(shaking head) You metal workers....trying to work like woodcutters..... OK....first your parts are quite small, and even a large vacuum pump will have a hard time holding them down depending on what operations you need to do to them. Can you describe a little more detail of what you will be doing? Aside from that, potential options include masking off unused area of vacuum table spoil board, taping all edges of parts to increase vacuum. Reduce feed rates use smaller dia. tools.

Ok....unless I am missing something, how can you assign a different WCS and bounding box to a new tool group (as opposed to machine group)?

We program for one machine, but we use the machine groups to program multiple parts (usually an assembly) as individual parts thus separating them via the groups each with their own WCS. This also works well for 2 sided parts. As I stated in my OP that this was not a problem in X2 I could mass select all ops in all groups and do what I needed. Often it is needed to change to a different tool or to change material thickness or clearance planes. We routinely have as many as 50-60 machine groups (parts) within a given file. Some parts may have only one or two ops some may have 30-40 ops. Regardless of the number of ops, if I have to go thru 50-60 parts (and their respective ops) one at a time, how much time do you think I will have wasted as opposed to being able to select them all in one fell swoop?? I do believe we are all wise enough to pay attention to what it is we need to change within the ops we generate. Again as stated in my OP they can easily put in a toggle switch or radio button to allow us to select among ALL groups or just the active one!!

Well gcode.....you are one of the lucky ones. Ok....let's try it this way. For all of you out there. Try selecting multiple operations in multiple machine groups, and then try to Edit Common Parameters. You don't actually have to change anything. First when you do this, do you get a message that reads: "Some selected operations are not in the active machine group. Only those from the active machine group will be edited." (this is the message I get every time now in X3MU1) Second, if you get the above message, try to run Verify on any given part within the file. Then carefully watch your operations manager when you exit verify. Does the red arrow race from the top to the bottom of the manager? And if your ops are collapsed does it expand them?

I'd like to see a patch long before X4 is out as I don't enjoy wasting time editing for 20 minutes when I should be done in 1. Not to mention the added time I will be waiting for the red arrow to do it's little dance every time I verify now (multiplied by two for both seats).

How stupid is that?? In X3 when you go to edit common parameters it will ONLY edit operations in the current machine group! What?? Are we too stupid to know which operations we are selecting? Whether they are in multiple machine groups or not, I want to be able to select them all and edit them ALL!! Does anyone else find this to be incredibly annoying and totally ridiculous?? If any of the software gods are reading this post.....give us the option of selecting ALL groups or only the current group!!! It worked just fine in X2, don't "fix it" if it ain't broke! In addition I just discovered that it will not allow me to "edit common" on the last machine group AND it triggered another problem (on 1st seat) that we have been having on our second seat, whereby the red arrow, will rip it's way thru and expand every operation in the manager every time you exit the Verify function. How about looking into this and see if a patch is warranted for this problem?!

We have two seats with X3MU1. One is fine. THe other does exactly what you said when it exits Verify. Did you have a fix for that?

Yes we have MU1 installed. The machine definition is not corrupt. Why? Because we share that along with many other files so that both stations have the exact same resource files in use. Both seats point to the same files that are shared through the network. Shared resourcess include tool library, ops, post, definitions, etc....,pretty much everything listed under files in the config. Any other guesses?

I don't think anyone else has mentioned this problem yet. We have two seats of MC one has no (known) problems, the other has the operations tree going crazy every time you exit Verify. Here's what happens: If you have all operations collapsed or not, the verify process goes off just fine. But, when you exit, the (red) arrow curses it's way through all the operations and expands them if collapsed. It also corrupts about 75% of the operations forcing a regen of dirty operations. Has anyone else had this problem? Is there a fix for it? We've looked at everything in the config file that might cause it. Looking for a little help on this one, as it is quite irritating and time wasting as you have to wait for it to rip through all the ops each time.

Thanks guys, I appreciate the feedback. It's good to know there are at least few more woodticks out there. To give you an idea of what we do check out the link I have here. It's not often that I get a chance to share insights to the work I do, but the attached link will take to you a site that provides a small showcase of our work. This particular project was a 3 year build. ALL the wood you see in the photos was crafted at our facility. We are a complete shipyard fabricating everything from the keel & hull to the finished product. The only parts we don't make are the buyouts like hardware, lights, engines, etc...., in short if you can't buy off the shelf or from a catalog or online, we made it. There is plenty of things for you metalheads to drool over too. After you are at the first page, and have viewed it click on the fourth line at the top of the page (which reads): Click here for a full gallery of Web Exclusive photos from the yacht. and this will take you to more exclusive photos of what we do......enjoy Burger Boat

I know I am massively outnumbered here by metalworkers (kinda feel like Custer at the Little Bighorn). Just wondering how many other woodworkers are here on the forum using MC to program their machines?

After reading thru this, I find myself wondering if you have any hair left at all..... Now if I can just figure out what to do with it

We finally made the upgrade to X3 over this past weekend. We have two seats. One has no problems (at this time) the other has a problem with the auto-highlight of elements. I remember seeing a thread talking about the auto-highlight problem in X3, and I did search for it but couldn't find it. Could someone either point me to that thread or remind me what the solution was? Thanks in advance

I have noticed that this "error" occurs when you ues the same tool for different types of operations (i.e.: pocket & contour). The way to avoid it (at least in my case) is that when the operation dialogue pops up and gives you the option to select your tools, if you see that particular tool number already in the window, just click on it and you won't get the question of whether or not you want a tool change to occur when you post out. I'm certain that if you view the parameters for a given operation and click on the Toolpath Parameters tab, you will see multiple entries for the same tool number.

Breaking it may not be enough to make a toolpath from the text. Yes you must "Break" it first, but if you pull a box around it to select it all, MC may still not path it. If that occurs pull a box around it again, but also select the "3D" option button and it should work. I have encountered this issue with 2d drawings as well.

If I am right, I have seen the problem too, but it is NOT MasterCam. It turned out to be the tool parameters in MasterCam. The differnece was only a few thousandths of an inch but enough to change the shape. We had to verify at the machine the exact cut the tool was making, so that MC would generate the correct toolpath.

We have multiple seats of MC here. I installed X3 on my pc. We also have shared resources on the network so that we are all pointing to the same tool library, material, etc.... The first thing I encountered with X3 is that it wants to "convert" the tool library, post, etc... for the time being I declined to do that in order to retain conmpatibility for the other users. The next thing I discovered is that the file format in X3 is NOT compatible with any previous versions, and if you save as version X it is still not compatible. You have to save it all the way back to version 9 to be able to open in anything prior to X3. We have already made a decision to simply jump into X3 after saving a good copy of all the common resource files that we share over the network. That way we will still be able to go back to X2 if we have a need for that at some point. We will be making the transition in the next few weeks.

"The stock from previous ops sometimes doesn't locate where its supposed to be in succesive ops and/or its orientation is whacked out." ======================================== Are you creating mutiple: Machine Groups? Toolpath Groups? WCS origins? If you answer yes, you need to make sure they are all properly coordinated and pointing at the right places when you create your stock setup and ops. I will commonly have as many as 30 WCS origins, Machine Groups, and Toolpath Groups to program the 30 parts that they will be for. This typically happens when I receive an Inventor or Rhino Assembly model for programming. Each Part will have it's own origin and orientation of the planes is handled by the WCS for the given part. No need to move and/or rotate parts to the global origin. But, going back to your issue, the "planes" for each part must be pointing to the correct WCS and, the Stock setup, as well as the Safety Zone, must also be pointing at the correct WCS for the part.

Hardmill is correct. If the font you are interested in is a True Type font, you simply need to put the .TTF files into your c:windowsfonts (or similar path) on your hard drive and and MC will read it from there. You might need to restart MC after adding fonts.

Thanks for the help Tony & Tyler. I got there and got the one I wanted. I am sure I am no different that most users where you find a few of the C-hooks useful and never find any use for most of the rest. There have been several occasions where I could have used this one for changing multiple circles. My basic philosophy has always been: work smarter, not harder!! Thanks again.

Tony35, I am in Manitowoc. Either I am doing something wrong or missing something altogether as I cannot get thru to the page for the link you provided. It is asking for an ID and password. Yes, I have a current valid maintenance contract for MC if it has anythiong to do with that. What am I missing???

I am new to this website (not so new to MasterCam), but could one of you please post a link to the page where that C-hook can be downloaded from? Thank you