Kathy, I don't know if you sent QC any files (I'm on the road right now), but please e-mail one or two of them to me at [email protected]. My debugger is at your service! PDG

One common cause of slow rotation is using 32 bit graphics, instead of 16 bit. I've seen this as the default on some new boxes. This is (usually) found on the Settings tab of your display parameters. PDG

If you reeeeeaaaallly want a reply from a Mastercam "techie", you're best bet is to contact us at [email protected]. If you want help from the people really running Mastercam every day, the forum is the place to post your issues. Now for your question - This error message tells me that something (very) strange is going on here. STAMOD is the first Parasolid function we call when starting Mastercam and using the Solids option. Like the message tells you, it must be called before any other Parasolid functions. I cannot imagine why this initial call is being skipped, or why STOMOD (the last call to terminate Parasolid) may be getting called to stop the modeler. Can you give me a few more details regarding exactly what you're doing in the Solids Mgr when you start getting this error? PDG

2 along and 2 across (simplest example is a square) = 1 patch PDG

If you updated to V9.1SP1, please make sure you also download the "ACADDATA" patch from the website as well. The Inventor importer essentially extracts the SAT solid data from the Inventor part and then relies on the SAT file importer. All this goes on behind the scenes, so if your SAT importer works, your Inventor importer should. Also, if you've got Inventor V7 installed on the same computer, you do NOT need to install the "DesignTracker" software from the V9 CD. This is only for users who will be reading Inventor files and do not have Inventor installed. PDG

This has been reported by several users since V9.1Sp1 was released. It has been corrected in the soon-to-be-released (man, I'm getting tired of saying that) V9.1Sp2. Any day now, I swear.... PDG

Actually, we create the surface shape itself based directly upon the surface data stored in patrasolid format inside the solid - no tolerances or approximations. The Surface chord deviation tolerance from Screen/Config only comes into play with defining the linearization of trimmed surface boundaries. We always represent trimmed surface boundaries as polylines, whereas in the parasolid part, they may be connected lines, arc, & splines. PDG

I found a problem in our DWG importer that was causing the crash. I made a change to it and I have uploaded 1ST UPPER ASSMBLY PDG.ZIP to the MC9_Files folder of the FTP site. This is the result I get after importing it with the fix. The problem arose because of the large number of "Body" entities in the file. These are usual solids (though in this case they aren't). Somewhere in Thad's process the geometry got converted to ACIS Bodies - probably in MDT. What I found was a problem with the temporary files we create when reading in "Body" entities. We were leaving some of them open and due to the 1666 bodies, eventually some internal limit is reached & Windows won't let you open files any more. Not a nice situation, unfortunately. And I agree with Thad that his process could be improved. And to answer his "where did my surfaces go?" question, we don't write solids or surfaces to DWG/DXF. (Maybe some day but don't hold your breath). We'll be making the new DWG/DXF importer available soon, as soon as our QC people can check it out. We'll keep you posted. PDG

I got CMR's file and it was the trimmed splines in his MC9 file that were messing up. It's a problem that was fixed between V9.0 and V9.1. He's up-to-date and was just running V9.0 by mistake. PDG

Jay, Sorry about that. I've got a long way to go - another 3600 more posts and I'll catch you! PDG

Support for SW2003 is not included in Mastercam V8. Only V9 will read them. You'll need to output Parasolid (.X_T) files from SW2003 - and make sure it's Parasolid V13 or earlier. Mastercam V8 doesn't support Parasolid 14 upon which SW2003 is built. Or update to Mastercam V9.... PDG [ 08-08-2003, 11:04 AM: Message edited by: ProductDevelopmentGuy ]

Mind if I take a look at the original MC9 file and the DWG file that was output from Mastercam? You can send it to [email protected] PDG

Go to Screen/Configure and select the 'Screen' tab and edit the "Number of entities for dynamic rotation". This value is there because when your entity count gets into the 10's or 100's of thousands (hey, it happens!), you may experience slow dynamic movement. PDG

Like James said, we have to pay royalties on every copy of the STEP (and Pro/E too) add-on that we sell. (We wish it wasn't that way too - maybe someday...) PDG

Andrew, Thanks for not sending a JPG or BMP with your post :-) PDG

As described above, we will read in the .IAM files if the associated .IPT files exist too. Unfortunately all to often, the guy sending you the .IAM will forget the .IPTs. Outputting the entire assembly as a .SAT file also works. This is a little nicer in that everything's in one file (there are no associated files to forget). But either way, your results should be the same. PDG

Sorry - there's currently no way to color different faces of a solid in different colors. It's on the list for Version "X" though. PDG

Maybe you could just use the original surface but indicate a 'stock to leave' value when generating the toolpath. PDG

To the best of my knowledge, the SolidWorks importer will not import Unigraphics .PRT files. Maybe there's confusion because old versions of SW used .PRT (now they use .SLDPRT) and UG (as well as Pro/E) use .PRT. PDG

--------------------------- "I like being warned that the chain is used in a solid but I should be able to do it if I am sure." --------------------------- Yes - this will be corrected in V9.1Sp2. PDG

One thing that we've seen that sometimes cures this is to go to your COMMONFONTS sub-folder and copy FONT0.BAK over FONT0.FNT. We introduced some subtle changes to the Stick font awhile back and this spurious problem has popped up a couple times. PDG

It should still say V9.1 at the top. We should have appended "SP1" to that, but didn't. The soon-to-be-released V9.1Sp2 (don't worry we'll let you know when it's ready), which contains fixes to bugs discovered in V9.1Sp1, will say "V9.1 SP2" at the top PDG

Your OpenGL button is grayed out because you've got shading on. Having this on forces OpenGL to be on. Turn off shading (and not just with Alt-S - by going into the Shading params and turning the checkbox off) and then disable this checkbox. Maybe that'll help narrow down the list of culprits. PDG [ 07-21-2003, 02:16 PM: Message edited by: ProductDevelopmentGuy ]

I'm seeing the same thing Jimmy is. Because the Analyze/Edit dialogs are somewhat special (they're "modeless" so you can pick entities on the screen at the same time) I suspect some graphics issues. I hate saying that because it sounds like a cop-out on our part, but I can't reproduce your problem here. PDG

Kathy, What type of entity(s) are you editing? What you're doing should work! PDG