reason to use surfaces instead of the entire model. Some people prefer the surfaces all together and never tool path off the model. Then boundaries start to come into play. Some of the 3D tool paths are governed by these chains no doubt but isn't this the case with any CAM app? The 2D HST tool paths require chains and do not use a model to drive the tool, and in some cases are proving to be more efficient than 3D HST tool paths, regardless of which CAM package your using. I worked on a fairly curvy punch today and not a single entity other than the solid was used although I'll often use all of the above methods to control whats taking place.

The blue chain is corrupted, overlapping entities, breaks and so on. Analyze the chain, creating geo in problem areas then fix it. Join all the arcs that can be joined. Make sure this chains as one full chain. Open up the outer perimeter to give the tool some wiggle room. Once that is done, you won't cut through the tabs and it will look saner than before. Really though, a HST rgh tool path would work better here.

I prefer solids 1st, surfaces when I need to get creative or when no model is present and I only need to cut some simple rads/angular faces. From what I've seen, this is normal filter behavior. (G3 instead of G2) or even having arcs created on flat surfaces. I've seen this happen when I select an entire model for surfacing, say using a parallel path, and a perfectly horizontal surface is tangent to curvy terrain. Loosen the tolerance just a bit and turn the filter on, arcs appear on the flat terrain. Why, because I gave it a tolerance to work with. This can be seen best when viewing the back plot in the front view and having wire frame geo. to view as a reference. You can also save the tool path as geo, say one tool path with the filter on, saved on one level, and one with the filter set to off on another level. Change the colors of the the saved geo on the second level then overlay the the two levels and compare. No big deal. When this happens and if it becomes a concern, I'll just turn the filter off and tighten the tolerance or just add a few more tool paths. Trying to cram to many surfaces into one tool path (Laziness) when programming usually gets me into this kind of trouble. Lead in /out can also do goofy things to an otherwise pristine tool path.

Without knowing what you guys do there, I can only speculate, but... "and the engineers will each get a new screen, and possibly have a second." Dual monitors for engineering and programming! I can't imagine doing anything without dual monitors except for data transfers at the machines. Things flow so much smoother. I have dual 22" at work, dual 23" at home. Cheap ACER's but decent none the less. I paid almost twice as much for my wife's single 23" HP2310M and I start drooling every time I look at it. I wish I had held out a little longer and and purchased two of those HP's for myself. "Also going to get 3 workstations for the engineers to run MC Design w/Solids, but I won't be putting as much money into their systems." IMO, this sounds backwards to me. I can't understand the long term benefits of pulling three engineers into the MC realm. IMO, get the engineering dept. some actual modeling software, better comps, and dual monitors. I've seen some really nice models in this forum created with MC Design w/Solids but it is fairly weak compared to most mid level CAD apps and was never intended to compete in that realm. Most customers also won't be using MC Design w/Solids, and therefore can not exchange data with a history, back and forth. All you'll be doing is exchanging "dumb" solids. The programmers should be doing more programming and as little modeling as possible, helping to get the machines making chips. Often, these guys play multiple roles, engineering, design, tool path's and running a machine. They do need just as powerful a setup as anybody else might require. In your scenario, it sounds like Solidworks standard, with MC4SW would be worth investigating. I'm guessing here but a true 64bit version of that should be available, if not now, very soon. "Haven't decided if I'll build them myself so future upgrades will be easier or buy'm from Solidbox or Dell. I've never seen a bad review on either the Solidbox configs or the OEM Dell's. The cases look nice and sturdy, the layout looks like it would be easy enough to upgrade/repair components if needed.

I don't know about the Solid Pattern features but I can tell you that an entire model can be copied in a linear or rotary fashion by using XFORM. Pretty simple actually. Features can not be patterned in this fashion though, only entire bodies apply.

Last time I needed a crown, the guy I went to had the whole setup as well. All this guy did was specialize in crowns and implants. I told him what I did for a living and then started asking him a few questions about file formats and how the part was programmed and this guy didn't have a clue about what I was talking about. I'm thinking this is probably like a FBM situation and that the software is probably proprietary to the machines.

Guys, this isn't a X5 issue as it occurs in X2 as well. I now color mask my surfaces to assist in selecting drive and check faces when I have to use them. "This is the norm and is very frustrating cus the old mind isn't what it errr used to errr... be!" Well put. Drove me nuts for a while. I just had to get used to, and ignore, the values for drive and check surfaces changing when looking at or changing tool path parameters. Call it a non critical bug. Remembering which surfaces were selected when dozens of individual faces are present gets old fast. I also make a note of the colors selected in an operation in the comment section. I do the same with chain , boundary and trim geometry when things start to get busy, also noting the levels that those entities reside on. Side note. I use check surfaces sparingly, usually when a boundary doesn't give the results I'm looking for or isn't an option. I found that they can corrupt the fist few layers in the tool path. I also only use surfaces when the solid is so large that it adds substantial calc time.

Save it (the solid, not the surfaces) as a para solid or step file and I can take a look.

"My IT manager is about to upgrade my system to a Dell T3500 (Xeon [email protected], 6Go, Quadro 4000). Will it improve processsing significantly? May I will be able to verify/save large STL quickly (above 50Mo)? Or should I ask an effort... more RAM and/or better CPU ?" The time stated with the dell 690, xeon 5110 is abnormally slow. You should be around 3 minutes, give or take, with that comp. It sounds like other factors are slowing you down. If those same elements are introduced into your new set up, you'll replicate the same speed restrictions to some degree. All things being equal, the new computer should run circles around the old one. IMO, get a second CPU (http://www.newegg.co...N82E16819117243) and more ram as most CAD/CAM apps are gearing up to use all CPU cores simultaneously. Think of it as insurance against pre-mature obsolescence. X6 is in beta now and should be able to take advantage of all those cores, with all tool paths, all the time. Perhaps the beta testers could shed some light here without getting penalized.

"Is it possible to change the transparency of the displayed stock.' Yes, look in the solids display options. Works with the stock set-up options as well.

I get slow speeds with back plot as well when doing just a single tool path. A simple, single 2d contour, and it crawls. Back plot several operations and it gets faster. Back plot a huge surfacing tool path and it's very fast as well. It' seems strange because I can verify that same single tool path and it runs so fast you can't see it unless you slow it down.

Aside from Darin not having all the variables before making that statement, I believe he was on the right track. If I had to absolutely run that in a indexer or A axis, I would just 2d contour that right down the middle, comp off, depth cuts, then SF parallel like JP said. Depending on tool size, maybe even a SF parallel to semi-finish.