Crazy, I can tell that the MasterCam team has been doing allot of work on the product lately. What I've seen in the last few months as a far as improvements has been amazing. I saw your presentation and I have to say that that particular product blew me away. The way you presented it, I could tell that you were genuinely pleased with the progress on the mil/turn product. It was by far my favorite presentation of the day. You brought some much need enthusiasm to the event. I was also impressed with the SpaceClaim presentation. I believe It won't be to long before we see it being used more widely throughout the industry. I just felt that the new "Simulation" and the new "Tool Manager", which impacted the majority of users, could have been presented earlier on in the event and not at the end when half of the room had already left for the day. Again, I do think this was a great event as a whole.

I was there. Saw lot's of familiar faces. But didn't have a chance to check-in on the forum while I was there. There were way more people there than I thought there'd be. I would have really liked to meet face to face with some of you forum members at least to say hi. That facility has a pretty nice setup, I was impressed. I would definitely go to another event there. Lot's of interesting info too. Most of the presenters had good info for the crowd and kept things moving pretty well. I'm a little disappointed that they held the X7 Mill Tool Manager and "Simulation" until the end of the day. Kind of got the felling that it was done on purposed to avoid some of the obvious. Overall, I think it was a good showing though.

Mick, there is, but it's a lot easier to just build a plane and use a 3d Flowline surface toolpath IMO. Also, using the min/max angle settings on the 5axis toolpaths has created some posting issues for me in the past. You may get a "Vertical Tool Detected" warning if you use a plane or missing code if you use 0 angle in the limits.

+1 ^^^^^ I do it that way pretty often if I want the axis locked.

if you draw your passes as geometry (offset them what ever your passes will be) you can use a point to point toolpath. It has the option of switching from G00 to G01 from one point to the next.

FYI, Smurfcam has recently been acquired by Vero Software, which is probably a good thing. Because it will either it will by fixed or it will be dismantled (I vote for the later). I never understood how they never incorporate the "UNDO" functionality. "TrueMill" is not nearly as good as the MC high speed toolpaths. I've heard good things about Hypermill. Haven't had any experience with Tebis. Good luck on the gig.

Wow, I went on the site early last week and I rember it being there. I'm not seeing it there now though.

X6 mu3 for sure. Much more stable, plus the translators are pretty much up to date for most things out there at this point.

Or something like this?

Not sure what you mean on that one. My works the way I would expect it to.

Yup, same here. Seems to work the same even with standard plane creations for me. I noticed it a while back but guess I just got used to it after a while. Workaround for me has been to modify my t/c planes in my toolpath planes dialog box.

Most programmers who know, don't use FBM and there's a good reason for that. Nuff said.

Yes, you can use high speed toolpaths with surfaces. You just have to be extra mindful of cavities and boundaries so as not to gouge your part. I usually don't bother trimming the solid because you can use the solid selection tool for most of the toolpaths with little or no issues. If there are faces or complex shapes that I want to isolate them maybe yes. I work in MasterCam and SolidWorks (solids, surfaces, wireframe) and for me it's usually easier/faster to make complex shapes in solids. Especially something that has many extrusion or lots of faces that would take along time to create individually. For most surfaces you still have to create wire geometry anyway. Usually the amount of geometry that it takes to design a solid model is a lot less than what it would take to design a surface model. Once you have your solid model you have the best of both worlds, because trimming the individual faces is a snap in MC, if that's what you need.

I think you're OP title might have better been put as Broken Tool Detection, or or something of that sort, It seems like that's what you're looking for. What James explained is true tool life management, where you know to what extent you want to use your cutters before swapping them out. What it looks like you want is a broken tool detection system( you may already have one, not sure) and a tool change out macro. This is usually a macro that works between your control and your broken tool detection system, like a Renishaw laser or touch probe. You'll have to use what ever macro is specific to you system.

Thanks for the honest reply. I know it can be a daunting task to compare all of the pros. and cons. which is why I turned here to get other input. I think we will try the trial version of Capvidia, as we've been asked to give a good comparison on our option out there. Jay, thanks. Have you worked with the Verisurf Validate? Is there much use of it in the industry through your view?

We talked to a Kubotek rep. last week and he talked about it using Verisurf for our MasterCam translations. Apparently it uses the same point based data that it would for other CAM systems as well as for PcDMIS. For SolidWorks and other parametric modeling software Kubotek seems to works direct with solid and surface faces. We also need to be able to check DMIS, SurfCam, and SolidWorks files? From what I gather, their pricing structure is built on however many different software you'd want to be able to compare to. I'm I correct on that? Not sure.

EX-wccprogrammer, thanks for the response. This looks good, but we're looking for something a little more robust than just feature deviation. Although, we do need that as well, we also need to check if all of the features came through the translation as the were saved in the native CAD file. This can include, wireframe, solids, surfaces, special notes and Model Based Definition. I have to look further into SpaceClaim as I'm not very familiar with it.. Thanks for the input. Ray D, Capvidia is on my list but I haven't had a chance to completely go over it yet. It looks like a better direct comparison to what Kubotek offers. So far that's what I'm gathering. And it does document a traceable quality report, which is key. I know that you said that you had no complaints over it, but is there anything that you can think of that you feel might set Capvidia apart from other similar software? Thanks for the input.

Bump

You can also do that in your Control Def.

^^^^ Both of these ^^^^ I've used the solids as well, with no problems as far as toolpaths go. Processing or regen time can become a bit to much for my patience though. I'll agree with tightening up the tolerance settings. I also have resorted to always using the output feed as this, I believe, is what caused a gouge in a program I did some time ago. And yes, it did NOT show in the verify. I noticed you don't have your "Part Clearance" on at all. I would add some type of clearance and just because I like to be cautious, I'd also raise the "Clearance Plane" setting a bit.

I'm researching model validation software for compliance for some of our customer CAD models. What we need is something that will take the original model and the translated model (SolidWorks, PCDemis, MasterCam, Surfacam) and compare the two to insure that the translated model is true to the original. We also need this software to produce a pass or fail type document report to comply with customer QC traceability. Mainly Boeing, but others with similar standards as well. I've started to look into Kubotek and the Verisurf validation tools, and as I understand it, they're somehow connected(not clear to me how yet). I have a few others on my list to look into but was wondering if anyone here uses one that they prefer over the other. Ease of use, price range (one compared to the other), reliability? Thanks in advance for any input.

JobBoss here. We have a pretty robust version of it. I'm only a novice user but we have a few people here that use it very well. Two things to take in to account with ERP systems. 1) Like any other software out there, the system is only as good as the information that you give it. 2) Make sure your network is reliable and rock solid otherwise everything comes to a grinding halt when your network fails.

This ^^^^ is because of this VVV When I need to get a surface profile like that I'll try blend but prefer a projected toolpath with accuracy setting on high and using some tweaked geometry as mentioned by others.

Two chains, stock and part profile. I also like to set an approach distance if I'm worried about the entry method failing. That way the tool doesn't just plunge on your stock.

Apparently we had automatic update already turned on X7. When we launched X7 in looked like it stalled for a few minutes (loading the update), then lagged for a few more miutes after openning. Got it going and were able to test a few things before calling it a day. Looks like some of the new "Simulator" issues were fixed. Chainning with window now gives us better results but still pops up an error before posting good code. We'll be putting it through the ringer next week to see what we can break, but it looks like we can work with this.