I'll be in K-zoo on the 21st, noon for the update seminar.

+1 to snowman "cancel" is pretty reliable NOT to give you the red x

Do you mean "left hand spiral, right hand cut" endmills?

Welcome to the forum! "Creating wireframe geo" is pretty simple, once you undestand the system. You can create "construction planes any whee you want, and draw anything from that plane. Personally I rarely move objects, but change my WCS to whatever my need are. Mostly because the items I would be moving are part of a larger assembly and would lose their position in the assembly. Yes surfaces can be modified. For those of us who have been around since before solids, most think its actually easier to machine from surfaces than solids. And some things are only possible with surfaces. In my experience, stitching surfs into a solid is usually only to advantage if there are further changes to make that would be easier to do on a solid. You can export the solid to something else, but it will still be "dumb". I don't have a good answer on the training, but somebody here will as several have different options available. HTH

Sorry I would love to, but I don't have X yet, so here's a bump.

Somebody tell me Carl is mistaken!!! I think that is a pain in the a$$. Must be a better way.

I would look at the setting in "job-setup" for "from material" or "from tool" and check the numbers in the "parameters" tab of the tool description.

Jeff- I have used MetaCut for about 4 years now. For the money its hard to beat, and the fact that it runs on your NC code makes it pretty damn reliable. The weakness is the graphics. If you are looking for minute detail in something, it will be hard, but if you want to check for crashes and gouges, it works pretty well. When I want to see if I am missing something, shows enough detail. And its WAY faster than Verify. You can find a screw up, fix it and rerun the MEtaCut befroe Verify would be done with the first showing. All that said, its nothing like the higher end products like Predator and such, but it is a good value for the $, IMO.

Jeff, I don't get your point. My reseller said mid-september, and I was checking with the rest of the state of Michigan to see if they had the same answer. I won't be getting codes by Aug 15th, or anything according to my reseller. I don't know where you are, so I don't have a clue how that relates to your situation.

OK Thad and you other Wolverines, Let me know if you get an X release date. I am told that we are looking at mid September. Have you heard anything?

carriopaul- If your surface-finish-contour is only jumping until it engages all the geo at one level, what I do is extend my geo so it can contact all surfs at any depth, then use your dpth cut controls to start where you want. With the L/O tlpth it can usually be reduced by changing tolerance, making sure you don't have surfs "hanging over" and as suggested above, work with boundaries and check surfs, or switch to zig-zag if possible.

Jimmy, Is the mcview chook on the FTP?

+1 to Ron's cutePDF, been using it now for 4 months or so. Works pretty well. There are others, but this one is probably easiest.

IMO that is a MC weakness. To protect yourself, and your customers, what we did was institute a strict file structure where there is always a master file that is the latest part data, and anyone who opens a file for machining purposes uses different "coded" file names so no-one can save over each other, etc. Another thing to look at is the MC config files on the three keys using the same files. Some settings can cause problems if not the same in all boxes.

WCS, Tplane, and Cplane all match here. Tplane and Cplane need to match (under normal conditions) when toolpathing. If WCS is set, then these should show relative to the WCS, but still usually match for toolpathing.

Define "chopping". If you mean remove some of the cuts, yes. The toolpath can be trimmed with 2D geo.

Thanks Ken!

Lars, I looked at it yesterday, but I wasn't sure what you were doing, or the intended result, and it looked like you needed a 4th axis program, which is not my strength. Am I not seeing something in the drawingor misunderstanding your intent?

Also out of curiousity, do you have a great deal of 3D toolpaths in this file? Something I do when the toolpaths take the file size over about 60-70 meg is to save a copy and delete the previous toolpaths, so I still have tools etc., then continue on with programming in the new file.

+1 to gcodes delete suggestion. Or save a copy of the file and delete the splines from the one you are working with. That way if you did have a need for something in that file, you could get it from the copy.

After your last post, Tony, I would do the re-install as hardmill said.

Tony, First take off the caps lock when posting. Then open My Computer, go to "tools", "folder options", "file types", and scroll down to "MC9" files, then change it to "open with" Mill9 or whatever you call the MC program.

Tony, Change your "file association" in windows. Tell me what you are running and I can probably tell you where to find it.

So since I would say the cat is officially out of the bag................. What are we getting along the lines of actual improvements in toolpath functioning?

Thanks for the preview CNC. Looks like added functionality will be a big plus. Git-er-done!