quote: The benchmark thread can answer most of your questions especially the last 2 or 3 pages. Seems to indicate that 12MB of Cache is going to help me. Doesn't address a lot of the other questions I asked for input on.

Will be used for CADCAM only. Here is my initial quote from Fry's Electronics: Corsair CMPSU 1000W ATX Power Supply -> $279.00 ASUS P5Q3 Deluxe / Wifi-AP Motherboard -> $219.99 Zalman GS1000 Case -> $169.99 Intel Core2Quad Q9550 BX 2.83 GHZ @ 1333 12MB Cache -> $329.00 DDR3 4GB 2000 MHZ Dual PA (2x2GB) With EPP 2.0 -> $349.99 Quadro FX 570 256MB DDR2 ->$199.99 I already have the monitors and hard drives I'm going to use with this system. Any comments or suggestions? Any one had good luck with a G-Force card? How about SLI does this have any benefits for Mastercam? In Novemeber Intel is supposed to release a new chip... should I wait? Is there any advantage to using Vista for Mastercam?

This technology, when it's available, will give notebook users more choices: http://ati.amd.com/technology/xgp/index.html

You're contributing now!

quote: I think you are right that there may not be experts in mastercam and as long as I have been using it I would say I probably only know 70% of it to it depends on the kind of work you do as to what part of mastercam you know. I am very lucky to know the people I do I work directly with colin who is very good at mastercam and we bounce things off each other all the time and try new stuff just to see if we can get it to work. I agree that Colin is very helpful. I also agree that you are very lucky to work with him. Colin's points on making Mastercam less modal make a lot of sense to me.

quote: They can save you a whole lot of work if you'll let them. Agree but it took a lot of work for us to figure out how to use it. There is a lot of power in Transform Toolpath Mirror and Transform Toolpath Translate. It's one of my favorite parts of Mastercam along with Edit Common Parameters.

quote: NeilJ, your method above is for doing 2 pcs at a time right? You anly do the mirror for on part. The mirror is done on all the toolpaths for say the left hand part. Once that is done you can set the Transform Translate to do as many right hand parts as you wish. [ 09-24-2008, 05:08 PM: Message edited by: NeilJ ]

quote: Yes, I'd like to see your example. Can you send it on Mastercam FTP's site? E-mail or I might be able to upload to Media Fire and send you a link. I'm not hard to get a hold of. Click the little envelope with the person standing next to it and send me your email address.

quote: I hope someone else can lead us down the right path, because I would like to know too. Like I said before, I learn something new every day. I love this place!! First thing I do is Transform Toolpath Mirror. Under the Type And Methods Tab check all the toolpaths you wish to mirror. In the Parameters page under Type select Mirror. Under Method select Coordinate. Select Create New Operations And Geometry. Do not select Keep This Transform Operation. Under the Mirror Tab select your Mirror Method and select your Mirror view (the WCS you're working from) Do not select Reverse Toolpath. Once you have done your Transform Mirror Toolpath now you can do a Transform Translate. Select all the operations you created when you did the Transform Mirror above. Under Type and Methods tab choose Translate and Tool Plane Origin Only. Method = Tool Plane. Group NCI Output = Operation Type. Select Copy Source Operations and Disable Posting In Selected Source Operations. Depending on your post you can select Work Offset Numbering Assign New. Start: 0 = G54, Increment of 1. Under the Translate Tab select Rectangle X Spacing = 0. Y Spacing = 0. X Steps = Number of work offsets you want. Y Steps = 0. If you want I have a file that demonstrates *exactly what I wrote above* and I'd be happy to send it to you along with our Machine Definition and our post which will post out this file perfectly. [ 09-24-2008, 04:33 PM: Message edited by: NeilJ ]

I just got Peter Smid's Mastercam 2 1/2 axis mill book. He is the same author as in the link above. This book is sold and published by the same people who run this forum... In House Solutions and can be found here: http://volumesdirect.com/detail.aspx?ID=3716 Disclaimer: I have an agreement with the author of this book that any specific ideas I have for improvement go directly to him so I’m not open to really discussing this book in detail. Despite this agreement it would be fair to say I like much of this book.

quote: Keep in mind that all the good programmers I have worked with have had very...eccentric...errr I mean...."colorful" personalities. That's why I have a blog. Last I checked it had well over 7,000 hits. Many of those hits come from people searching for information on Mastercam.

Many people on this forum know who I work for. Suffice it to say it's not a machine tool dealer like you work for.

Probably the best part of were I work is we all help each other because the boss fosters this attitude and approach. I would not describe this as typical or common in the machining industry. I started in this trade in 1992 and have never worked in a better environment than where I'm at now. It took six months for me to get hired here. The boss even read my blog and posts to Usenet before deciding I was what he was looking for.

Facts: I make my living programming and machining with Mastercam. The company I work for is based in San Diego, CA and is the largest and most successful of its kind.

quote: your opinion is worthlessCliques who can't back up their opinions with facts and have to resort to personal attacks are worthless.

In my opinion there are no Mastercam experts. The people I feel know the most about Mastercam don't consider themselves to be experts and acknowledge they know perhaps 70 percent of the product.

Without a doubt who you wish to learn from is a choice and in my opinion it's the most important choice one can make.

Working for a company that has no problem paying for software maintenance helps. Making an effort to build a relationship with our VAR has helped me. Mike Mattera's videos have helped me: www.tipsformanufacturing.com alt.machines.cnc has helped me in the past. Some posters to this forum have helped me. In House Solutions Mastercam books have helped. Not expecting people to be perfect in the answers they give to my questions and knowing that they are trying their best helps. Being willing to spend my own money and time have helped me. Being honest with myself and with a products limitations helps. Having used many CADCAM products helps... they all have issues. Some more than others. Picking and choosing who I wish to learn from probably helps the most.

quote: try to use the solidworks settings first. Will do.

Back on topic and still looking for an answer to this question: Is the correct Quadro setting or a 3450 Nividia Quadro card going to give me smooth, crisp, clean chaining instead of what I get now which are broken up, jagged, choppy chains?

A good forum is no substitute for poor product documentation. Making the effort to properly document Mastercam will ensure that a Mastercam resellers time is better used and that more Mastercam users get to know the product better.

quote: Yes, I never tried double clicking the chain It's poorly documented. Much like Change At Point is. It would be nice to see CNC Software tech writers take an interest in posting here so this kind of thing can be corrected.

Is the correct Quadro setting or a 3450 Nividia Quadro card going to give me smooth, crisp, clean chaining instead of what I get now which are broken up, jagged, choppy chains?

quote: Even clicking on the solid chain icon in the manager will not highlight the chain on the model. Double click on the solid chain in the Chain Manager. Below that solid chain will appear an icon and a name. Click on that and it will highlight your solid chain.

quote: changing video cards won't help with this.. There is a workaround.. Open the chain manager, delete all the chains close the chain manager. Now open the chain manager and do your new chains.. Yes, I know that sucks...this has one of my pet peeves for years, but I've never taken 5 minutes to send it to QC so my whining rights are limited Looks like the answer for me might be to never use Rechain All and just delete individual chains. When I try deleting individual chains they disappear immediately from the graphics screen.