Hi All Just to clear things up a little, the Productivity Plus add-in to Mastercam is not released in X6. It is only a prototype and is only available for testing with dealer Sims, or if you have a prototype code to run prototype functionality. It was developed in conjunction with Renishaw. Developers from both CNC Software and Renishaw did the integration. It will be officially released in X7. If you are familiar with the standalone Renishaw version of Productivity Plus (which has been available for several years), the look and feel is the same in Mastercam. We've integrated it as a toolpath type in Mastercam, and allow the user to use Mastercam selection to define the probing routines that they wish to run. These probing routines are added as operations in Mastercam's toolpath manager. This add-in requires some post customization in Mastercam and it also requires a Renishaw post. It is an extra cost add-in, but will be very competitively priced when released. I hope this clears things up a little. Doug

Hi All- Mastercam X6 is still in beta, but we are close to moving to a Production Candidate. And to dispel any rumors, X6 is still supported in XP. But if you're thinking about moving to Windows 7, that's not a bad idea.

Guys- Fantastic idea. It's good to see forum members pooling together this type of useful information for the benefit of others. Chris, I'm not sure if non-authors can add to your spreadsheet, but feed per tooth would be a useful field. Also, although maybe being a bit premature, we should consider adding another tab for the upcoming 3d OptiRough toolpath which will be released in X5. You could call it the 3d version of Dynamic. CNC and Beta sites could add to this area. We've been testing the heck out of it here at CNC on our HS Makino, and the results have been amazing. We've been benchmarking it against old-school surface-rough-pocket, and we're seeing cycle times drop by more than half.

Stephen, The main reason being not having full control over the sorting, correct?

Hi Chipmaker- Currently, there is no way to combine ops that share the same diameter but have different depths. But we understand the benefits of doing this and we're looking into it now.

Great parts! I'll check the FTP to see if they came through. Thanks for taking the time to do this. Doug

So far, very few responses, so bump for some more.

Hi All- With the release of Mastercam X3 on the horizon, we are beginning the design planning of our X3 product brochures. History has shown us that it is often difficult to come up with good examples of machined parts that we photograph and use in our brochures. Many times we will come across a very good customer part only to find out that it is proprietary and can't be used. So, we are appealing the best cross section of users that we have out there, our user forum. This is what we need: 1) Mill: preferrably a mold/die part, nothing too simple. 2) Lathe: We're looking for something from the medical field, but if you have an impressive part, we'll certainly look at it. 3) Wire: Anything that you feel would be a good representation of Wire. Please make sure that any parts you share are not proprietary in nature. If need be, we can sign a non-disclosure. If a physical part can not be provided, there is a possility that we can machine it ourselves, but a physical part would be better. We will use the photographs of the parts on the covers of the brochures and well as screen shots of the MCX files. If you have a file (photograph, MCX or both) you'd like to share, please upload it to our FTP site here: "ftp://ftp.mastercam.com/Customer Area/To Mastercam/X3 Brochure parts/" Once the file is uploaded, please send an e-mail to [email protected] to let us know that it's there and the name of the file(s). Since our primary criteria is the look of the part, you can strip out toolpath information from the MCX file to save on file size. If we use your part in our X3 brochures, we will certainly give your company credit for the part. Any questions can also be directed to [email protected]. Thanks in advance! Doug

HscMan Can you please e-mail me with the name of the reseller you spoke with? Thanks- Doug [email protected]

Hi Thad- Yes, this is correct. I'll look into the possibility of making is available as a download on mastercam.com. I'm not sure the reason for keeping it from the public. But in the meantime, Axsys should be able to help you out. Doug

Hi Terry- If you are current on maintenance or had active maintenance as of Aug. 31, 2006, X2 will run.

Kunfuzed- Try the High Speed pencil. I get better results with it.

It allows you to "quickly" select all surfaces, solids, lines, arcs, etc. In X you had to do "all" selection through the regular masking, which wasn't all that quick.

Jeff- A couple things: 1) When you select the chain icon on general seletion, select it with a right click. Then It'll stay locked. 2) For general selection chaining, I just hold the shift key down which is the hot key for chaining. for me, this is the fastest way.

I think he already left!