I’ve been going crazy trying to figure out what’s happening here. Unfortunately, I work for a large defense contractor, so I cannot share my mcx without risking my job and jail time. I’ll describe the best I can… I am creating a milling / drilling program for a mill with a rotary axis. I have 3 planes created in the plane manager, one for each rotary axis position used: A0, A90 and A180. X0, Y0, and Z0 of each plane is at the center of rotation. I am performing both milling and drilling operations at each plane. Everything is fine until I drill at A90, where the tool is mysteriously entering the work from the minus Z direction. This does not happen in the milling operation at the same plane. The top of my hole is supposed to start on a surface at Z-1.367 and is drilled .050 deep. What I end up with is the tool coming through the bottom of my fixture. Anybody have any ideas what I should be looking for? Thanks, Scott Lent

I feel really stupid for not thinking of that myself. Thank you !!! Scott

I’m hogging-out a housing using Surface High Speed toolpaths and I used Create / Surface / Fill Holes to keep the tool out of a hole with counterbore which is being machined using various 2D toolpaths. I'm now programming for that hole and counterbore and there is a .050 radius feature that I am trying to use a Surface Finish Flowline toolpath to generate, but I am not able to select the radius surface as it is inside the part because the hole is filled. If I delete the surface created to fill the hole, I am deleting a referenced entity and that messes up my hogout. Is there a way to pick that radius surface under the fill surface? Thanks in advance! Scott

Thanks! I will pass this on to our IT provider. I work for a large aerospace company and only the IT people have the admin rights to make any of these changes.

Hello all, I've been trying to set the file associations in Windows 7 to open a .step file in Mastercam X9. I was able to do this in X7, but lost that association when we upgraded to X9. Our IT service provider has supposedly tried everything under the sun to accomplish this. Our reseller has told me this is a problem everybody has and that Windows has a fix for this to download that will allow you to force file associations. Getting our IT people to talk with our reseller is like pulling teeth, and right now our reseller is closed. Has anybody found that download and if so, could you tell me how to locate it. Thanks in advance, Scott Lent

Well, I can now answer my own question. I ordered one and it arrived today. It works wonderfully!

I'm fairly new to Mastercam, but since nobody else has replied, I'll take a shot at it. You evidently have a tool in the program which will create an undercut, such as a T-cutter, yes? In order for the simulator to show the cut correctly, the 5-axis Simulation engine needs to be enabled. In Mastercam simulator, select File, Options in in the General tab for Simulation engine check 5-axis. I had the same message show up all the time when I used X7, but since I'm running X8, it takes care of it automatically. I hope that helps.

I was wondering if X8 HLE supports a 3D mouse, such as the 3D Connexion Space Navigator?

Thanks

I was wondering if the free Verisoft download can be installed in the educational version of X7. The reason I ask is they have a very tight control over software installation at my place of work. It would need to be installed by our IT contractor, which generally takes an act of congress to get done. I have the educational version on my personal laptop, and if I had something to show the powers that be, I may be able to convince them to do it. Thanks

That did the trick! Thanks!

I got Tranform - Rotate working, but I can not figure out how to stop it from repeating the source operation. I'm spot drilling and drilling the hole at A0 twice. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance

Thank you all for the great advice! While the Verisurf method is definitely the most direct way of doing it, the large corporation I work for does not allow us to install anything into our work stations. I have an educational seat here at home and I did seem to get the results I'm looking for with Toolpath - Transform - Rotate from the information provided here. I'll know for sure later when I get to work and apply it to the job I'm doing. Thanks again, Scott Lent

Hi, I'm a relatively new user of Mastercam X7 and I'm writing a program for a cylindrical part that will run in my rotary axis (A-axis). I have to drill 18 identical holes, equally spaced, around the circumference of part. They are all located at the same X and Y coordinate. The A-axis will need to index in 20 degree increments to locate each hole. I'm wondering if there is a way to use Toolpaths---> Transform---> Rotate to accomplish this. All I've been able to do with it so far is rotate my toolpath about the tool plane, which is not the result I'm looking for. The only other way I know of to do this would be to create a toolpath for each hole, each at it's own view. This seems like a lot of work, especially if a parameter needs to be changed (now in 18 places) Any suggestions? Thanks...

Oops! I see what I was doing wrong. I used the sphere I'd put on level 3 to trim to and it worked. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction!

That is the process that I've been trying to use, but when I attempt to select the sphere surface, it won't select, neither will anything else for that matter.....

I’ve been using Mastercam for about 9 months now and I’m relatively new to solid modeling. I’ve had good success creating most models I’ve needed to, but the geometry in the example I’ve attached has me stumped. This is also my first post to the forum, so hopefully, I've done it correctly. I’m attempting to draw a butterfly disk, the extents of which are contained within a 4.0” sphere. To clarify this, I’ve created a sphere on level 3 for illustration purposes only. To create the model, I drew the geometry of the disk portion and created the solid body by revolving that geometry. I then drew the geometry of the boss and cross hole, of which the centers of both pass through the center of the sphere at 15 degrees. When I extrude the boss, I can’t figure out how to extend it to terminate at (and become part of) the 4.0” sphere, nor can I figure out how to trim it back to the sphere if I intentionally make the boss long, as I did in the example. Any help would be most appreciated. EXAMPLE.MCX-7