Thanks for the replies. The switch to 8.1 from 8.0 was no problem. It's nice to work with-out some of those little bugs. I also installed into a different directory in case some problem arises, but so far everything is working fine.

I'm up to my eyeballs in work! We got our ver 8.1 disk the other day. When I upgrade to ver 8.1 from 8.0 can I expect any "problems" or is it a slam dunk? Just thought I'd ask before I jump into it during a busy time.

We had one of our PC's doing this and found that either disabling or lowering the setting for the hardware acceleration fixed this and some other problems, like crashes. Go to: Start, control panel, display, settings,advanced,performance -- then there is a sliding pointer with 4 positions. The problem should disappear if you turn it all the way down, but scrolling in Word and Excel will slow down. Experiment with the highest setting you can live with and see how it works. I'm told by our dealer it has something to do with the type of video card you have and how Mastercam accesses video cards. Game type cards work through windows and the hardware acceleration where cards designed for Cad systems are directly accessed by Mastercam.

The 399.999 sounds similar to the xxxxor control we use, which is a Spanish control that aparently uses the metric system for its calculations. The manual said that max arc radius was 99.999. I found out that this was mm not inches. When I changed the max arc radius to about 39 inches my problems were solved.

I don't know any of the specifics of how it was done, but at Cerritos College they were using a device to read into the tape reader on a Fanuc control. A PC was wired directly to this device that was on the tape reader. Does anyone else know how to set up a control to read from a pc using this method? P.S. Ron Smith is the head of the Machine Tool Technology Dept at Cerritos College in Norwalk California. He may be able to tell you more. Contact him at [email protected] [This message has been edited by jeepman (edited 12-10-2000).]

The ctour8.exe patch did fix the problem. The problem did occur on the outside of a frame. Thanks for the input. This forum is a great resource for Mastercam users.

I almost never use comp in the computer and almost always use comp in the control by itself. This allows us to change cutter diameter at will by changing the radius value in the control. The lead in/out moves do post properly most of the time. I have never experienced a grayed out lead in/out page with the comp in computer off and the comp it the control on. This has been the case in my experience in versions 3 through 8. I got the ctour8.exe patch but have not had the time to test if it fixed the problem.

Sometimes the lead in or the lead out will not work. Regen and backplot does not show the straight line or the arc move, and it does not post either. We have tried making the moves larger, (up to 1 inch with a .250 cutter. We generally use cutter comp in the control and none in the computer. We are using Mill ver 8.0 with Win 98 and Win 95. I will try the ctour8.exe patch and maybe V8.1 will fix it. Has anyone else experienced this or have a solution?