Do you have to hire people who already know your CAM software? Most people who know one system can easily learn another with good training and support. Speaking of support, does more seats mean better support? Maybe....maybe not. Support can become quite personal and would you rather call a company and be put into a que and then talk to someone you've never met before. Or call someone directly on their cell phone who was also the guy who trained you and knows your shop and you personally? As post are concerned.....Mastercam is pretty large, why do they rely on In-house so heavily for post????

Don't disregard the lesser known systems, they are quite powerfull, even if they don't have mass market appeal. Hypermill is quite strong in 5x positional, 5x simultaneous and machine intergration, and is worth checking into. They are located just over the river in Livonia. http://www.openmind-tech.com

Mic, in the US, Methods Machine Tools doesn't seem to push these features for whatever reason. I knew Fanuc was working on this issue, but I have yet to see any Fanuc control that didn't behave like this. Maybe I'm working with old data, thanks for the correction!

Moris have it....Matsuuras don't. They band-aid it with CAMPLETE, which is a hassle, in my opinion. FYI...the Fanuc based controls need to have the rotarys at zero to activate it, while Heidenhain and Siemens controls can activate it anywhere. It is relativly a new feature for Fanuc, but Siemens and Heidenhain have been doing it for a while.

Still think there should be a machine/control solution...have you called Mazak?

dolphin1, I don't know if this would help but I used to run a Mikron UCP1150 that had the same issue, all the Y travel in one direction. It had a specific M code that would activate a retract and would rotate the C axis 180 degrees so that the Y- was now Y+. Of course, different machine and different control, but you might want to contact Mazak to see if they have a solution on the control. My bet is if the machine only has that much travel in a particular direction, then there must be a control solution as oppose to a CAM or post solution.

Hypermill has always had a intergrated Inventor product as well as Pro-E wildfire. Intergration is what they do and have done for years.