nice, so happy to see these new forums, tied up with work for a few days but i definitely have some interesting topics that i wanted to start on here soon! Love that we have this new forum because its going to be awesome to share some ideas and get others ideas on things, i of course use mastercam for all of my modeling, stl/mesh editing, etc and from there prusa slicer. i have an ender 3, hate this printer and most likely gonna replace it with a Bambu labs printer soon, i also have a prusa mini with upgraded extruder that i get great result with and really like the printer, before the upgrade to the extruder it was so/so but with the upgrade it does spectacular at almost everything ive thrown at it and except for the slowness (comparing it to bambu) and small print volume i think its great. Looking forward to getting my hands on one of a Bambu some day soon. also i hope everyone knows this but you can use the Mastercam HLE to make .stl files and .3mf files for 3d printing without having a full license, thanks to everyone at mastercam for letting this be possible, its a great way to stay sharp with the softwares cad tools and i think its a great thing that they let it be used for that at no cost, great way to get it into students hands as well and thanks Emastercam team and Daniel for starting this forum!

thanks so much Daniel!

i seen bob bashing mastercam on one of his blogs once, or at least making it seem like something else was superior to mastercam when it was all his opinions and nothing factual that i read, so i lost some interest in his products... was a while back and not sure if he still has it up or not but kindof ticket me off because he was incorrect on his opinions. if he has a good product feel free to use it if yall want to but he rubbed me the wrong way with that post he has up, ill see if i can track it down at all Edit: Sorry im talking about G-wizard not HSM advisor, just noticed you are all talking about hsm advisor so nevermind and found the article here https://www.cnccookbook.com/cnccookbook-2023-cam-software-survey-whats-the-best-cam/ , very opinion based article and states at the top somewhere that fusion 360 is the overall market leader and that mastercam bobcad and hsmworks are all down on share lol whatever that means, so we are grouped in with BOBCAD and fusion 360 is better than mastercam is just laughable

just an idea, but as popular as 3d printing is and as many of us here do it wouldn't it be awesome if emastercam created a specific forum for 3d printing, like when we go here https://www.emastercam.com/forums/forum/17-mastercam-forums/ , we see Industrial, educational, woodworking, and a few others but wheres the 3d printing forum, would love to see one of the folks at Emastercam make one and i would certainly contribute to it

Pencil can be a great toolpath this is how i typically get a pencil toolpath to work well if it gives me any trouble with a task. if your having trouble try the following leave the bitangency angle at about 165 degrees to start as mastercam defaults, thats a pretty decent number to begin with set overthickness to .01" , see if the toolpath generates, if the toolpath fails to generate just keep increasing this overthickness in small increments, like (.01, .02, .05, .1, .2, .4) and eventually when the overthickness becomes large enough mastercam should be able to target that radii. If your dealing with surfaces that meet up at very shallow angles above 165 degrees, then you can increase the bitangency angle but in most cases this is not needed. typically the bitangency angle wont need to go much below 165 degrees ever. another note is typically i dont need a containment boundary with pencil, but if your overthickness is too large and mastercams targeting too many radiis then a containment boundary can be helpful, but dont restrict yourself too much initially with a boundary or steep shallow as your testing the overthickness values with that type of processing i never have any trouble with pencil personally, perhaps someones found an even more efficient method but typically i can get it working great pretty quickly.

if the message really stated that location then something is pretty odd there because the material file should not be found in that location in the first place, my system had installed it here: C:\Program Files\Mastercam 2023\Mastercam\common\SharedDefaults\MATERIALS , i would first suggest reaching out to your mastercam reseller as they can offer the most assistance in my opinion, otherwise i think i would start with a re-installation of mastercam if it were me running into that error since its looking for a file in the wrong location and since that doesnt make a lot of sense

I know what you mean, back when i learned GD&T they taught what is considered industry standards, now everyone makes up their own standards

I've always been a big mastercam fan and love new features and think they do have a really great team up there, just about everyone at mastercam that i have met in person or worked with on anything are really great people. But it was frustrating to me the last couple years when all my customers complaints as well as mine fell on deaf ears on the new stock setup. theres so many reasons the old stock setup was better, im just tired of reporting it and it falling on deaf ears, never once has anyone that used an older version of mastercam with the older stock setup told me they like the new one better, ive only ever got complaints and in my honest opinion there is not one single feature of the new stock setup that i like better than the old, all of it is just extra work for no added benefit, makes the software harder to use, and have of that stuff isnt properly linked up anyways liek the mach sim stuff. it sucks being a huge mastercam fan and to use the software more than most and to continuously get ignored, makes it tough to even beta test but i still do anyways

are you guys saying someone left some dimensions off a blueprint, that's unheard of!

you must have went to 4 im guessing, 4 is max that is ever suggested even in their knowledge base article about the topic, so perhaps setting the precision factor to something like 2 or 3 may have been better for that system your working on. This setting is definitely not something intended to be used all the time, typically very small parts or when fine detail is needed and not everyone will be able to utilize the setting all the way up to 4 as you have discovered

if you need even better quality (at the expense of performance) you can make a more advanced setting change by doing the following. 1. go here C:\Users\(NAME)\Documents\My Mastercam (VERSION)\Mastercam 2. Duplicate the MastercamSimulatorDefaults.xml , then rename it to something like HighPrecisionMastercamSimulatorDefaults.xml 3. Right click the file and choose edit, then change the Force 5 axis option to True and also adjust the Precision Factor from 1 to 4 maximum. 4. then in verify, choose file --> defaults -- Open Defaults, choose your high precision file, and now your verify will be more precise and accurate looking, at the expense of some performance

Glad you found an answer to your question, the original poster Todd Tracey was my colleague, he has since retired and unfortunately since passed away, he was a great person and is still missed, he was a great friend and colleague

Hi Corey, my home pc does have an AMC Processor, but its just a Ryzen 7 and not the processor that i think they are discussing, but i definitely dont have any issues with my Ryzen 7 compared to intel i7 pcs' that i have used, cant say i see much of a difference between similar amd and intel processors in my experience but also have not put them head to head or had any real apples to apples comparisons, but in my experience i wouldn't be at all concerned with using a AMD processor for mastercam. in my opinion though i wouldn't switch from nvidia to amd when it comes to graphics though because i dont like amds graphics cards, also just my opinions and i could be wrong

the best option i can think of to accomplish this is using the toolpath editor, create the path exactly the way you want it to be, then use toolpath editor to make that feedrate adjustment by right clicking on the toolpath and choosing toolpath editor and then making the change in the toolpath editor, that should be easy enough.

no its not super great, plus with dynamic motion there is not typically any need to increase or decrease feedrates during a cut nor have i persoanlly ever seen any recommendations of feedrate changes during the cut by any tool vendors with trochoidal or dynamic motion. maybe it has a place with traditional milling processes but with dynamic or trochoidal type motion theres no need for it in my opinion and dynamic is pretty much the standard for high feed milling with solid carbide tools today so i think thats part of the reason the function gets little to no use today by mastercam users those are my opinions edit: i did since find some supporting evidence from a tool vendors site that claims slowing down feeds in corners is still suggested with dynamic type motion, but i doubt there are many out there that actually do that

for mill tools we have 3 methods that can be utilized method 1 = the tool is drawn vertical along the TOP plane, tip of tool located and centered on Origin of TOP plane, file then saved out as a .STEP file and when a new tool is created in mastercam we import tool from file and choose the STEP file method 2 = the tool is created as a 2d profile, layed out in the X+Y+ (or quadrant 1) of top plane, drawn all on same level, all same entity color and attributes, no splines supported, file is then saved out as a standard .mcam file, then a new tool is created and we click the import tool profile from file and select the .mcam file method 3 = file is created in a specific manner with cut and no cut levels, users must abide by iso 13399 standards and this method is the least user friendly method that i wont get into here then for lathe tools we have 2 methods method 1 = the tool is drawn as 2 separate profiles, a silhouette of the insert and a silhouette of the holder, file is saved out as a .mcam file, then imported as a custom tool method 2 = the tool is created or downloaded as a solid model, then we use the 3d tool designer found under the lathe tool manager to create the 3d lathe tool. if you have any questions let us know, there are also tons of vids on youtube on these topics

here is an example with a custom tool that includes a nut at the bottom, just be aware the tool must still be touched off of the cutter portion and not the bottom of the nut from how this example was setup. nut.mcam

its because your driving to a Square or sharp corner tool on the left side, your rendered mastercam tool and rendered imported tool need to match properly, so you need to start with a Slot mill tool not a custom tool, here is a video i found after a quick search that shows how we need the parametric values to match the imported tool

maybe upgrade one of the licensees to a network software license so that way you cna use mastercam launcher to make custom shortcuts for the launcher, one set to Nethaps license type and the other set to network software license type (which is the choice selectable in the bottom left of the mastercam launcher)

for how simple that shape is you can even use this path shown here to get it done, assuming you fix the custom tool like mentioned above and re-define it as a slot mill https://blog.caminstructor.com/cutting-3d-forms-with-2d-toolpaths

i really hope some day mastercam releases a more powerful transform, we don't need stupid changes like changing the name of Inch to US, or we don't need stupid stock setup changes that make the software harder to use and then we all get ignored when we share our opinions on that, we need and want stuff that makes mastercam easier to work with like improvements to transform to make it more powerful, or a transform made specifically for Horizontal machines so we can have more control over a pallet and offsets and order of operations things are ran in. There is just so many users out there that would benefit from a more powerful transform toolpath in mastercam.

for the original poster i would just say in most cases is extremely easy to upgrade to a new version, i would suggest you install mastercam 2023 first then run migration wizard, then install mastercam 2024 and upgrade all your mastercam 2023 to mastercam 2024, so simply run 2 migration wizard processes instead of one. If you don't upgrade to mastercam 2024 then you really should run all of the updates for 2023 and by the time you do all of that you may as well have just installed 2024, its worth it in my opinion and 2024 is in general better than 2023 especially if you use 2023 without all the update patches. just be aware if your posts are outside default "shared" folder locations then those need updated and re-linked, which is typically best to have your reseller assist with, but if posts, tool libraries, etc. are kept in default locations then a basic migration does a really incredible job and the new version should receive all your settings, etc.

one thing everyone can agree on im sure is that you don't use a Touchpad for CAD/CAM unless you would like to handicap yourself. Had a few people over the years reach for that Touchpad on a laptop instead of the mouse and had to give them a punch

oh the scroll wheel for your thumb i dont ever use personally, so idk what the intent behind that second scroll wheel is, i just mean the main middle mouse scroll wheel is nice, personally that extra thumb wheel i never even use but by default it seems like it just scrolls through my browser tabs so doesnt do me much but it can be mapped to other things im sure

after my collegue bought a mouse with a hyper-fast scroll wheel i used it, had to buy one for myself and i would never go back to any other mouse if it didnt have an awesome fast scroll wheel, this specific one here is my fav https://www.logitech.com/en-us/products/mice/mx-master-3s-business-wireless-mouse.910-006581.html , logitech makes a few types with a "hyper-scroll wheel" and for zooming in and out in mastercam nothing beats it in my opinion, its like on a bearing so i can barely spin the wheel and it seems like it will spin for hours, so instead of spinning the middle mouse wheel like a mad man to zoom in and out of various things its super smooth and fast with this type of middle mouse wheel. I never would have even considered the importance of a smooth middle mouse wheel until using one of these and now owning one. just my opinion on what i found as my all time favorite mouse for mastercam, its also nice for just web page browsing though cuz of that scroll wheel just scrolling throuhg pages and stuff is faster for me as well