loraxian, quote: So far, our other machines running X have not had the problem. That's a good indication that there's a hardware issue rather than a software one. Is Mcam X all updated on the other seats? What about AutoCursor settings/configuration? Are they the same for all the seats of Mcam? Are you following the exact same steps to produce the geometry correctly on the other computers? If all these questions were answered "yes" than you should look at what's different with the hardware setup between the systems that work and the one you have the problem with. HTH

kota, quote: "hapy lending with at list one engin" Oh and BTW. AFAIK engines aren't necessary to land a plane properly. As long as the flaps and rudder are OK, you can pretty much glide an airplane to a landing. I'm not a pilot but I am a professional. That's my professional opinion. But I could be wrong. I guess you'll just have to take it for what it's worth. As Dane Cook, another hilarious and vulgar professional says, "Take that home". Chew it."

kota, "Professionalism" has many interpretations. The word Professional is in fact a derivation of the word "profess". In simple definition this word means to speak with conviction. That means that anyone can say they are a "professional" at what they do. Basically as long as goods or services are rendered in exchange for equally agreed upon monetary compensation, the one performing the service or producing said goods is termed a "professional". Many foreign-born pro athletes have a very difficult time communicating in the common lanquage of this country. They are still considered professionals at what they do. It's not how it's said or written that counts. It's what is contributed on this forum that matters most. Advice is always to be taken "with a grain of salt". It is professional opinion. Not every eventuality can be tested prior to the release of information. That's the nature of "open" community forums on the web. Any amount of this opinion is generally welcomed regardless of the content or context. Just one word alone may lead one to an which is all that is necessary to get the job done. Days after a training class I conducted, I received a file where one of the class attendees successfully produced a difficult solid operation from following my explanation of how it should be done. I had not, up to that point, performed the exact task myself. As your tunnel-minded post replies have indicated, you are contributing the LEAST amount of professional help. Your professional contributions up to this point have actually detracted from the overall effectiveness of this global Tech Support forum. You've wasted time and effort but have, unknowingly I'm sure, provided some entertainment to those who truly do contribute much to this forum as professionals. Have a nice day.

connormac, I believe billystein was referring to Circle Mill parameters. There is a "Start at center" switch but not a Lead In/Out button like a contour. The toolpath will produce a line move as the first move after the plunge to depth as long as the arc radius and sweep value are small enough to allow the motion. If the tool is close to the finish diameter of the hole being interpolated, set the Entry/Exit arc sweep value to "0.0" and turn "Start at center" on. This will force a linear move. Wear comp is ideal in this situation as you don't need more than the radius of the tool for the first comp move.

SRT Mike, quote: Well, we havent bought OneCNC XR yet. I want to try out X before I make a final decision. Right now I am leaning towards XR because I havent seen anything it cant do that MCAM can do, and I have not heard anything to explain why MCAM is worth the extra money. THen again, I havent tried X and when I do, maybe I will really like it. This topic has really evolved so that I think there is a lot of good information here. I hope you make an informed decision about the software you decide to use. Contact me if you have any questions or need info about Mcam. DrewG, quote: Do you service the New Jersey area??? Sorry to get back so late to your reply. Unfortunately we don't provide service beyond the New England area. I'm sorry to hear that your experiences with Cimco were so disappointing. Frank and Glenn are two people I have a lot of respect for when it comes to Cimco. Frank always stresses the importance of using the best hardware and it seems that your experiences reinforce that philosophy. Glenn is extremely competent and professional. Continue to communicate with him and don't get discouraged from using Cicmo. HTH

CH, quote: Mike , I tried your method and had no success with it. Being that I am masked on a 5mm hole and the hole goes through the part I end up with 2 hits per hole. The Mask on Arc function is more flexible than many users are aware of. Instead of selecting "All Arcs" as Mike suggested, Window select only the arcs that you want for comparison from a Front or Side view. This will then eliminate the selection of arcs that are the same size and angle segment but at a different depth in the geometry. HTH

KLR, There's also a switch in the Settings/Configuration of Mcam X on the Screen topic page. This switch reads "Disable hardware acceleration" in the Graphics Support box at the top of the Screen page. This will essentially do the same thing as changing the acceleration in the Display Settings on the computer. Training is something that shouldn't be taken for granted. There are all sorts of possibilities available however. Talk with your reseller. Ask your boss or the purchaser of the software if you're not sure who they are. HTH jmparis, quote: What is it with companies that want to expand their abilities yet skimp on the training to get their help up to speed as quickly as possible? I'll never understand it. I hear that! It's about the same as investing in a new piece of equipment and then not buying the proper tooling for it. "Oh we can just use the same tools and holders as we have for this older machine."

TECHSERV, The displayed coordinates for Backplot are indeed below the operations manager however the Status Bar buttons don't reach all the way to the left to cover the coordinates. Unless you're using a really low resolution on the screen (less than 1024 X 768), there should be no problem seeing all three coordinates at the same time. BTW, the way to configure the Status Bar buttons in Mcam X is by clicking on the "!" button, second to last button from the right on the Status Bar. HTH

mnJeffs, Solid Drill replies on the solid to use for geometry. There is a switch on the Depths, Group and Library tab of the solid drilling operation. This switch is shown below in the image. When activated the solid drill operation creates center points for all the holes found in the solid part. It will generate the toolpaths from those points. This means you can modify any of the operations and points without having to continually regenerate the solid drill operation. You can even delete the now locked solid drill operation as it is no longer needed. HTH BTW, Welcome to the forum!

camguymtl, Are you using Mcam X or V9? You don't have to change all the tools in the library or switch libraries even. In Mcam X select the Files folder under the Machine Group Properties. This will open the MGP dialog shown here: Click on the Edit button in the Machine-Toolpath Copy box. This will open the current Machine Definition. Look for the Tool Spindle under the Mill Table Group in the lower right corner of this dialog. Double-click the Tool Spindle and a new dialog will appear to allow you to change the spindle speed for that machine. See image below. Once the Spindle speed has been modified, click the OK button until you get back to the Ops Manager. Then just select all operations, right-click in the Ops Mgr, select Edit selected ops-Recalculate feeds/speeds and regenerate them. Or you could follow the advice from the previous replies. HTH

Thad, Perhaps I read a little too much into his original question. When he mentioned that he had a "nested boundary" error message instead of the rest of the phrases for that error (intersect, overlaps, collapse...) I assumed he was talking about machining a Pocket with islands that he wanted to avoid through some creative geometry manipulation. If that is what Metal Flake is interested in, I hope that what I suggested would provide something useful without resorting to another toolpath. Not meaning to step on any toes. Just trying to help.

Thad, quote: Try Create-Fillet-Fillet chains on your boundary. Use a small radius. So far it's fixed that problem for me every time. That works only if you have one boundary. The 2D Pocket toolpath allows for island geometry to be chained inside the outer wall boundary of the pocket. The error will show up if there is a chained boundary inside another for the Surface-Pocket. The only way I know of to "simulate" an island with 2D boundary geometry in a Surface-Pocket toolpath is to connect the two boundaries with a very narrow "bridge". If the boundary surrounding the island is offset by the radius of the tool, the tool containment boundary can then be set to Center and the "bridge" is machined away because the center of the cutter gets to the boundary while the edge cuts through the bridge. There would be a slight scallop at the floor of the pocket if you use a Ball EM for roughing. HTH

robsbuick, How's it goin' Rob? Haven't heard from you guys in a while. The tool comments and manual entries are known issues and are being addressed by CNC Software. It should be taken care of soon. Keep in touch.

dwsz71, I know your concerns Dave and I, like so many others, am here to help. Granted there should be some form of information testing and dispersal of resulting data via one convenient location for all to see. It's just not set up that way yet. Give it time and it probably will be. This forum is as close to that ideal presently as we are to see in the very near future. Please don't forget about the support network you have outside of this forum. All, To paraphrase Mcam Newbie "think about all that is good with the software and the accomplishment to bring it to the general user base". There will be issues. Let's face it. Not everyone has the same computer setup, even between resellers. Not everyone has the same experience. Almost no one does exactly the same thing with the software or wants identical output from anyone else. There's infinite variety in people and projects. Why would we want it any other way? This tool comment or note issue simply illustrates something that's minor that affects a lot of users because it's a very basic item. What if you didn't want tool comments at all? Would it be as much of an issue? Produce a setup sheet and give that to the operators instead of having them read the actual code for information on the tools. If they're reading code on the machine after it's been sent, it's almost too late to fix things. If it's read by the programmer immediately after processing, it may be found or may not. It all depends on the programmer and circumstances related to other things that may be happening around them at the time. Even a great programmer will miss things at times if they are pressured to "get the job out". Simply replacing the updated files with old ones is a "band-aid" solution. Also uninstalling and re-installing the software to the point just before Update 2 is not much better. This will be fixed. It's only a matter of time. Hang in there everybody.

dwsz71, Dave how'd that surface work for you? I could've answered this question for you as well. Glad you got the answer you were looking for. This is something that I usually discuss in the Intermediate Mill class we offer. Some people have gotten used to working with the Gview-plane change. I for one can't get used to it. I always prefer to view the geometry from the Iso or 3-D perspective, even when constructing geometry from the Front or Side plane.

TREV, Open the configuration in Mcam X by selecting Settings/Configuration. Click on the topic that says "Chaining". This will show you most of the chaining options that were available in V9. The General Selection box on this page contains "plane mask" and "ignore depths". Any other chaining options like color masking and entity masking is found in the All and Only buttons. You can use the Only settings in combination with General selection techniques such as Chain or Window. HTH Happy Thanksgiving!

DrewG, quote: Peter-Doesn't your company also offer CIMCO DNC systems? I believe I may've met you at Eastec two years ago when I was interested in buying a wireless DNC system for my facility. Yes we do sell Cimco Integration software products. It's entirely possible that you met me at Eastec as I've been with SFA for 6 years now. Was that the year the Cimco booth was directly across the aisle from the Mastercam corporate booth? The Cimco product line is very simple to use and generally considered "top of the line" in quality. I'm surprised to hear you've been experiencing "headaches". Many of our clients use both Mcam and Cimco and have posted in this forum that the Cimco product "rocks", to quote at least one of our regular customers. We switched to Cimco several years ago after selling Predator software. Where are you located? I know your sig says "Wall". Is that Wallingford, CT? Give us a call if you're looking for help. Happy Thanksgiving

DrewG, Not to chime in too late on this topic. Here's a statement you made which I know for a fact is not correct. quote: I believe Mastercam believe's what too many on this forum say about "how wonderful it is, and beats any software on the market", and therefore rested on their laurals, collected maintenance fees, and ONLY after they started losing significant business to other CAM systems did they finally realize that "hey, we may be able to get over on our current customers who aren't looking at new software, however when we have to go up against the current windows based CAM companies, ala GIBBS, Esprit, Edgecam, etc.. we're getting our xxxx's kicked". Being an employee of a reseller allows some insight into CNC Software and how decisions are made. I've met several employees of CNC Software and have dealt with them firsthand for a number of years. Mcam X was in development far longer than the Maintenance program was instituted. MATSS has also been in development for a few years. The developer of Mastercam is one of the few software companies that is aware of their customer's needs and actively pursues the fulfillment of those needs. With Mcam X, it took a while because they didn't want to release an inferior product just to meet a deadline, or the perceived time their customer base expected a major rewrite of the software to take. This is also true of MATSS. They are extremely conscientious of their user base and what they release has to be worthy of the high expectations from the user base. MATSS was temporarily shelved to meet a higher priority. This doesn't mean they're not going to continue with the development of that product. It is currently under development. We have clients who are in the same position as yourselves. CNC Software just doesn't want to rush the release of software they feel is not ready. I prefer to have it that way. If it's not ready, don't release it. I doubt they would've promised the release of MATSS had they foreseen whatever it was that caused the change in priorities. They made a calculated risk that MATSS could wait until after Mcam X was released and they could devote more effort to continued development of MATSS. There are few software companies today that have the kind of dedication to their customer base that CNC Software has demonstrated time and again over the years. Hang in there. Keep talking and asking questions. Help is available.

Matt Berube, I didn't mean to imply that you wouldn't be able to remain a valued member of this great forum if your Maintenance expired. I only meant to point out that another software may not have a forum such as this one, and that if your company switched to OneCNC, the current members of this forum may not be as helpful. Loyalty to one product is very high on this forum. There are other members who use or have used other software. Personally I'm glad to assist anyone if I feel I can, whether it's directly related to Mastercam or not. I can't speak for everyone however and I know others in the past who had voluntarily left the forum discussion when they went to another company that was not using Mcam. When they returned they were welcomed back with open arms. I just wanted to make you aware of what others had given up when they were no longer using the main software under discussion on this forum. I hope that clarifies things a little more. I, like many other members here, am always looking to help those in need.

kani, I recommend updating your version to at least V9.1 SP2, the last free update for Mcam V9. This may have been addressed and fixed for later releases of the software. It's always best to use the latest the software has to offer. If you're not on Maintenance than V9.1 SP2 would be the latest you could use. Besides trying Modify/Convert to Arcs, which doesn't work unless you have circular spline data, Modify/Break/Splines to Arcs would help to smooth out the profiles. Applying Filter can help as well but the filter tolerance should be larger than the Linearization tolerance. I usually set my filter tol. to a value that's twice the size of the Lin. tol. Breaking the spline data into arcs instead of converting them will produce many more arcs than original splines but that's better than having thousands of lines to machine from a single spline. Mcam automatically breaks all spline data into G1 motion. Breaking the spline data initially into arcs before applying toolpath to it will at least make the toolpath smoother, if not reducing the number of moves in the code. Filter will attempt to replace G1's with arcs but also reduce the length of the code. Either way, you should get smoother cuts. HTH

kani, Are you using Verify as a True Solid simulation? Is the Quality slider all the way to the right? What is the Cord height value when looking at Shade Settings? What is the resolution of your monitor? What's the video card? Are these "unclean" areas also appearing on the part or is it just in Verify? Maybe uploading the Mcam file in question could help us pinpoint what settings you should use to get the best results. HTH

DrewG, quote: UG is a complete CAD/CAM package whereby all of the others are advertised as CAM software. Mastercam is also a complete CAD/CAM package. With associated toolpaths which means if the design is changed, within Mcam and there are toolpaths that are using that CAD, they are easily regenerated. Usually this regeneration is so fast it isn't even worth clicking a stopwatch to time it. Surface toolpaths are the only ones that usually take more time to regenerate. quote: I finally was shown in about 5 minutes how to do this when I was at Eastec and delt with another reseller. There is a difference between resellers. But for Mastercam to even consider Tech Support for their ENTIRE client base would be monumental to say the least. Not to mention they would need it to be open 24/7 and have every known spoken language represented. Mcam is used EVERYWHERE. Should Mcam hire people from every country to provide Tech Support or simply rely on the international reseller network to provide local support in the language that is spoken and at the time most shops are open in their region of the world? Fortunately there is a choice of resellers in the New England states. That is not the case for almost everywhere else. As you discovered at Eastec, that difference can be substantial. Rob Quality, Welcome to the forum. quote: I'm not trying to start a argument It that i don't see why "we" as cad/cam ers should be paying for a program bug fix! No one using Mastercam pays for "bug fixes". These are referred to as Service Packs or SP's. A couple of years ago Mastercam decided to offer an Optional Maintenance program for their software. The Maintenance is a good way to receive all improvements/enhancements for the software for a single annual fee. This Maintenance package includes ALL enhancements and updates, even major version changes, for the length of the maintenance contract. If the contract expires any MR's that were installed before expiration are still applicable (sp?). Service Packs are available for everyone using that version of the software. Someone without Maintenance will just not receive any enhancements during the version cycle and they would also have to pay a fee to update to the newest version of the software. Matt Berube, Please take the time to review all the information you have at your disposal. We are available during normal business hours and will be happy to answer any questions you may have about Mcam. The advice here is good advice. Always "kick the tires" of any new software. Test it out for a period of time. Consider all that you will lose if you switch, and not just the software's capabilities. Training is always a time consumer and there will be a learning curve for anything new. Also consider this wonderful forum that you would no longer be welcome to communicate with. Does OneCNC have as many varied resources for providing support as Mcam? Are there as many knowledgable users that you would have easy access to learn from? The intangibles are often as important as the tangibles in this case. HTH

xgioser, It may not be related to the Filter. Do you have any large Entry/Exit moves that will interfere with the island geometry? Are the Lead In/Out parameters set for Gouge checking? Granted it is not likely but I would not automatically blame the filter settings. Murlin's idea to shut off the filter to test it is valid. If it "fixes" the problem don't assume that you can't ever use Filter. Just make sure your post processor is "dialed in" to output the code for the control of your machine. Unless the pocket boundary or island geometry is comprised of spline data, or the Morph Spiral roughing method is used, filtering is usually unnecessary for 2D pockets. HTH

greybeard, Thad is correct, this sounds like a graphics card issue. Did you recently update the O/S or any other software in that computer? When was the last time the graphics card software (driver)was updated? Everything should be kept updated. HTH

TODD_P, Select Settings-Configuration and find the Start/Exit topic. Just to the right of the topic list, about in the middle of the page, is a switch named "Default machine". Check this on to set a machine definition by default. Select a Lathe definition from the drop down list. This will automatically open Mcam into a Lathe configuration when you click on the icon on the desktop. You can also modify the actual properties of the desktop icon so it will only open with Lathe. Look through the Installation document that came with the Mcam X materials. If you can't find it, it's also in the Mcam X program directory as a PDF file. HTH