I'm not dead yet!

Ah, the glory days. Moldbase worked well but was too much of a niche product so it was discontinued. I still have a brochure of it on my office wall. Would be really cool to get it working again with solids instead of wire frame. Assembly mode and components, standard pocket styles, automatic dimensioning, etc.

The closest thing you have to Moldbase now is FBM, but you'd have to draw each plate individually in solids and then run FBM drilling and FBM milling on it and even then all you'd get is just the toolpath operations (hopefully in the order you'd want to machine them).

Definitely not as automated as it was before.

Sorry.

Public Service Announcement - Posting And You

Yup, the X5 redo stomped on that bug too.

Kev,

It will now create (and optionally save) all the new named views transform needs to support whatever NCI (or spawned operations) are created. You have a choice to save them if not creating new operations and geometry. If you are creating new operations, this option is forced on (as we need these views to store in the operation's toolplane, etc). The system will first look for any existing matching views and use those before creating loads of duplicates though. If it does need to create one on-the-fly in transform, the default view name is XFORM_n where n is the next available number.

One of the problems with the old mirror option was 'mirroring a view' which created bad 'left-handed' views. Imagine a icon of XYZ axis, then think of flipping just the X axis about the Y to create a "mirror" of the original, but the Z direction must stay the same. Mathematically is doesn't work and the 1014 line in the NCI (the toolplane) would be invalid and cause a lot of users problems. We used to have to massage these bad views in backplot and verify just so they'd display properly. Basically bad news overall. The new transform fixes all this.

Sorry for the delay - I'll take a look tomorrow.

FYI: Transform toolpath had a major redo for X5 (especially mirror!). You now have the option to either transform the NCI (like in X4) or temporarily transform/copy the geometry, generate and save the new NCI on the copy, and then blow away the copy (just like what you'd do if you had to do it manually). It takes a little longer, but it's always correct. This eliminates all the assumptions that are inherent when you're just copying NCI (especially when doing a mirror-reverse with all the retract and comp direction issues). The transform-mirror option always forces on the 'use geometry' option. For Translate and Rotate you have a choice.

Oh, and you can transform toolpaths that reference solids now too. It will extract & copy a surface from the selected solid face to machine to (it won't copy the solid - that would create quite a large mess of duplicate solids).

You ain't bonafide if you don't have a scar from a hot chip.

Which version?

Good catch boys, and the problem has been fixed. You'll see it in the X4-MU1 release.

The bug: A couple toolpath filter functions (arc & point distribution) were introducing an extra start-of-section record when the filters were applied. This was not a critical error as the NCI is checked and corrected for this during a file-get, but anything screwy with the NCI has a potential of causing problems farther downstream.

Also, some performance improvements were made with the speed of the filters.

Oh yeah, it's faster.

And what would REALLY help is if you turn on your 'backup files' utility and are able to give me a pre-bad ops file and a post-bad ops file. Then I can step thru and recreate the crime (and hopefully provide a quick solution).

Somebody please give me (and QC) the files!!!

[email protected]

That's was Jim Martin (Jimbo!) He thought either Don cut off his arm or there was a squeeling little girl in Don's office.

Poor Don.

Just another day at the offices of CNC Software...

No, there's no setting.

If you can repeat the steps, we can find the problem. Please try to nail it down and report it to QC.

Sounds like the internal variable that's used for the current MCX name isn't set until you actually name the file when saving.

What name does it give you when you post?

Make sure you have the Search part list when entering tool number enabled in your machine group's tool settings.

Also make sure to enable the display of your operation's NC path in the Operation Manager as bordered in red below.

This should not be.

Please send in the file to QC and email it to me.

[email protected]

Just so you know, it occurs when you create a toolpath group that contains nothing but other toolpath groups and no toolpath operations.

IT'S A BUG!!!

But don't worry - no data is lost.

There is a work around until we can issue a fix.

Saving and reloading the file will display your groups properly, or select the offending group (the one without the expand/collapse icon) and move your red insert arrow into it by pressing the button bordered in red as shown below:

Try moving the red insert arrow around. It has something to do with having empty toolpath groups in the list.

This is a known bug and has been fixed in the sonn-to-be-released MR2.

Please send the file into QC. This should not be happening, but if I can get my hands on the file I can step thru and maybe recreate the crime. I may also be able to save the file.

We need a praying emoticon.

That was a bug that's been fixed for MR2.

All Hail MR2!

Hello boys.

GENERAL INFO YOU MAY ALREADY KNOW: When you startup Mastercam or do a File/New, the standard views (TOP, RIGHT, etc) are all created for you at an origin of X0Y0Z0. These origins can be changed (against my better judgement, but quite a few customers wanted to be able to, so we allow them).

Views have 2 components: an orientation (the matrix) and the 3D point defined as its origin. They are not able to be separated; create a TOP view with an origin of X0.0001 Y0 Z0 and you will be required to save this new view as it is different than a TOP @ 0,0,0.

QUESTION: did you change the origin of your TOP view that's being used as your WCS? In other words, is the origin not X0Y0Z0 ?

If so and your WCS is set to this TOP view (say with an origin of X2.5Y0Z0), then if you then go select the view named RIGHT, then the system will look for an existing view in RIGHT view orientation with the same origin of 2.5,0,0. If an existing view matching both the orientation and origin is not found, it asks you to save one.

THE BOTTOM LINE: The system will always want to create a new view when it cannot find an existing matching to satisfy your selection (except when selecting for a graphics view, which we don't save views for).

What kind of operations?

Which "diameter" is changing? The tool dia?

Okay - I'm a poppin' in.

Are you importing into a file that already has operations and tools in it?

I'm thinking maybe there's some conflict with existing stuff...