I'm afraid it's not possible to deselect solid faces, unless you had selected them induvidually in the first place. You could try going into the Solids Manager and surpressing the counterbores. {Edit} Then you can regen your operation. If you then need to bring your counterbores back into view, but not worry about it affecting the contour toolpath, you can lock the toolpath in the Toolpath Manager.

What you'll need to do is (as listed from the top menu) Create Arc Create Circle Edge Point Then the Ribbon Bar will appear. Towards the right hand side you will see a button with an arc and a line tangent to it. Press that button, and you should be able to create tangent arcs (don;t forget to put in a radius/diameter!)

It could be that your system uses a third party post processor (from CNC Automation or Cimco for example). If these files are out of date that could explain the problem. If this is the case, it's probably best to contact your dealer or the suppliers and get them to resend the post-processing files.

Thanks for the background info Paul

Welcome to the forum Daz There has been a number reports about problems in Backplot, and several workarounds until (hopefully) SP1 comes along and lays them to rest. If you have a decent Nvidia Quadro graphics card you could go into it's settings and switch off "use unified back/depth buffer". In Mcam itself, you could try going into Settings, Configuration and then the Screen page. Try turning off "Use OpenGL acceleration"# You could try downloading the latest drivers for you graphics card, but there has been reports of having to go back to older drivers in order to fix problems in Backplot. A search on this forum should give you some pointers.

I feel that I am wondering off topic here, slightly You have two sessions of X running, and you want to import ops from File1.MCX to File2.MCX. You could do this... 1) Save File1.MCX 2) In File2.MCX, go to the Import Ops page (right click in Ops manager) 3) At the top of the box, where it shows the default *.OPERATIONS file, press the Browse button to the right. 4) Navigate to the folder that holds File1.MCX and select that folder. You can import operations direct from MCX files! (you may get warning first off that the selected file does not contain any operations, but that could be because the first file in that folder is a drawing with no toolpaths.) 5) After that, you can go into the drop down list, choose File1.MCX, and then select the ops that you want to import. You will still need to reselect the geometry before you can regen the toolpath. That is, unless you set the option to import the geometry used to create the operation too, in which case you just need to regen. Pretty neat!

The option "Write NC operation information" is a checkbox and can be found within the Control Definition. 1) Go to Properties and then Files in your Machine Group. 2) Press the Edit button (which takes you to the Machine Definition) and then press the Control Def button, which is the middle one out of the three, at the top left of the window. 3) Then go to the Files page within the CD and you will find the checkbox towards the bottom right corner. Mine is checked as standard, but I will admit I'm not quite sure what it's supposed to do. I know that some post processors need to read the file that is produced when this option is active; that may be the case for you.

George, Think I got the wrong idea after re-reading the original post - please disregard!

Don S, If you go File, Open, and go down the File Types list, you will see options for V4 *.Model/Exp files and V5 *.Catpart/Catproduct. But...... The Catia translators from CNC have be installed seperately to your Mcam X installation. You will have to contact your dealer for a CD I believe (as I can't find a public place to download them from on the CNC website) Wire is still a couple of months away I think.

quote: I just want the arrow to stay at the bottom, and if I need to move it, I can move it at will.. I hope CNC doesn't think I'm stabbing them in the back seeing as I work for a dealer, but.... +1000 In my training courses, I see people being caught out a lot by this insert arrow, including me. I think it should stay at the bottom of the active machine group. If you edit a different machine, or an operation in a different machine group, then it should jump to the bottom of that group. Why, just because you edited an operation would you want the next op to appear directly beneath it? It's something that you should really have to worry about if all you are doing is creating toolpaths. It adds some frustration to the mix

Threept82, I guess we approach Autosave a little differently - sorry that the change isn't going to work out for you. I actually found it annoying in V9 that even though I did not want Autosave to prompt me before saving the file, pressing ALT-A still brought up the Autosave window... hey I said don't prompt me!! After all I'm the one who pressed ALT-A, so I have already decided that it is OK to save the file. I have to say X is working better for me this way.

If I have a file on the screen, pressing ALT-A will save the file silently in Macm X (although a tooltip message appears briefly... too briefly to read if the file is a simple one!) This is because I haven't got "prompt before saving file" checked in my Autosave settings. Take a look at Screen/Configuration/Files. If you set it to prompt you before saving, then everytime you press ALT-A, the autosave dialog will come up. [EDIT] I did not have to remap ALT-A to Autosave on my system. I will say that I am beta testing the SP1 update, although I doubt if this would change my key assignments.

Johnny, If you look at the General Selection ribbon bar (the one with the All and Only buttons), you will see a drop down list with "In" on it. Hit that and you will have your windowing options.

This may not help directly, but... If you want to find out the depth of a flat surface (that is flat, relative to the construction plane you are in), press the Z-depth button in the left hand menu. Now you probably know that you can't just move your cursor over to the surface and select it... but you can if you first press "Endpoint" from the Point Entry menu. Press Endpoint, take your cursor near a corner of your surface and left-click (this is usually easier is the surfaces are shaded - otherwise you have to keep the cursor on the "wireframe" skin of the surface to make sure it's highlighted). Should work most times, unless you are dealing with a funky trimmed surface. This lets you know what depth a surface is at. Another option I use is to go to Screen, Change Levels, and then go into the Front or Side View - something that lets you see the suface edge on. Then use Window to select the surface and move it to a different level. Then you can use my method above to work out the depth, or just create curves on it and analyze those.

El Scotthead, There are a couple of ways, but this is what I do: Press "All" from the General selection ribbon bar. Then press the All Entites button near the top of the window. That highlights all of your visible geometry and closes the window. Now right-click you mouse over the word "Level" in the status bar at the bottom of the screen. You are then given a Levels dialog, and you can type in the level you want (or Select it from a list, if you are going to a level that already has geometry on it). I'm usually quite slow, esp on a Friday

Russell, The icon you are talking about is the right one, but it won't show up unless you are doing something (i.e creating curves) AND have a solid on the screen that you can actually select. So (providing nothing is wrong with your system) go to Create, Curve, All Edges. At that point the system is waiting for you to select surfaces. You should have the All and Only buttons, the Activate Solid Selection button (blue box with the checkmark) and the round green Accept button. You should be able to press the solid select button, which activates the face/solid buttons. Just keep in the button with all faces of the box coloured red, which means to select the entire solid. Let me know how you get on. The other things you mentioned.... Paraolid Conversion: You can just do that from File, Open. Go to "files of type" and you can find SolidWorks and Parasolids files in the list. When you select one of those, you will have an "Options" button appear. There you can set the scale, or choose whether to import as surfaces or solids, like in V9. Arc centre points - on/off: Go to Screen/configuration/CAD settings. It's a switch near the bottom left corner.

Tony, quote: I have that done but it doesnt come through on start up You nearly answered your own question! Try this: Settings/configuration/start_exit/ and switch on the check box for "Default Machine". Then you can choose your machine from the list. ------------- El Scotthead, Sorry, it's not possible to add the green check mark to your menu at the moment. Hopefully CNC will get that sorted out! ------------- Russell, Create, Curve, All Edges. Now on the General Selection ribbon bar (with the All and Only buttons) you will see a cube with a checkmark on it. You have to press that to tell the system that you are working with solids. Then you have some more buttons - one to tell it you only want to pick induvidual faces, or another to select the whole solid. ------------- SBA, You will have to turn them off temporarily in Settings/configuration/screen/. Switch off "Display viewport XYZ axes". ------------- Must go, I'm supposed to be working!

R.O.Y._23, I created a drafting Note on my screen, then went into Smart Dimension. In the ribbon bar, a load of buttons show up. One of the buttons says "ABC" and it is clickable. If I press that first (or hit T on the keyboard which is the shortcut for editing Text), I can then click on the note without moving it and edit the text. The same applies to editing text on dimensions. Like in V9, you have to remember to switch it off again before you select another dimension/note, unless you want to edit that text too. This is "How It Works In X" But I will agree that Undo doesn't seem to work once I had moved a Note in Smart Dimension. Although Undo does take back any edits I made to the text itself.

Stevieboy, Break, Many Pieces does not work with splines - at least if you want to break it into two pieces rather than lots of little pieces: http://www.emastercam.com/ubb/ultimatebb.p...6469;p=1#000006 From what I've done in V9, Break Many Pieces (i.e into 2 pieces) didn't work with splines there either.

bchristilaw, In X, I tell it to break my circular spline into 2 pieces, using the method you described. When I break it, it gets turned into two flat lines too. Well exactly the same thing happens in Version 9 (although I don't know if you ever used it). If I go Modify, Break, Mny pieces, By length and Num pcs. If I set it to 2 and break the spline, it gets turned into two flat lines the same way. I don't think this fuction is meant to work on splines, but at least it hasn't got any worse from V9. I guess you will have to use Trim/Break, select the Break button, plus the Point button and break the spline at it's midpoint instead.

Jim, Glad you found the answer, but just to let everyone know that when you go File, Open, then choose the type of file you are looking for (X_T for example) an "Options" button appears. If you press that, you can choose whether X converts the model into surfaces, or keeps it as a solid.

In the operations manager, you have the Properties line just under Machine Group. Expand Propties, go into Files and hit the Replace button. This allows you to select a different post (a different machine really). When this happens, the operations you have will be checked against the machine to make sure that they are compatible (i.e. if your ops include 4th axis machining, then the new machine should be able to support that too or you will run into problems).

Yeah, got ya... I went off on a bit of a tangent I think! Left comp is the norm, so lets say I chain 6 arcs, but I get no.4 in the wrong direction and it machines outside the arc. If I go to the Chain Manager, select no. 4 and Reverse Chain, when I regen no.4 is now machiing inside like all the others. I only get the problem you are referring to if my toolpath was only on one arc. Then if I reverse the chain, the comp gets reversed like you say. There is a work around here... before you select any geometry, go to the Chain options. In there is an option to force CW or CCW chaining. For you I think you would want CCW, rather than the default option of using the position of the cursor to set the direction.

somename75, Are you using X or V9? In X I just tried Reverse Chain, and it keeps my cutter comp on the correct side [EDIT] what I mean is, I went around the outside of a shape, hit reverse chain and it stays outside. In V9... oh... umm... mine is doing the same thing! I just did a contour op around the outside of a square, went into the chain manager and hit Reverse Chain. When I regenereated the path, the toolpath is still running around the outside! You're saying that yout toolpath would then cut on the iside right? I thought it did that too. Maybe this was fixed at some point - I'm running MR0105. [ANOTHER EDIT] I've just noticed (when you mentioned counterbores) that this does not work the same way if you are chaining arcs. What I did above was with a rectangle.

Code_Breaker, Not sure if that was a joke?? It should be made clear that SP1 for X is at beta test stage at the moment - I don't think it's far away, but I have to be as vague as beta testers had to be before X was realeased, sorry [ 08-26-2005, 07:01 AM: Message edited by: Rich Thomas ]