Hi Paul, I'm not sure about X3 but in X5 there is a function called Xform Template. You can create one arc, and then select multiple points to translate it to using the Xform Template. From memory it is not in the Xform menu, but if you go into settings and customise and scroll down to the Xform category you should be able to pull it from there and stick an icon on your toolbar. May not be the correct use of the function but i use it for this all the time and it is extremely helpful! HTH Brendan

oh dear...that would be terrible

I personally cannot wait for X6 to land! The truth about software is that it will always have bugs...and to think that Mastercam would be exempt from this is a bit naive. I mean...look at windows...probably the largest single piece of software around (based on my thinking...not fact) and they are always releasing updates and service packs for it to fix bugs. I am a relatively new user of mastercam so probably havent encountered all of the bugs and glitches that some of the more veteran users have, but i can say this about mastercam...it is very much a user based package. IMO CNC Software does an amazing job of actively listening to the issues that users have and helping them find solutions. Even just on this forum there are obviously CNC software reps and resellers etc helping general users. Having come from Unigraphics I can tell you that this is something that not all CAM software will have. As i said before...I know that X6 will have issues, and won't have fixed all the current issues that X5 has, but I very much look forward to seeing the improvements that they have implemented, and know that when problems do arise, I can put them forward to CNC software and they will be heard.

+1 This makes a lot of sense to me! I didn't even consider it and have been struggling with the holders issue for a while! Thanks Joe!

Tried that one already...since it is not a number field as such, this does not work. the output of the "SZ/STOCK-XYZ" is XXX.XXX,YYY.YYY,ZZZ.ZZZ, with the number of trailing numbers dependant on the specificity of the stock def in mastercam. I have tried a few combimations of formatting changes using the output format section but to no avail. Is there any way that you can set this in the controlling XML Document? Any other ideas?

Hi Everyone, Been modifying datafields in my active reports to output numbers to 2 decimal places only. I would like to do this for stck sizes as well. I am currently using the SZ/STOCK-XYZ data field to grab my X,Y and Z dimensions for stock as set in mastercam. I would like each of these values to be limited to 2 decimal places but cannot work out how to manipulate the default formatting. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Brendan

No problems! Glad I could help:)

If you have multiple separate entities, you can combine them through the solids menu using boolean add. To make the solid non-associative i think the best way is to use the 'nohist.dll' c-hook. Works a charm. You can access it through the settings menu under run user based application (ALT-C for shortcut) HTH Brendan

Thanks for sharing your findings! You are correct in that STL compare can be quite demanding on your computer. There are things that you can do to minimise the effect of this (such as reducing tolerances etc.) Also when in STL compare I usually take it off compare view ( so just display machined stock) when I rotate the view, and then activate the compare again. Welcome to the forum! I'm sure you will find it very helpful, and a great opportunity to share knowledge with others. Brendan

do you know about stl compare?

Perhaps 3+2 axis? 5 axis positional????

pilot drilling is only necessary for larger diameter drills with thick webbing. For normal HSS drilling bits I would say you would need to pilot drill from 0.75 upward to be safe. For carbide drills and modular drills this is not the case. When I'm machining Aluminium I like the small cut depth and high feed approach, but for steel alloys i prefer to take deeper cuts...especially with chatter free cutters...they are made for it!

I can't help you with the speeding it up issue. I know that if i do lots of 3d surfacing operations it will take a long while to generate a setup sheet also. Maybe there is someone else out there who knows a bit more about this?

David, I probably should've looked at your location...i did not mean any offence to the company. We were located in a fairly small town in NSW about 400km north of sydney. Whenever we talked to DMG we would only get onto 2 main technicians. They were very knowledgeable and could had great over the phone service, but when it came to them coming onsite to fix a machine we would sometimes have to wait a few weeks which was frustrating for us. They must've just been servicing a large area themselves. Anyway, they have both been terminated after the merger which leaves me concerned as I know how good they were with the german machines.

Good to know! Thanks for the info David! One thing that i forgot to mention in my assessment earlier is that the support for DMG machines in Australia is fairly limited. There were a few very knowledgeable guys in the country, but they were quite often tied up. I can't comment on where you are, but that was just the case in Aus...like i said before tho, love the DMG machines!

not sure where everything is getting made now with the mori seiki merge???? The CTX beta that we had appeared to be an italian build?? or at least partly. It had GRAZIANO painted all over it and the handbook was in italian mostly...turns out that german machines are never really german machines. I suspect that since the merger this will become truer and truer with DMG machines...

From my understanding, the active reports need to 'process' each toolpath to pull all of the required information from it. So the 'snapshots' that you see on your screen are actually the active reports going through that individual toolpath and pulling out speeds, feeds, tooling info, machining time etc....whatever info you use on the actual report. I may be mistaken, but this is how it seems to work for me. HTH Brendan

I know that by default pressing the 'end' key on your keyboard creates this effect

The other thing you can do is if you are happy with your model and satisfied you won't want to change it, go to the run user application menu and select the nohist.dll chook...then select your model...and the geometry used to create the model will no longer be associated to it.

Hi there, My last workplace had a CTX 420 which IMHO was a great machine. It held tolerances well. We had the Siemens shopturn controller on it which is very powerful for on machine programming. It was used as a production machine mostly, kitted out with barfeeder etc. and proved to be reliable and consistent. The turret was a bit prone to being knocked out of alignment if it were 'crashed'. We also had a CTX beta 1250 for the last 6 months that I was there. We had a few issues with that, but we bought it as an ex demo model so it had been moved ALOT and been worked alot. Overall it was a nice machine though...dual spindles again with the siemens shopturn control which was great for programming on the controller. What sort of machine are you looking at getting? Is there anything in particular that you would like to know about the lathes? Overall I would say that DMG generally make very nice machines. HTH brendan

How are you capturing it?

try going to the desktop, selecting a file icon on the desktop and pressing ctrl+c (copy). This should clear the existing image from the clipboard. Now go back to mastercam and capture the image...see if this works.

Can you paste it into any other software e.g image editing software (MS Paint at the least)? You could be able to save the image and then insert it rather than copy and paste. HTH Brendan

25.4/pitch(metric) = tpi e.g 1.25 pitch 25.4/1.25 = 20.32 teeth per inch???

or more simply: 25.4/pitch = tpi