I love macros, but use them sparingly - namely, if it cant be done with GCode alone. Use it for Probing, tool life, and once even used it to hijack a palette changer to run 4 different programs every 4 palette changes.

I actually wouldn't be the one to ask. I've got far too much time invested in VB (wrote my first "Hello World" program on papyrus)

Well, there's always C# ..... Wait till you look at NetHook 4 / Mcx7 .... the words "feature rich" come to mind....

I took a wild guess and assumed one couldnt have NEGATIVE boundary points

I cant tell you what that MASTERCAM's problem is, but when writing software, you have to define what type of 'number' you are going to use beforehand. 32767 is the largest number you can hold in 16 bits. Sounds like you hit a wall of some kind in the program design.

If I understand correctly, you have a 'standalone' program saved to disk, and you want to import it into MasterCam, so you can post out a 'standalone' program saved to disk ?

Back Up anything that you dont want to lose. I'm not being smarmy .... there *always* seems to be things you forget .... as far as Mcx goes, it will depend on WHERE you stored all your settings, etc. In your Shared mcx dir, any custom machine simulation files. Also, if you have .SET files used for setup sheets, you'll want to grab all of them from their respective Mill/Lathe/Wire/Router public folders. If you use ActiveReports, grab everything in, and under, the mcamx7\common\reports\SST folder. In your Mcx USER dir, grab the entire CONFIG dir. Also grab all the .xml/ini files in the base folder, if your verify is working well. Do you use auto backup? Want to save all those drawings? (and do you have plenty of backup space?) ... grab the MCX folder. You save off STL's for Verify? Look in the Data folder. All your posted code ? Look in each of the NC dirs under Mill/Lathe/Wire, etc. Have any custom CHooks? Look in the Mcx Install/chooks dir. sort them by date, and you will see which were copied in there AFTER your install. Do you have any local license files for Cimco/Verisurf/3rd party apps? back them up. And if you are a super-geek, might as well export the reg tree from HKCU\Software\CNC Software, Inc.\Mastercam X7 Check your Documents folder for important files that you may have saved there, and export your bookmarks from your browser. (If we never hear from you again, we know you forgot to do that haa haa) Good luck.

I used to see these errors in the X7 betas, possibly X7 RC1 ... the UBVS (unified backplot) errors ... but they are showing up with increasing frequency in X6. I dont believe X6 *has* a unified backplot/verify. See image below ... anyone else seeing these ?

maybe you should make your lines into arcs, with a 5 million unit radius ?

I'm not sure if the ''machine Möbius strip" option is available in X7

Yeaaaah! Works like a charm! Thank you, Roger.

Windows 7 32bit - Tested under Mcx7/VS2010 and Mcx6/VS2010 When running the above code in the IDE, it runs OK, but after completion, the IDE gives a PInvoke Error (see image) Below is the complete (short) VB source: Imports System.Runtime.InteropServices ' Imports System Imports Mastercam.App Imports Mastercam.App.Types Namespace MyExample Public Class NetHookAppExample Inherits NetHook2App Public Overrides Function Run(ByVal param As Integer) As MCamReturn Dim rv As Integer = Interop.XformProject(0) Return Mastercam.App.Types.MCamReturn.NoErrors End Function End Class ' Declare the P/Invoke signature Class Interop ' extern "C" __declspec(dllexport) int do_xform_project (int dummy) <DllImport("McCore.dll", EntryPoint:="do_xform_project", CharSet:=CharSet.Auto)> _ Public Shared Function XformProject(ByVal dummy As Integer) As Integer End Function End Class End Namespace Is there something else I should be doing ?

This has been a semi-regular issue with me. I don't remember having that problem in X5, and don't think its happened in X7. It's exacerbated in X6 when saving to a network, but not limited to. At first I thought I was just mental. I'm AN-AL about saving, but maybe I forgot to save this time ? (again ?!). But when I finally saw one day, that I had a saved file of posted GCode, including ops that were 'missing' when I reopened the Mcx file back up, I knew. Just today, exactly what you spoke of happened.To make sure files are not overwritten from an 'errant' close, I will always do a SAVE, then a SAVEAS, before closing a file. But when I went to close the file, it STILL asked me if I wanted to save my changes. I of course said yes. When I opened the file back up, I could see ops were missing. :/ I've also had this problem with a couple of other CAD Apps, on different PC's I don't use the 'autobackup' function, I save off duplicates, (Using MasterCam's function), and have it set to 100 files. but when it doesn't save the original, it doesn't save the backup. In fairness, I'll say no one else in our Engineering Dept has this problem. So they don't think I'm mental, just reckless :/

Depends on what your parlec expects for a database format. X7 uses SQLite.

Dude .... not sure whats going on here. That is one crazy file. Dozens of empty, nonsense-named ToolPath groups ... and whats the 'Electrode' reference ? (see attached Pic) After opening the file, I saw that all the toolpaths seemed to be already named correctly. I selected a post and posted all files, and they seemed to post correctly, NCI files included. Looks like the file does what you want, already. I went and renamed ALL operations in the file to a single name "ABCDEFG.nc", then ran the script. SOME of the operations were renamed correctly per the script, some remained untouched (still referencing ABCDEFG.nc) Looks like the script doesnt perform as advertised on MY box, but Im not getting any of the renaming issues you are having, either

I like the submenus you've got set up .... how did you do that ?

the x7 verify, which I had problems with (but also had problems with x6 verify) seems, for me at least, to now be as stable as x6. However, one of the strange errors I was getting frequently in early versions of 7, where it cant find UBVS.dll, now occasionally pops up in V6.

Nice catch on that oversight

Hee hee .. but you CAN disable the service

I'll be d*mned. One CAN do it. Thanx for the tip!

I've used both, (Jobboss and E2) at different companies, and under different hardware. Despite the JobBoss period being the most productive time in my life, I have NO memories, good or bad, about this product. I'm using E2 now, and I have both. I'd love to automate this product, but I find the documentation lacking. From a user perspective, I feel it functional and capable.

[soap box mode ON] i had serious problems with verify in the X7 betas, and even RC1. And as you could see, if you want, from my previous posts, I was not shy about posting about it. But since I wasn't b*tchin for the sake of venting, but trying to get things corrected, I gotta also give an attaboy where its due. Most of Mcx7 may look the same, but as a developer, I can tell there were HUGE changes made under the hood. Trying to please the ppl who hate them holding on the old code base, while trying to appease users who cling to familiarity, was a balancing act they pulled off, but not perfectly. [soap box mode OFF]

[This was a double post of my previous rant, and I can't delete this second instance of the post ... grrr ]

Hmmph ... good luck getting consistent speeds/feeds when they are from manufacturers. It's like trying to herd cats. As soon as they know their numbers are gonna be listed side-by-side, the numbers go up. So, converting Mfr SFM to real world SFM requires a factor of some sort, like converting dog-years to human-years. I say this cause Ive already developed something on a smaller scale, MUCH less ambitious than what CNC Software is doing.. and these Mfrs didnt know they were gonna be listed side-by-side ... and I couldnt get similar tools from different MFRs to mesh.

Its great to know up front that there wont be any chatter :/