*edit*

I've been given kind of a loose budget of $2k, I can stretch it a little if it would make a huge difference.

Do you guys have any recommendations? 

I guess my biggest question is would you sacrifice a little CPU speed for a better graphics card? 

I know to stay away from Geforce,  That's about all I know right now.

Thank you!!

1 hour ago, JParis said:

 

NVIDIA RTX-A4000

 

 

Woah, just looked that up. I bet that's what this whole pc cost lol

3 minutes ago, JParis said:

I know it's hard when you look at the minimum spec's required for Mastercam...but man, those are bare minimum...will it run? sure....will it run well? not likely.

There are people that use GEForce cards and claim they do well...I'm not going to say they are not.  Over the years I had ATI FireGL cards, a couple performed "ok" and a couple ran like dog poop....

When I spec a computer for CAD/CAM, it will absolutley, positively get spec'd with the best CAD/CAD card I can get them toi spend the money to get..these days RAM is vital...I won't ususally want anything less than 64 gigs and if a system will handle 128gigs and I can get it in the budget, I'll add it....as seen from so many tests over the years, closk speed and cache memory on the CPU play a big role...so if you get get the latest i11 or i9....use that rule on the newest i7..

CAD/CAM software in general is getting larger, more powerful and more complex, as such buying a computer that will have the power needed for several years(not just this year), is vital...

When I started this job in 2017, the boss said if you want a new computer say the word and I'll sign off on it with I.T., but it was honestly fine and I don't like spending money even if its not mine lol. Maybe it's time to discuss the upgrade. It's not just Mastercam that I've been upgrading, I have Inventor open as well as our ERP software and Autocad.

It's still not horrendous..

It's not just when I hit Parameters though, it's every time I chain something and have to go in to the parameters for the settings and there's a 3-5 second lag I guess. But not on the Mill, so I figured there was something I could change... Guess not

4 minutes ago, AHarrison1 said:

Reads more like a hardware issue than a 'spoiled brat' issue

He's usually cool. Maybe had an extra coffee this morning.

1 minute ago, crazy^millman said:

What kind of parameters is it trying to load? Is the wire configuration one that needs to bring in a lot of setting for that specific machine?

Sorry, but you're sounding like a spoiled brat. I have programmed big parts where waiting 1-5 minutes for the screen to refresh was normal. I remember back 20 years ago I would hit the make the toolpath button on a Thursday and move to a different computer and it would be Monday before that toolpath would be finished calculating. I could spend 30-120 hours making programs by hand using AutoCad to figure out all my different features 30 years ago. Crazy how demanding we have all become. 3-5 times longer opening wire the world has just ended and you're no longer able to do your job????? Really?????????? Is the owner docking your pay? If he is then tell him I spent $8k on my programming system. I have 128gb of memory, i9 Top of Line Processor, Samsung 980 Pro M2 2 TB SSD, RTX5000 16GB video card and have 3 ASUS 27" in monitors with a Thunderbolt adapter. It is funny when I program parts for customers that only take 3-5 minutes to open on my system take 30 minutes to 2 hours to open on theirs. That always becomes the first question what kind of a system are you running?

Point is if 3-5X opening wire if the biggest thing slowing you down and holding up your programming then time to think about getting a better system or just dealing with it. If you running a system better than mine great, but you would be one of the few doing it and not that I am anyone special by saying that. I have worked with companies with 10-100 programmers and they are running 16GB entry level systems and wonder why programmers are taking so long. Be the same as wondering why a Bridgeport can keep up with a CNC Machine. I have been there and fought that in a shop and speaking from experience.

 

Whoa take it easy there happy. I'm not saying I cant do my job, and I'm old enough to have programmed with finger cam too. Not impressed.

All I'm doing is wiring dies and punches, very simple stuff. If you had to sit there for 4-5 seconds to change a parameter on wire while the mill was just about instantaneous you'd want to look into to it too. 

In the meantime, my machines are still running.

I've seen your posts and I appreciate all your input, I've learned things from you on other topics. But there's no need to jump on me like that.

2 minutes ago, JParis said:

In my opinion, that system likely seriously under powered...it's not even have the power I had when I started here 7 years ago..

11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-11800H @ 2.30GHz   2.30 GHz

64.0 GB

NVIDIA RTX-A4000

2 Solid State Drives..

Is that the issue? That would be my guess...YMMV

 

Yeah, I kind of think so too, but I don't have another one to try it on so, thanks for the assist!

52 minutes ago, JParis said:

No, I just tried it again, I get about a .2 sec pause which is about what I get in Mill, Lathe, or Mill-Turn

I am curious, what are your compueter spec's and video card?

Great, thanks for doing that for me. I appreciate it.

It says Intel Core i5-8400 at 2.80Ghz, 16 gigs of ram and an Nvidia Geforce GT 730 with 2 gigs

On 6/24/2022 at 8:49 AM, JParis said:

I experience no such lag...

I would suggest checking the location & data paths being used.....

I'm curious, If you hit the Parameters in the toolpath manager in Wire, would you say there's no difference at all between that and mill? Or would you say the wire is slightly slower?

It's slowed down a little again, and before I look into it any further I'm trying to determine if a slight difference is normal, or just my computer.

Thank you!

They logged on to my computer remotely and changed a video driver setting, They forced it to use hardware acceleration for Mastercam when it opens.

It's still slightly slower than Mill, but not enough to bug me. It's much better now. I don't understand why there would be a difference with this between the two... But it works.

I don't have any configuration files on the network. They are all local.

My work files are on the network, but that's true for both mill and wire.

I'll put in a call to my reseller Monday.

Great, thanks guys I'll have a look at that

Are you guys saying that maybe it's looking for files on a network drive vs locally, for example?

I just did a very official and accurate Mississippi count, parameters showed up before 1 in mill, I got to 6 before the wire parameters came up.

In the toolpath manager for Wire, when you hit "Parameters" to go in and change something, does it take like 3x - 5x longer for the window to come up then if you were in Mill? 

I'm wondering if it's just me. If not maybe I can talk to the boss about a hardware upgrade. It's pretty annoying.

Thanks

Found it by right clicking the operation and going to "wirepath editor" then you can change things wherever you want, just like in the toolpath editor for you mill guys.

I could swear there was another way to do it with points but who knows. This works.

Thanks!

Thanks, but that's not it. There used to be a way you could put a point anywhere on a line and have it stop there. Nothing to do with tabs

I swear I saw an option in there to manually put a point anywhere on a line and have it stop (M00) at that point. Pretty sure it looked like the stop sign they use too.

Can't find it now. Am I nuts or is there such a thing?

Thanks

35 minutes ago, JParis said:

Any chance you're using OneDrive for backups?

I know it drove me nuts for the better part of a day trying to figure out why my config and workspace kept defaulting...

In my case it was OneDrive restoring the files after I made changes...

Turned that off, problem solved on my end

Thanks! I use OneDrive but not for backups, although I'll double check now to make sure.

I only use it when I want to save something to work on at home. Very few files in there.

14 minutes ago, AHarrison1 said:

I suggest keeping a backup copy of your 'My Mastercam' folder as well as the shared folder containing control and machine defs and posts.

Every time I make a change to my config I back it up. 

I do, thanks to your advice in another thread actually.

I'm just wondering if it's a Mastercam glitch that other people experience or is it a local problem here. Seems pretty regular.

About once a month or so, I open Mastercam (2022, although it happened on 2020 as well) and my custom key bindings and custom ribbon stuff is back to default.

I blamed it on my computer at first but this is a new one and it does the same thing. Pretty frustrating.

Also, if I select more than one circle, hit analyze properties, change the diameter and hit "propagate" there's a 50% chance it's going to crash Mastercam and want to send in a report, but that should be another thread I guess.

Anyone else getting these problems? 

Is there a way to orient a rotary broach?

Sounds like the right order. I'm not sure though because I've never used cut points. I found when I have more than 1 thing I'm doing it puts the wire cut in by itself.

Maybe you  aren't seeing it because you're only cutting one line there?

Attached is a picture of where I take care of that big lead out. I check the box and force it to only .020, don't know if thats the correct way but it works.I had to figure it all out on my own. You'll find help for Mcam wire is hard to come by.

Another thing I've learned to do is leave a gap between the start point and the beginning of the chain. This allows room for the comp to engage. If you were to put a start point on a circle, then feed the wire on that point and attempt to cut the arc with the wire on either side of the line, you'd see some wacky behavior. Just like with an endmill in milling I start to the left or right of the geometry depending on what I'm doing...

Just changed to the default gradient a few months ago after using black for.. decades? A couple engineers here who use solidworks and inventor commented on my black background was "too dark" or something so I decided to move over from the dark side and see what it was like.

I honestly don't seem to have a preference. I just don't care. It's obviously a big difference from one to the other, but I can't seem to make myself pick one over the other. Doesn't matter to me. 

Bright white would drive me nuts though. I'd have to wear sunglasses! Other than that... meh... whatever..

Just lost everything too and found this thread. Figured I'd resurrect it rather than spam with another one.

I just want to be clear on this - if I backup the entire "Mastercam" folder inside the "My Mastercam 2020" folder, that will back up my custom ribbons, colors, and most importantly, keyboard shortcuts as well?

On 9/23/2019 at 10:28 AM, Jayson Kramer-CNC Software said:

We apologize for the delay in CNC Software’s response time with these issues. We have recently been impacted by serious network issues and all of our systems are down. Restoration is underway, and we will get back online as soon as we can.

I thought maybe someone get sick of us complaining about the trim/extend functions being split up and maybe the plug to the server accidentally got kicked out or something