Matt Berube, Use the edge Loop from the edge at the top of the Chamfer. You may have to offset the tip of the tool and change the XY offset distance but this will be more or less of what you're looking to do. The best way to do this would be if there was no chamfer designed on the solid. Designed chamfers and fillets can sometimes make it more difficult to use the solid geoemtry for toolpath. If it had been desined in Mcam you could suppress the chamfer and toolpath the edge as it was before the chamfer. HTH

Matt Berube, Using Cadcam's picture for reference, you can use the closed Loop edge for a closed contour and Partial Loop for an open edge (start pt. and end pt. different) toolpath. The Loop button MUST be activated to get a "chain" of edges. Clicking on Partial Loop will activate all three buttons at the same time. Solid "chaining" takes a little practice but you will get it and when you do, you'll learn to appreciate it. HTH Cadcam (aka Jay), Where'd you find that color scheme for the dialog? Is it one of XP's standard ones? robk, Are you still using V9? Need an Mcam X update class? You're not alone if you want to sign up for one. Let me know.

DC Gorn, Have patience. Mcam X is a new experience. It may take more than 3 weeks to get used to the way it does things. There are plenty of .PDF documents that were installed to help you with the transition. Go to your Start-Programs-Mastercam X menu from the desktop and look for the Documentation folder. Also be certain you're using the latest release for the software. With maintenance that would be MR1. Without maintenance it should be SP2. Both were released at the same time as one update package. Some of the things you describe may have already been fixed if you're using Mcam X SP1 or the original release. HTH

concepttool, quote: quick measurments so I have always stuck with surfaces forthat reason How do you measure points from just surfaces? You must have had wireframe geometry along with surfaces. The only data that you can get with Analyze and surfaces is when you Analyze-Dynamic to find the radius of a fillet or draft angle on a wall surface. With Solids, you can measure points directly from the solid part without having any other geometry. That's just one advantage. The ability to quickly generate a core from a cavity, or vice versa, using solid parts truly makes the job of making an electrode enjoyable. I love working with solids. If I had my choice it would be solids all the way. Forget about any other form of geometry.

prototypes, Welcome to the forum. Iges files are not the best to work with. Do you know what CAD system was used to generate the model file? Native SolidWorks (.SLDPRT) files, Solid Edge (.PAR) files, Parasolid (.X_T as an example) files and STEP (.STEP or .STP) files can be opened in Mcam X without paying for add-on converter licenses. All the formats I've just mentioned are based on solid design packages and are far superior to IGES files any day of the week. Especially for extracting wireframe (edge curve) information from. If you're stuck with IGES, try the Edit-Simplify function after generating the edge curves. This was called Modify-Convert to Arcs in V9. If the splines are circular in shape, Simplify should replace the splines with arcs. HTH

MillingMan, What's the major diameter of your thread and the diameter of your thread mill tool? Try the "Start at Center" switch instead of "perpen. entry". This will plunge the tool at the center of the hole and linear feed to the start of the entry arc. If the major diameter and diameter of the cutter are not much different, there may not be enough room for an entry line. What is the Entry clearance value? What is the compensation type you're using? If the Entry clearance is much larger than the difference between the Major and Minor diameters/2 than you may reduce this value and that can help. Typically Wear comp is used to help avoid comp errors when there is less room to apply line moves. HTH

RMagnusson, The file appears to have been done quite nicely. Good job. Backplot is not always accurate depending on the settings for displaying toolpaths. Select the Backplot Options button as shown in the pic below. Then the display options will appear and you should de-activate the "Simulate Rotary Axis" switch and activate the "Simulate Axis substitution". This should display the Backplot of the toolpath correctly. HTH

Ivan, Of course you could always use the Autocursor options or selection point drop-down menu to get the exact point you're looking to select. See pics below. Autocursor settings. Point selection drop-down. HTH All right. Why aren't the images being shown. I've done this before without problems.

Ivan, What selection box are you referring to? Is it the Autocursor square? If so, jmparis is correct, unfortunately. That square cannot be changed at this time. Perhaps enough users who feel as you do will convince CNC Software that it at least needs to be made larger. Adjusting the Windows Pointers doesn't affect it either.

Mike M., Solid Drilling won't even activate if there are only surfaces on the screen. RMagnusson, The switch Mike refers to is called "Limit search to Tool Plane" and if this switch is on, which it usually is by default, de-activate it and see if that helps. Other than that, if you'd like to send me the file, I'll be happy to look it over. I just don't know if I could look at it anytime soon. HTH

stanektool, quote: Quatro NVS 280 Unfortunately, gcode and dwsz71 are correct. Herein lies your problem. Those graphics cards are not good. You could try to turn down the hardware acceleration but that's a "band-aid" solution that will rob your system of processing power. Especially if you are trying to generate some complex surface toolpaths. So your options would be to turn down (or OFF) the hardware acceleration for those pc's, or replace the graphics cards with Quadro FX 500's or better. HTH

stanektool, I would check to see what the differences are between the 8 machines that run Mcam X without crashing and the 2 that run it but crash several times a day. I can almost guarantee that it would be related to the graphics card. Is the Shading active when those large IGES ("I guess") files are brought in? What is the graphics card on the two machines that crash regularly? ATI cards are still to be avoided at all costs when running Mcam. The error message you printed is meaningless to all but the few software engineers who wrote it and programmed the O/S to show it when something goes wrong. As far as all the computers running quote: MasterCAM X MR1 (The latest crappy 'reinstall the entire package' update). , I've experienced no such crashes on my system since installing that "crappy" MR1. But then again, I'm using a graphics card with a nVidia Quadro FX 540 chipset on it. HTH

kathy, quote: How do I??? Access the chain option menu when picking a chain using the General Selection Ribbon Bar? The All and Only buttons are to be used as Chain options when using General Selection chaining. Just like you would use the All button to select all geometry that's a certain color or on a level. If all you wanted to chain was arc geometry use the Only button to only chain select arcs. HTH jmparis, John Himes's chaining issue started because he couldn't use Plane Mask due to his 3-D geometry. John Himes, Window selection from another view may also help to select the geometry you're intersted in. Switch to the Front or Right side view and see if you can Window select all the geometry you had originally wanted to chain. Polygon windows are usually really good for this sort of thing. HTH

JOHN HIMES, You could try to "Ignore depths in 3D chaining". This is right under the "Plane mask" selection in the System Configuration-Chaining topic. The reason you're getting single entities could be due to branches along the chain. Mcam is unsure of which entity you need to chain next so it stops at each branch point until you select the one you want. Ignore depths may not even help at this point. You may simply have to select each entity in turn, until you have a complete chain. If the entities you want to chain were a different color, you could use the All or Only buttons to help you select just those entities. Oh, and AFAIK the General Selection Ribbon bar is one of the few toolbars you cannot edit at this time. You can however include many of the general selection techniques in the right mouse button menu so they'll always be available when you right-click the mouse on the screen. HTH

Mark Graham, What version/update of Mastercam are you using? I seem to recall what you're describing may have happened after the initial release of Mcam X. Even if you aren't on the Maintenance program with Mcam, you should be using SP2. This may fix the issue. HTH

RMagnusson, quote: I actually wanted the fillet going the opposite direction as in the above drawing. As if you were doing a face to face fillet. With the arc of the circle starting from the outside of the block and extending in toward the center then curving upward toward the top. Like if a chamfer were to have a concave arc across the length of it. OIC "D'Oh!" Like this? The green geometry is the flat, closed profile drawn from the Right Side plane. Is this what you wanted?

RMagnusson, Following jmparis's advice above quote: Try this, solids >> fillet >> solid fillet will NOT add material to the solid "brick". There's more than one way to do what you want. Draw the shape from the Right Side plane and extrude it, or create a solid block and fillet the edges. HTH

jbrian, Create-Primitives-Sphere. If you don't have Solids it will simply generate the sphere as a surface. Supply it with the Radius and use the center of the sphere as the Base point. HTH

dprovost71, If turning off the hardware acceleration allows you to view and print the setup sheet, it definitely sounds as if you have a graphics card issue. Correct me if I'm wrong Dave but does that Dell workstation have either an ATI card or no card at all (Intel graphics)? Turning off the acceleration is just a "band-aid" solution for now. Unfortunately that will affect the speed of processing more complex surface toolpaths. Changing the graphics card may not be possible but you can check to see when the driver was last updated. Right-click on the Desktop (everything minimized) and select Properties from the menu. Then select Settings-Advanced-Adapter and click on the Properties button on the adapter page. Select the Driver tab and it will supply you with the version number and date for the driver. If it's older than a couple of months, I recommend visiting the card maker's website and downloading the latest tested driver for that graphics card. HTH

dprovost71, What are the exact steps you're following when you get the "crash". Which setup sheet are you using? Is it the Graphical User Interface (GUI), the .Set file or something else? What's the graphics card on your work pc? Is it the same Dell workstation you were using before at the Br. or Str. location? Was there anything updated on that pc recently? How up to date is the graphics card driver? How about the printer driver? I'd be happy to look it over for you if you want to give my a call. We can set up an online Tech Suport session. HTH

Chris (aka the one and only Bullines), As you journey forward never forget those who you have met and helped along the way. You will be missed but I, like so many others, wish you the best in all you do. Don't be a stranger. Good luck.

Ivan, Can you upload the file to cadcam's FTP so we could look it over? Or e-mail it to me directly. I don't have any problems generating edge curves on any surfaces. I still believe it's related to your video card or video driver for said card. Did you check the driver date like I had suggested earlier? Are you using Mcam X MR1? HTH

Ivan, What is the driver date for that card? Traditionally, consumer market ATI cards have not played well with Mastercam. The Fire GL seemed to be a good card but it still may need to have the driver updated to run optimally with Mcam X. Everything else appears to be OK for running Mcam X. If you want, try turning the Hardware Acceleration down a few notches and see if that helps. It's not something you want to do all the time but it may help for the moment. If the driver is old, definitely get it updated. That should help no matter what. Let us know how you do. HTH

majariley, You're welcome. I can't figure out why the picture didn't show. As long as it helped. jmparis, You never know what you'll find out if you just listen to the reseller every once in a while.

majariley, Another way is to select Xform-Offset Contour and look at the Chain dialog for Partial. A partial chain can also be selected by left-clicking on the first entity of the partial and left-clicking next on the last entity needed for the partial chain. HTH