I always make solids for everything I work with personally. I like to have more information than needed so that they guys on the floor have everything they need to make a good part. I like the idea of a 3D PDF, I hadn't thought of that and it will be very useful. Thanks for that idea! Now that Tetra 4D doesn't have sole rights to 3D PDF our 3DTransvidia package can generate them. I have SpaceClaim but I still can't help but use Mastercam to make my solids, maybe I'm just stuck in my ways. I will extrude most things and when I do window frames I usually backplot the toolpath, save the geo, then use it to extrude the correct shapes. The solids work great with all of my software and it actually takes me less time to make a solid than it does to make a full part from surfaces. SpaceClaim is really easy with the quick features and I'm learning to use it more often. I doubt I helped but my vote is for making a solid since it will have many uses

When I had my reseller ask the home office about this irritating dialogue box this was the reply: In X8, when the first warning displays, the user will have an option to not display any more warnings in the session. It seems that a lot of things are being addressed in X8 from the different replies I've received personally and have read here.

I agree wholeheartedly Zack. Often times our department is treated as a necessary evil where those that hold the purse strings are loathe to pour more money. I hear them say that success equals having the right tools for the job and then scoff at a request for the proper tools to do ours. Millions of dollars are dropped on machines, tooling, materials, etc... to produce the parts and then they're waiting impatiently for our programs to run them. Every request that our department makes is directly tied to increasing efficiency and productivity and not to our personal wants. I have even asked to pay for my own system because I know that dropping $2,500 on the exact box I need will pay for itself in the long run but they still say no and hand the request to IT who does their own thing. When I was Mastercam support I would field calls daily with all kinds of problems that I knew were directly tied to the systems the programmers were running. We would go through months worth of support explaining the same thing 100 different ways. The lucky customers who finally purchased the computer I recommended were only heard from for "how do I do this" or "my NetHASP is blah blah" common support issues afterwards. Oh well, it is what it is as people say. We'll just keep being awesome in spite of it all. Keep on making chips my friends!

The stop conditions are fine. I was just trying to help with a solution for newbeeee that would allow to quickly switch between options. We have the ability to customize many toolbars within Mastercam and the latest version of verify allows us to save current settings to a config file. My thought was to have an additional option in the stop condition dropdown menu that says "save current settings to preset" and then a dialog box would come up where you would name the preset button. Once this is done the user can add the preset toggle button to the verify menu bar. I image that there would be an already existing preset toggle for having all stop conditions on. I'm just thrilled that we can save our settings now and not have to turn on 5-axis every time we use verify. Anything past this major update is frosting on the cake.

What about being able to make custom presets for stop conditions? Preset 1 would have different stop conditions and preset 2 would have a different set on a custom toolbar. Then you can toggle between the ones that you want quickly.

lol, I don't mind one bit The nicest thing I have been called is "meticulous" when it comes to how much information I provide management when I have a request. My last computer "upgrade" was a result of management coming in asking why a job was late and being presented with a report breaking down the amount of time spent waiting for the computer to process and when the job would have been completed if I had the computer I requested. This also had a monetary breakdown of my wage, shop rate, etc... I had a new computer ordered the next day. Unfortunately, IT bargain shopped the Dell scratch and dent instead of ordering the very specific computer I requested. Time for another report!

I downloaded the HST CORE HORIZONTAL RASTER X6 BENCHMARK file from the ftp here and opened it in X7 MU1. I then selected all operations and hit regenerate. It took roughly 8 minutes to regenerate completely and I'm curious if any of you have some feedback on how I can get this computer up to snuff. IT has "upgraded" my system twice and all of the numbers would lead me to believe that this should be much faster. Windows 7 Pro 64b X7 MU1 Dell Precision T3600 Intel Xeon E5-1607 3.0Ghz 32G 10600 RAM nVidia Quadro 2000 1G 1tb 7200 spin drive (not SDD, but shouldn't be that big of a difference) This computer is brand new and I have changed my performance settings to Best. I have increased caching and enabled LargeSystemCache in the registry to 1. I have even dedicated a flash drive to ReadyBoost as a hail mary with a 10 second improvement to the time. My stock models crash Mastercam constantly, always have over 3 computers regardless of settings. I would usually have a professionally overclocked i7 ivy bridge CPU with SSD, 32g RAM, and the beefiest Quadro I can afford but IT insists on complete control over systems in my department. It took months of sending screenshots of performance reports and links to forum threads to have them approve adding more than 6g of RAM lol. Any advice is greatly appreciated with this one.

I looked at this topic last Saturday and it baked my noodle. I went home and read the Wikipedia link from Colin, watched many Khan Academy videos, reread the Wikipedia link from Colin, visited all other links on this thread, then rinsed and repeated. I came back that Sunday and reread this thread... it made sense!! This forum has been an invaluable wealth of knowledge for all things manufacturing. Thank you guys, keep it coming so that we can keep moving our industry forward as a whole.

I have used the "Trim to Stock" option when roughing using a 5 axis toolpath. It forced the rough passes to only cut where there was material and avoid air cutting. It takes longer to process but it works well.

I have had this issue quite often and it is always after working with a certain session for an extended amount of time or after doing a lot of different functions. Sometimes using the Ram Saver option makes the right click functionality come back but I have yet to pin point what is causing the issue unfortunately. I've been bugging my reseller with many other X7 issues so I have kept quiet about this one since I can fix it pretty quickly. Chose my battles and all that.

Hello all! I'm going to try and describe a minor annoyance and see if anyone knows of a way to make it work differently. I work with 2 screens and I have my operations manager, level manager, and view manager on a different screen than the Mastercam graphics window. That way I have plenty of screen real estate. The problem I have a lot of the time is that when I start a command like a toolpath, edit, or whatever that the dialog boxes will pop up correctly over the Mastercam graphics window but my operations manager is the active window and I cannot see the dialog box until I click over to the Mastercam graphics window. This is annoying at best and causes crashes at worst when I click incorrectly and the main Mastercam window minimizes which seems to hide the dialog box. Once this happens I am stuck and I have to close Mastercam but I get an error saying that I can't close Mastercam because a window is open. I think it says something to the effect of "cannot close while (edit) geometry is active" or something like that. It's a minor annoyance that didn't happen in X6 and I was wondering if there was a setting somewhere that can fix this issue. I've seen some people in the c-hook forum that have problems with how X7 focuses dialog boxes but I didn't see any solutions. Thanks!

There's a box that I can check to "not show this message again" when I am about to permanently change a solid with no chance to undo other than reloading the file. I'm surprised that the same thing hasn't been implemented by now for something like this. I was hoping that there was an xml file or some setting hidden away in the latest release that I couldn't find Thank you for the reply Mike.

Is there a way to suppress the error messages saying "Work offset number already in use for a different view defined in operation" and “Work offset already in use!” when you assign the same offset to several different views? With multiaxis indexing it’s a necessity to assign the same offset number to several planes and I would love to not click 2-4 error messages away each time I create additional planes. Thanks!

We've had some similar issues with older HAAS machines. One thing that helps was to have the majority of moves in 2 axis at a time and not 3 (X,Y - X,Z - not X,Y,Z). When the machine tried to process 3 axis it slowed the feed rates down to much lower than programmed. A setting that I love is "One Way Filtering" This will combine any lines of code that follow the same linear path instead of splitting them into small segments. This can dramatically reduce program lengths depending on the part. "Minimize number of points" will try to figure out a way to create your toolpath while reducing the number of nodes that are very close to each other. This setting can reduce code as well. I have played with creating arcs in XZ and YZ but I sometimes get tool comp on an arc instead of a line which causes an alarm at the control of course. You can post code with certain settings on and then post a different program with other settings and compare them using a file compare program (usually already in your NC editor) and see differences that way as well. Please let us know what you find out.

I have found myself using all of the Opti and Dynamic toolpaths more and more for most everything. The constant tool engagement lets me push high speed machining techniques to their limits and really extend tool life. The crew at Mastercam really puts a lot of effort into toolpath algorithm's so that we can stay competitive in our industries. It's much appreciated and the major reason I've stuck with Mastercam over the years instead of getting frustrated with the occasional bug or issue. It also helps that there's such a dynamic community for Mastercam and fantastic support. *cheers*

Hmm, I'm on X7 right now and not X6. I don't seem to have that particular post with my installation of Mastercam. In Mastercam if you go to Settings-->Machine Definition Manager... Once you are in the Machine Definition Manager click on the icon near the middle top of the screen that looks like an etch a sketch for Edit the Control Definition. Once in the Control Definition Manager expand NC Output and make sure that Output sequence numbers has a check next to it. You can also control the sequence number increment and at what number the sequence will start over. I would recommend posting your question in the Post Development forum here on eMastercam instead of in the Industrial forum. You will get the fastest answer to your question over there.

Different posts have different switches to output N numbers either not at all, at tool change, or on every line. What post are you using and what version of Mastercam?

I memorized G-Code as a new operator and started programming simple jobs by hand while my parts were running. After I proved that my programs were good by hand typing them into an old tape controlled knee mill they tossed me at V5 (mid 90s). I learned through necessity and eventually got some training around X5 and now I program all 5 axis and lathe work in our shop with some 3 and 4 axis tossed in for good measure when the other programmers overflow. Mastercam gives you enough rope to hang yourself and a dozen or more ways to accomplish any one task. Personal style comes into play with every programmer I've worked with and that's one of the things that I love about Mastercam, it gives you the tools and it's up to you what you are willing to do with them.

When I reported the issue to my reseller they told me that it was a known issue with no work around as of yet. I just have to use a different toolpath when the problem occurs.

I had a similar situation in a shop that I was troubleshooting DNC issues similar to yours. The owner insisted that all hardware was flawless so I went through all of the standard checks and spent considerable time. Suffice to say, I eventually borrowed a cable from a machine that was working and attached it to the problem child and the problem was solved. If you have verified that the settings at the control match the settings at the other machines controls and the computers settings are the same across the board then you need to check connections, swap cables, plug the cable into a port on the computer that is working and send to the problem machine to test the port/switch, etc...

Between my reseller and the QC department at CNC Software we finally figured out what was happening (overall) and how to work around it. It turns out that I had a level displayed with geometry that Verify didn't like. If I turn off the level then Verify works just fine. I don't have an answer yet on the exact cause but I would venture a guess that it has to do with me using the Xform Offset Contour command and set corners to None. This tends to break the geometry up into bits which it seems that Verify has trouble with. My reseller and I have been working on this since the release of MU1 and we have both spend days and days compiling information and sending it to support at Mastercam. My reseller laughed when he got an email from QC asking them to help me after I posted on here and he had been working for weeks trying to get the issue to the right people. I recommended that he start using eMastercam to accentuate the tools that he already uses for support. The community here is 2nd to none. Thank you to my reseller, CNC Software, and the awesome community here at eMastercam. I can get back to work

I have to agree with the above posts. Go with an i core processor, 32 or more gigs of RAM, keep the Quadro cards, and an SSD local hard drive with a secondary "spin" drive whatever size you think you'll need for standard storage. I have seen several Sandy Bridge overclocked processors built specifically for Mastercam and they ran beautifully. Those 4 components bring the most out of Mastercam.

One issue that I noticed before X7 MU1 was that if the area being looked at by an Opti path was below Z0. the retracts would end be well above where you tell them to be and the only way to fix it was to either edit the toolpath manually using the toolpath editor, using a different toolpath, or getting the region being cut above Z0. The problem seems to have been addressed with the release of MU1 and it only happened with Opti toolpaths for me. In the Linking Parameters playing with Minimum Vertical Retract or Minimum Distance may help instead of using Full Vertical Retract as shown in your screenshot. Steep/Shallow will also do it as mentioned previously.

It seems to happen after I edit geometry on previous toolpaths and then run verification again with the verify window already open. I can't say with all certainty that is it because I'm usually cruising along making adjustments to what I am seeing and then it sideswipes me so to speak. Since I can't fix it once it happens I can't undo and test the process. Once I get the error it's game over and I have to use legacy backplot to check tool motion and create stock models to see any gouging. That isn't a big deal with 3 axis and even most 4 axis, but with 5 axis it's a killer. At least this problem is pushing my Vericut request through management faster. I sent an email to QC Kenneth, thank you for the willingness to look at the problem. I had an opposite hand part to the one that messed up on me today and I ran through the same sequence of events and the error didn't come up. There is seemingly no rhyme or reason but I know that can't be true because computers do things precisely, even if it's messing up.