3D Studio Max, its up to version 4.1 now i think. It is prety much the industry standard for computer 3D animations. I think producers of the movie Jurrasic Park used an earlier version for the dinosaurs and efx etc in the movie. [ 03-07-2003, 02:05 AM: Message edited by: olib ]

And i hope nobody is annoyed with me like that other new user. I say to him less time typing rubish and more time using MC productively. N-Vidia realy are not the best vid card chipsets anyway. detonator drivers are like random alpha driver releases, much like lucky dip. maybe thats a bit harsh. Thousands for MC and a few dollars for a vid card? come on! Get a wildcat.

I've only been into cad-cam for about 4 weeks, using demo's to get me up to speed so the shop I work for can figure out if its worth their while laying out for MC or a different software solution. Something just didn't make sense to me. You have these very precise computer controled robotic mills capable of less than one micron tolerance, very fast very efficient, computers everywhere, but everything (without going too high end) seems to be straight lines or arcs, NURBS is not a new technology and then Tri-Tech complainig that MC 9 couldn't cut as well as MC 3 or 4 using a lofted spline or something like that. My inexperience in the industry shows but I am very curious as the what exactly the bottleneck in development is. NURBS must be a complete and utter wild animal! The shop here would love and thrive on a full NURBS workflow from development through to production. Good luck to all software engineers!!

user defined stock is a must! i'd like to point to a solid with all my tools and associated specs, and mastercam creates all multiple tool paths from rough, finish, chamfer, drill, ect etc in one operation. a new tool called polishing head, eliminate all hand polishing haha. keep working on full implementation of NURBS, perhaps ready in time for MC ver 11?

Tri-Tech From memory and my experience modeling in 3D Studio Max, NURBS (Non-Uniform Rational B Sline)surfaces are described mathematicaly by spline curves. Take a any cross section of any NURBS surface, analyse it and it is always a spline. Refering to your old skool experience using splines in Mastercam version 3 or 4, sounds like NURBS is the way to go in combination with an "along" distance. I am only new to the whole CAD-CAM thing, but the hardest thing to get my head around is the fact that NURBS is not incorporated into everyday CAD-CAM. It is either arcs or straight lines.