Maztercam Has Layers ??????

My Dad goes country dancing at an Elks Club

quote: Yes they are. That was in reference to your comment about the 2 systems being different. If an entity is a true arc in top view but has different z compenents it isnt an arc.

quote: Getting ready to take the family to Florida. The payooff for setting up a slick un attended bar fed system ... Ya get to go to florida while the machine chunks out parts.

quote: I have come to program the "smartcam" way. I draw my toolpath. This is fundamentally different than all other cam packages.I found this great for simple stuff. Really makes it easy to tweak toolpaths after they are created too. BUT I always felt like I was walking on egg shells when making changes to complex process models. One wrong click without realizing it and you can wind up on a treasure hunt to fix it. quote: Smartcam was written as a pseudo cad pkg as well. I can draw faster in smartcam than in any other pkg I have tried.You are a better man than I. I always did as much drawing as I could in my cad system and imported it in SmartCam. In fact in the programming department where I used to work you would usually hear daily "I hate drawing in f@#$ing Smart Cam " Hence the nickname "Stupidcam". That said, I did like "grabbing" ordinates from existing entities (X from that line endpoint y from that circle center). I actually started on Smartcam so I also had some unlearning to do. I had the advantage of being a long time Cadkey user so creating geometry in Mastercam was a pretty easy transition. On big change is getting out of the "Group It , Do Something to it" mentality. quote: these other pkgs require me to create geometry first The flip side of this coin is working with custome models. Ive found smartcams process model approach to be a little cumbersome when programming from customer cad geometry. It would be really interesting to see what Smart Cam would look like today if still being developed. quote: am i correct that 2-d geometry in mc will always be drawn on one level? a z level of zero? When drawing in 2D, geometry is forced to the current CPlane. If Cplane = 3D geoometry is drawn in true 3space. quote: if i draw features that are from the other side of the part that i want to design around from the side im working on now,wouldnt i at least have them another color so i could hide them Are you talking about the ability to mask on Z levels in SmartCam ? I sometimes use colors as you described. You can also make use of Hide or Blank ¨ Blank. Blank removes from view selected entities, on any level, reducing the complexity of the screen display. ¨ Hide. Hide removes from view unselected entities, so that you can quickly focus quickly on a small amount of geometry. And of course you can also manage entities by placing them on different levels. quote: is it common to create geometry in different colors so its easier to keep track of whats what? Yes quote: sorry if some of these questions seem like im just a beginner but these 2 cam systems are very different. Yes they are.

Some cute little Titanium (Ti6AL4V) parts for some type of photonics device. Its got lots of really fun #0-80 tapped holes .150" deep. 99 $40 taps in the box 99 $40 taps ... chuck one up snap one off ... 98 $40 taps in the box... [ 03-08-2003, 12:39 AM: Message edited by: CAMmando ]

I was a smartcam user for about 5 years started in DOS then windows. I changed jobs and went to a shop with no cam system. Shortly after I purchased Mastercam V5.5. As was mentioned it is a big change in approach. After using MC for 5 years I went to a shop that was running SmartCam, I was there 1 and a half years and despised every minute I spent programming in Smartcam. Now Im back to my previous job and mastercam. I think once you get the hang of MC, you will really learn to love it. Especially now with the associative toolpaths.