Sorry for the delayed reply and thanks for the input. We are, against all odds, running a decently capable machine shop in a major hospital so needless to say, network security is a very serious issue and there is an awful lot going on here in IT terms, of which the machine shop is a minor part. The people running it are definitely not idiots. Our VAR, InHouseSolutions did get back to me that the way they like to do shared files is to copy an entire, correctly configured \Public\SharedMasterCAM2023\ directory to a shared network location and then do registry edits to point each computer's MasterCAM to the right place. We will also see if we can get write permissions to the whole sharedMaserCAM directory on the local drives, but my gut tells me there is something else with how they've restricted AppData access or something, What I was really wondering is are there any other known file locations that MasterCAM tries to access when you try to open a file. I'll update this thread if I learn more...

We have a highly regulated network where we don't have admin privileges and can't access each other's personal directories. I have however worked with our IT people to configure each computer with the same machine definitions and posts and other things held in Users/Public Documents/Shared MasterCAM2023/ . However, config files are all in people's personal user/My Mastercam 2023/ Directories. We've run into a situation where we can't open each other's files from common network folders and in fact, after MasterCAM posts a System Configuration dialog box saying it's loading the inch configuration file, it just hangs and you need Task Manager to shut it down. This seems to be specific to 2023 files as 2021 files were successfully opened by another user in MCAM2023. This has the feel of MasterCAM not being able to access the original configuration files. Even when on the same computer, Bill can't open John's parts. I had one of the guys do a Zip2Go on a part and tried to apply that to my MasterCAM instance. That didn't work and it still crashes. Does anyone have any insight here? I haven't talked to inHouse yet but this place is a such good source of knowledge in these areas I had to ask first. thanks in advance.

Thanks for the replies all. We seem to have fixed the problem in that if we start with a brand new part with the tool library on the local drive, everything works fine. I suspect the issue is that when you start a part and add a machine definition and tools etc, it is always looking at those original locations even if when it doesn't seemingly need to. This does not answer the question of why it was so slow in the first place. The network is otherwise perfectly fine in data transfer speeds and indeed all the parts we've worked on for years are on network drives, including some on the same share where this tooldb was. And the tooldb, which is only 12Mb, also works perfectly when installed on local drives. I do like the theory that it threw off where the operations files were supposed to be but if you look in the configuration it all looks fine. Anyway, all's well that end's well, albeit in an intellectually unsatisfactory manner.

Ours is 10Mb so far but it works perfectly on two other computers. Also the problem is now not connected to this database, it's slow for all the lathe databases, as though it's still checking for something on the network which is being slow, even though it shouldn't be doing that.

OK I have super weird one with MasterCAM 2023. We wanted to share a new lathe tool database on a common network file location. I set it up but as soon as we linked to it, selecting an operation got extremely slow. eg you click on Face or Rough or Drill and it takes 15 seconds to bring up the operation dialog box or chaining window. On our other computers and before this event, these come up instantly. So we went back to having the database in the regular shared location on the C:\ drive. The problem is, the operation selection is still really slow. We have MasterCAM installed on several computers and this issue only happened on one computer where we tried accessing the tooldb at the network drive. The network location operates perfectly normally otherwise by the way. Has anyone seen this or has any insight? I'm tempted to uninstall 2023 and reinstall it if we can't solve it more elegantly. I feel like there is some user-specific file I need to delete that will be recreated on startup or something. Additional note: I just checked and the mill operations are unaffected by this issue, they pop up instantly.

We do exotic things with network licenses, hosting between two clinical networks with secret tunnels, and then run MCam and Solidworks on quasi-hospital computers, with about three levels of IT support (the small gods, the great gods etc). In other words, it's remarkable it works, but it's actually been very reliable over 17 years and multiple versions of both programs. In our experience, license issues will not cause MCam to crash, it will just get stuck trying to get a license, but because the whole system seems so baroque, everyone blames the license first. Unrelated to the OPs issue, our biggest source of crashes recently has been upon importing SW files into MCam. The current solutions is to bring the SW file in, immediately save the MCAM file, close mastercam down and restart without doing anything else, and then all runs fine.

Thanks so much from me too @AHarrison1! Exactly what @crazy^millman said, it just doesn't occur to you that since MasterCAM knows the insert's boundary in the cutting plane, it wouldn't be able to define a tool width, especially since you told it that you're defining a parting and grooving tool, so you assume it knows the width is important! I guess telling it what type of tool it is only affects how it filters the tool in the tool library, not what the tool actually does.

I literally watched Charlie Pierson's new video about this lathe literally today then saw this thread. Small world, as they say. In the video, Pierson notes that it is loud, but he didn't describe it as a show stopper. Did it get better or did you just somewhat learn to live with it?

I find remote desktop works fine but our office is also a large data center and our network and VPN is very robust. The advantage of RD is your files all stay local in the office so there is much less data transfer if you're working directly off on-premise network drives. But there are one or two weird issues with MasterCAM display. See the thread I started yesterday and how it got resolved:

Ha, I am a n00b! So I trundled off to the office this morning and in response to Crazy Millman, set about making a sample tooldb library to upload. But now that I am doing this on my actual computer, rather than running it over Remote Desktop, it works fine. Even the mini boring bar showed up properly, not initially, but by opening it to edit and then immediately hitting the OK button. So put this down under rare and weird issues that arise when you run MCAM over Remote Desktop, which otherwise works fine (except the backplot buttons don't show up until you mouse over them - and even that is not a problem in MasterCAM for Solidworks). Thanks Crazy Millwright for poking this towards a resolution!

I've been having fun over Christmas learning Lathe and starting to build a library of commonly used lathe tools for the Haas TL-1 in our prototyping shop. All seems to be going well (pre first post) except when I import a 3D tool as a step file I don't get a proper thumbnail in my tool library. The pictures are an example tool I made of a small boring bar, this one drawn in Solidworks and imported as a step, but I've seen the same thing with .stp files from Iscar. The tool setup works perfectly and comes in and backplots and verifies fine, it's just the thumbnail shows the classic blank with gomon. I did search on this topic and while there was nothing specific to the tool library, I did see where Windows file thumbnails are tied to how the part was oriented in the last save or something. Is that the case here and is there some special trick to saving the part before you import it as a tool? While I'm here, I must give a shout out to George at MLC CAD on YouTube who's video "Mastercam Tech Tip: Lathe Toolholder Set-up" sorted out my previous big problem which was understanding tool orientation and the fact that there is such a thing as upside down tools! I would further shout out to Mooray Machine who's YouTube video on boring setup led me to the miracle of Stock Recognition.