well, the first 388 bytes or so in a Control Def file, a machine Def file, and an MCX file are very similar. It's all the data AFTER this common header that has me stumped :/

mine sometimes just BARELY shows the top of the window, at the bottom left of the screen. see if it's there, just above the taskbar

Hey ... where did my Verify crashes go ?

Not in X6/.Net, I'm afraid, nor VBScript. Possibly with a C-Hook. However ... while I can't say I've tried it, in X7/.Net, while the "TotalTolerance" is read-only, the CutTolerance, LineArcTolerance, and SmoothingTolerance are all Get/Set, and these properties are for the Generic "Operations" object, so in X7 it sounds like it's doable. Try casting your surface op into a generic Operation

It's leaving .080" . Thats from your .050" Rough Offset, and your .03" stock to leave on walls. Reduce one or both of these and you'll be all set.

Export your toolpaths (in chunks, Im guessing, and do it by Planes) and make sure you select to export the geometry. Start a new file, then import your workplanes from the old file. Then reimport your toolpaths into the new file.

I've always been under the impression that fine threads are stronger (larger minor dia) and better with vibration.

Yes, you can use the Express Editions to make NetHooks. But not C-Hooks. And personally, I went back to 2010 , I like the IDE better.

True dat. We have developed Excel <---> .tooldb in-house ... even excel <-----> mcx drawing from digital catalogs in-house. But the operative word is 'in-house' ... we are a machine shop, not a software shop.

Im opening earlier (X6, X5) files in X7. I get the same messages using ''Mastercam.IO.FileManager.Open(filename)'' as I would manually opening the files. I didnt usually see this when opening, say, X5 files from X6.

MasterCam X7 32-bit, VbExpress 2010, Is there a way to open files "quietly" using the nethook API? Im using the GetOpGroupDataInExternalFile to scan hundreds of existing files for specific Tool/Op data. I love this, its a LOT faster than loading thru the Interface. When I see a possible candidate, I have to open the file and scan thru it's operations to see if the remaining Op/Tool settings are what I was looking for. But if I open an X6 or older file, I get that series of Dialogs wanting me to upgrade the control file ("The control file being read is from a previous version of Mastercam") and the user has to, at the very least, close 6 dialog boxes before the Op data can be read, and that would be for every file opened thru the interface. Is there a work-around ? TIA

im AN*L about saving ...every few minutes sometimes ... but i've noticed there is a period between when things start to act funny, and crash actually happens, that SAVE does not work .. (and therefore backup doesn't work) .. I'll dig thru the backup files afterwards, and see hundreds of copies of my work that had been saved every 5 or 10 minutes ...but mysteriously no backup files for the last hour or two.Once it was an entire days worth missing. I still hadn't ruled out the possibility that somehow Id forgotten my decades-old habit of oversaving, and that crashes were coincidentally happening during that exact time frame . But I'd noticed that, sometimes, even after saving, then doing a second SAVEAS to the same filename, that when Id go to open up another file, MasterCam would still prompt me to save my current file(which it shouldn't be doing if it is a fresh save, and no mods were made to the file).

Ive had X6 turn each Toolpath group into a machine group - except there were no properties for the groups :/

happened to me in X7 a few weeks back. I was able to open it back up (with errors, and toolpaths gone) after a reboot.

pockets in a lathe op? maybe this post might be helpful .... http://www.emastercam.com/board/index.php?showtopic=72883&st=60

it seems strange that MCX would open successfully with a parameter (The double clicked filename) and unsuccessfully without one.. before you do the whole uninstall thing, can you verify that clicking on the MasterCam.exe file itself in your %installdir% also crashes ? if it doesnt, it might just be a bad shortcut .

How are the GUID's generated in the new database, btw ?

so .... I open my config file, and it says "8000. Text unavailable? y" .... and to find what #8000 refers to, is in your answer ?

+1 on this one ... but I gotta ask .. where did you get the text values ? Do you have the MCam Secret decoder ring ?

"Object reference not set to an instance of an object." ... I normally see these errors when there is a problem with ActiveX (old school addons) and not with .Net. Normally 2 different animals... ".Net Framework Data Provider" .. this is a database-related error. With both these errors showing up, I'd check your Microsoft ODBC drivers. While I cant guarantee that is how the Tool Manager is interfacing with the SQLite database (tooling library), that would be the first place I'd start sniffing around.

Wow ... Occam's Razor whittled that problem down to almost nothing

I'm no post whiz, but why couldn't one just define a variable, initializing it to zero/empty, and at a tool change, update the value only if the value is zero/empty ?

This has recently started on me (last month or two) in X6. No idea why.

macro ? as in a nethook/mcx vbscript, to modify the settings in an operation, or something to directly manipulate the Gcode ? I personally have had limited success doing it from the operations

Not sure if I'll be in the dog house for this one, but the presentation file (.exe) is just a self-extracting .zip. Once the presentation window is closed, the extracted files get erased. All the associated .dlls are redundant; once you have all the dll's in a folder, it's a lot smaller to deal with just the actual sim data itself.