You will be able to slow the spindle speed as well as the feedrate at a radius of your choosing in X5

I don't think you can stop the standard restmill op machining to the containment boundary. However the High Speed Surface rest roughing strategy won't machine out to the boundary.

Hancast, happily there is an option to do what you want. Go to Settings, Configuration and then go to the Toolpaths page. To the top right hand corner there are a number of options under the heading "Toolpath/surface selection". You can change the option "Check" (third one down) from None, to Unselected. Next time you do a surface toolpath, all the surfaces you do *not* pick as drive surfaces will become your check surfaces.

I've been playing with Highfeed recently and I can say that Higfeed does not adjust the Depth of Cut of the toolpath. It does need to know about the depth of cut of the toolpath, which initially is based on a % of the tool diameter (it doesn't take it from the toolpath parameters automatically). Therefore you can adjust the depth of cut field to match your actual operation. It's a shame it's still very C-hookish in that it locks your operation. CNC really should integrate this better into the toolpaths.

Jim, First problem - did you know you can simply click on a line, arc, spline or surface a second time to de-select it? Second problem - I would like the full chain manager in those situations too... but did you know there is a "cut down" chain manager available on the General Selection ribbon bar (the one with the All and Only buttons)? Just past the Window Select menu (which usually is set to "In"), there is a drop down menu with Chain, Window, Polygon, Single, Area & Vector. Now to do a quick chain for Xform/Delete, you can choose Chain first from that menu, or press the Shift key on your keyboard while you click on the first entity. Still not as good as the full chain manager but it helps. Of course you may know all this already!

Yeah that sounds more like the problem here doesn't it. Therefore the answer is "no", there isn't a way of stopping that AFAIK. Best email [email protected] and ask for an option to disable the view/WCS switching.

Kunfuzed, Sorry.... to clarify, I meant that I hope the button would once again work as originally intended, not that Mastercam used to work in that way. Chris, If I remember rightly you would get a warning/alarm if you tried to change something if the toolpath was generating in the background. I didn't spend a lot of time with it tho and it was a good five years ago!

The Apply button is leftover from when the new "high speed" interface was first incorporated into Mastercam. In another CAM package, pressing Apply actually started to process your toolpath while the dialog was still on the screen (i.e. multithreading). I live in the hope that function will make it's return in Mcam someday!

You can assign a default view/plane to a Machine Definition - maybe that is what's set on one of your machine defs. Settings, Machine Definition Manager - Edit General Machine Parameters; it's an icon at the top next to the Control Def icon. Then look at the tab that says "Cplane" on it (among other things). Check this page for all of your machine defs.

Try Surface Finish Contour and... (I'm sure you have checked this in Waterline already) make sure that you have switched on XY arcs in either the Total Tolerance page or Refine Toolpath page (name changes depending on whether you chose to try the Refine Toolpath feature). If you get arcs with Finish Countour but not Waterline with the same Total Tol/Refine settings, then go to the Windows Control Panel, find and select the Mastercam X icon. Select X4 at the top of the window and the look for "Toolpath Support". There is a section there for "HMM kernel arcs" - I wonder if your arcs have been disabled from there for the HMM (including Waterline) toolpaths? By the way, with Finish Contour you'll probably need a tool boundry around the top of the sphere, to stop the toolpath running down the outside of the job!

Yeah thought as much! Moldplus has to be the way to go. Mike, unfortunately the bottom faces of this job is kinda of similar to an egg carton in that the both sets of faces rise and fall in 3d to mainatin a constant thickness. This means that window select wouldn't work here. But thanks

Hi there, Anyone know of a C-hook or similar that will allow a mass select of surfaces but only pick the entities that are visible in a given View? This is mold/tool making sort of question, where I'm hoping there will be a quick way of selecting the "top half" of a complicated 3d model (20,000+ surfaces). I suppose there is one answer.... Moldplus, but this customer rarley does this sort of work and is hoping for a quick way of doing this without going through that expense. Cheers!

quote: quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you think about it, to *really* program a part in Mastercam as you would expect to see it on a horizontal machine (Haas ES-5 for example) - you should really be programming Top/Back! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Not really. What we see (and makes total sense) is from the tool's perspective, not from the operator's perspective. Personally I could care less about the operator's perspective. OK fair point I suppose - I'm not a programmer or an operator! Just our frustration with getting Machsim set up properly is maybe leading us down the wrong avenues.... still waiting on CNC for help.

Thanks you guys for you replies on Machsim. We've tried a couple of suggestions but no changes in the Machine definition seem to help the resulting simulation (not for our needs anyway) If you think about it, to *really* program a part in Mastercam as you would expect to see it on a horizontal machine (Haas ES-5 for example) - you should really be programming Top/Back! Picture it, a part on screen in the isometric view..... if you were viewing the machine from the same isometric view in the workshop, the tool would machine from the back of the m/c cabinet, not the front. But no posts I know would correctly output B0 if we programmed the Back plane. So we think while Machsim in technically correct in it's simulation, it doesn't match the real world usage of Mastercam and the development of horizontal posts. It's a can of worms to be sure...

We used to be Top/Top back in the old days (pre V7) when the horizontal posts generally preferred it that way So ever since, it's been Top/Front, and that has not been a problem... until last week We are trying to set up X4s' Machsim add-on to simulate a customers' Haas ES-5 5-axis HMC. So we program a job in Top/Front. Now the actual Haas post procesor outputs B0 like we expect. But in the machine simulation, B0 faces the spindle at the back of the machine and therefore thinks our toolpath in the Front plane is actually at B180. This means that Machsim initially shows the part facing the wrong way on the table and makes one rotary axis spin 180 degrees to machine the part We have found no way so far of telling Machsim that the Front plane in Mastercam is B0 and not B180. So we've been waiting for a reply from CNC while the customer gets shirty waiting for the machine simulation. Moduleworks won't help and tell us to contact CNC There maybe an easy fix for this but we haven't found it and we have looked. Oh yes - sorry it's a bit off topic! [ 06-15-2010, 05:55 PM: Message edited by: Rich Thomas ]

Well Gcode, as you say all suggestions are welcome.... 1) Turn off OpenGL in Screen/Config (but you lose shading that way) 2) take down the graphics hardware acceleration in Windows display properties (usually one notch above minimum will do do it) It's bound to be related to graphics in some way, always had hanging type problems in V9 with newer PC hardware.

Previous time in X4 Mu2: quote: 3 Mins 58s Dell Vostro 400 X4 MU2 Vista Business 32 Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 @2.33Ghz 2Gb Ram 667Mhz DDR2 160Gb SATA Nvidia Geforce 8600GT 256MB I ran thetest again today in Mu3 and it's pretty much the same. And now in vapourware on the same box: 2:17

quote: Auto cursor will snap to features on the solid to help you analyze and select features on your model even if you don't have wireframe geometry. You can't do this with surfaces. Justin, Just chiming in to say that there is a way of finding snap points (specifically, Endpoints) on surfaces with the Autocursor.. Although with trimmed surfaces can be a little sketchy... Anyway, if you have a surface model and for example, trying to draw a line from a corner of a surface, you can use the Autocursor overide list (the drop-down list from the Autocursor Ribbon Bar). Select Endpoint from the list and then you'll see that the mouse can highlight surfaces. Get close to a surface corner and click. Mcam has been able to snap to surface endpoints since at least V7, and probably V6! Not as sweet as solids, but it helps. My opinion with Solids is that you'll get the best value from it if you have to draw your own part models and are always fighting with things like surface fillets or hiding features like holes and cavities from certain toolpath operations. But it's not the be-all-and-end-all; for example there is no Solids equivilent of a Net or Coons patch surface, and Solids Sweep is not as powerful as Surface Sweep.

This looks like it's fixed for X5 (don't ask me how I know ); I don't know if another MU or Service Pack is coming for X4.

Unfortunately I think it's just a function of the Verify package - it doesn't know how to clear your part when moving from one side of it to the next. You could try using Safety Zone in the Machine Group Properties section, but that is meant for "real" tool/part clearance and not just a "virtual" change for the sake of Verify.

I tried that Mr. M but on my system it just zooms out my image of the part,even with the focus in the Ops Manager.

Hi MayDay No can't help a lot, all I can say is that when the new Toolpath Group appears, just click once on it and wait a second. Then it'll let you rename it

It's not new and to be honest when I tested it *without* pressing the "save.." button I did get a warning that I hadn't saved the Ops and I was given an option to do so.... but.... the warning message had a little checkbox saying "do not warn me again" - I wonder if you or someone else might have checked that box. Anyway, happy to help

Are you pressing the button "Save default settings" after changing your defaults? It's directly below the list of operations.

Hi Pip, In the Create Point menu, you can make a Thread Point shape and a Cut Point shape. Probably easiest to create those two points first and then include them when you chain the geometry for your wire operation. Or... are you already trying that and it isn't working?