One helixes and one doesn't. lol Pretty straight forward. If you have a solid piece of steel and you need a pocket, and you're using the endmill for it, helix down to depth, then finish the pocket. Circle mill in this instance wouldn't work. Circle mill is ok if you have a pre drilled hole.

Good info Thad. Thank you for that.

Morning guys. I was wondering if there was a way to set up tool defaults for my linking parameters. Example for arguments sake and an easy example, lets say I have a spotdrill. This tool will always drill with a retract value of .25 and a depth of -.125 and a clearance height of 1" So I know I can set up my defaults to have those linking parameters set, but if I wanted say my 1/4 drillbit to have an r value of .1 and a clearance height of 3". Can I set these 2 tools individually somehow?

I believe IT has done so already. I will have to see if he will give me that user and pass. Thanks. And Thanks Mark

Premium members only.

IT just updated my computer with an X9 update 1 but I didn't get to see what the update addressed. Is there somewhere I can see what was changed or updated? If I go to whats new, it just shows whats new in X9.

^^^What he said. Push the feed hard. Test different DOC's as well.

Awesome. Thanks for the tip Colin. Worked great.

Here is a sample of what I mean. They are not always holes I need to make. In this sample is a slot. Without adding geometry to the part, if I select to drill on the center arc, can i get my endmill to contour to start at the same place? I have use entry point selected in lead parameters but I'm not sure how that is supposed to work as it is not going to the drilled hole. CONTOUR TEST.mcx-9

Morning guys. I have making a lot of parts recently that use an endmill that cannot plunge (Fiberglass specific) The part has a bunch of various sized holes. I use a 1/8 fiberglass drill to make a pilot and then come in with a 1/8 endmill to contour it to size. Of course I need the contour to start at the placement of the drilled hole. The problem is I have been doing it (I'm sure its the wrong way) by putting a contour path and then back plot and write down the placement of the plunge, then I add points to those locations and that is where I add the pilot drill, thus preventing the endmill from plunging. So the question is, can I pick an entity to drill and then have the contour plunge in that exact location before it contours? Hopefully I explained that clear enough.

Wow, figured it out. It was something I had changed in my workspace. I don't know what in the workspace did it, but when i loaded a different one, everything worked good. If I reload my old one, it stops working again. Thankfully it was something easy.

Not sure if that will do anything, but I will try it on the laptop later.

So what is the alternate way to toggle the toolpath and the model on and off besides the Alt shortcuts?

I just added X+ to my workstation upstairs at my desk and everything works great. Must be something on the laptop causing my issue. I will try to uninstall it and install a new copy to see if it fixes anything. EDIT: Just tried a new install of it on the laptop and same thing. Oh well, guess I'll just use it on the desktop if I want to do a set up sheet.

OK. I just want to make sure we are on the same page. The following pictures show a million words. The first one is my mastercam window and what is showing on my screen. The second one is the output with large bmp on. The third picture is the output with large bmp off. So as you can see regardless of which I select, the image is still not right. Now on the 4th picture I have edited the headscreenshot size to 2000 from 600. Then the 5th picture is that same file edited to 100 from 600. By 4th and 5th you can see the image capture is still the same, it just shrinks or enlarges the whole thing rather than capturing larger area. Rhett I tried your method as well with the adding of the lines and it still did not work. I think I'm better off waiting for Gunther to chime in. Maybe he knows what my problem is. If I unzoom Mastercam from fit to 50%, then the picture outputs perfectly.

Doesn't do anything except shrink the whole image along with text. So I was playing around with the css defaults file and kept trying different settings. What I have found is that no matter what size I make the image, it's still cut off in the screenshot. Almost as if the X+ is not capturing the whole screen on my computer. If I zoom out on X9 to make the image smaller, then it fits on the X+ screenshot. Seems somewhere else will need modifying.

Ya tried that but its still too large. I actually see more when large bmp is on but still too large

Ok, forget about the company logo picture. I have no issue with that at all. My dilemma is with the screenshot the program outputs.(See attachment) Part file is beyond the limits of the frame. First you said there was an html to edit, then you said its a dll file, now you are telling me its the css file in the chooks directory? What is the name of the file and what extension is it that needs modifying?

I don't need to edit the logo. That part is fine. I have the company logo already changed. Its the part file screenshot I'm referring to that is too big.

I don't follow. What html file? I realize I can change the html it outputs but this wouldn't help me if I have a lot of them to do. Is there a default file somewhere else I'm missing that needs modifying?

Great job. One question though, I get a big screenshot that doesn't fit on the page on preview. Am I able to change that somewhere?

If Mastercam is not open yet, I typically go to the database, double click the file. It's not about "working around the issue". The issue is still an issue whether its something simple or not. I just wanted to fix that particular issue. But its all good, as I got it figured out.

Yes Yes and No, lol. But I couldn't double click from the server to default the file to open with X9. Anyway, I figured it out. I just had to change the defaults in the registry to read from the X9 folder rather than the X8. I firmly believe its cause all exe's are the same with each version, rather than mastercam5.exe, mastercam6.exe and so on. HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT Search mastercam. Keep searching till you find the associated file type you want, dwg, dxf, whatever. Example for dwg, the search "mastercam" will find dwg_auto_file\shell\open\command I modified on the right, the key "default" and changed the X8 to X9. Then I did that for all associated files I wanted changed.

Hey guys, have X9 installed and so far so good. Problem is I want to open files from the server (dxf,iam,ipt, etc) and they were/are all defaulted to open with X8. When I double click the file, it opens with X8 but does not give me the option to use X9, even if I browse to X9 exe. I believe the problem is because the exe names are the same. This has been an ongoing issue for me as far back as i can remember. I had one year a co worker did something in the registry (I think he somehow deleted the association of those files with X8, allowing me to re select the new mcam exe) but typically it fixes itself when I uninstall the old version. Thing is I do not want to uninstall X8 just yet, so does anyone know how to fix this? Or better yet, does anyone know what I'm talking about?

Good idea, but they are off. Frustrating to say the least.