OT: Have you noticed how quickly you start forgetting things if you don't use this software all the time? I've had the displeasure of "pushing the button" for a couple of months and damn, when you get back, it's not a very instant process to become productive with Mastercam! IT must be all the dialogs and buttons.

Thank you both very much. I totally completely forgot that you can use the same control definition for several machine definitions so no need to maintain duplicates.

The problem is that I have a single machine definition file for an Okuma mill which I use for both rotary table and without. I have created two axis combinations, XYZ and XYZA. For some mysterious reason, I cannot alter the local axis combination parameters under the mastercal file's machine definition parameters, and thus I cannot set the default axis combination setting for the entire project. The default is XYZ in the "global" machine definition file. However, if I want to use XYZA for the entire project, I have to change each one individually, and the risk of forgetting to do so is massive (garbled post output->crash). Is there ANY reasonable way to deal with this problem other than to create individual machine definitions, one for the A axis and one without?

Why can't I mass change axis combination in the edit common parameters dialog box? Almost everything else I can.

I can't share the file. Just noticed this myself, don't even know when it happens, but at some point an empty toolpath group has appeared in the operation tree. Maybe something to do with toolpath trimming? (I rarely use it)

Please fix this.

Guessed so and no, not fixed in 2017. Maybe it's not very high on their priority list...the debugger looks and feels a very hastily-put-together program. Shame, as post customizability is one of the strongest suits of mcam.

In the post processor debugger, shouldn't the "step over" action behave so that it does not enter into the following block? Am I missing something here? Is there any way not to enter the next block besides setting a breakpoint after it?

Can you tell us what was changed in the post? I have the same issue and contacting the reseller during the weekend is not an option.

We had over 100 jaws lying around at one time. Fortunately no longer. I don't number the jaws to avoid confusion with the jaw - master jaw order. But alphabetics ran out a while ago, now using "AA", "AH"...

I am pretty calm if I have to put my endmills into an ER40 collet. It's the smaller ones that make me nervous.

Air chaining is the best thing since sliced bread. Could not live without it any longer.

Dang So we have multiaxis license and a valid post for Macturn but can't machine simulate it - still have to buy another piece of software. Sigh... better off simulating 4-axis stuff then.

I know All our heavy duty milling is done by high feed milling cutters. But there are occasions where dynamic toolpaths would work better. There's only a handful of weldon holders around and if none available, no change but to put it in an ER collet.

Looks great. Having finally upgraded to 2017, I'm finally going to learn and take full advantage of the machine simulation feature. No 5-axis machines here but our close partner has a Macturn 5-axis multitasking machine and modeling it would be a start since we are going to write programs for it. It's good to have machine simulator experts around.

Does HSM-advisor compute the force that will try to pull the endmill out of the collet? We currently use only ER-collets and I constantly fear that the collet will give out long before the endmill does. (One of those neat HydroGrip holders would be great...)

I wish there was a C-hook that added a command-line box at the bottom (similar to Autocad) and you could just type the command there.

The problem with working with lathes equipped with a three-jaw chuck is that all the jaws tend to occupy all the possible free space after a certain period. I started labeling the jaws a year ago with alphabetics and maintain an openoffice spreadsheet which shows the diameters of both ends and whether internal or external clamping is used (or both). Is there any jaw database software that allow to define jaw geometry as well easily?

Jon's tip works for me as well.

There are some problems with the wires right now (we are cleaning the house and moving stuff around etc.) so I'm pretty sure the transfer failed due to electrical reasons. But it seems off that Cimco's settings become corrupted when the transfer failed quietly. The cleaning operation on the PC was just removing some big temporary installation files.

What on earth is going on here? I went back to Cimco 5 which still had the proper DNC machine settings configured, tried to transfer from machine to PC, the transfer was incomplete (no error message or anything, only partial program was transferred) and got the message "Unable to open port". Restarted PC, re-started Cimco 5 and now the machine settings for the machine I previously used is BLANKED as well!

This function doesn't seem to exist in V7 and I also seem to have misrecalled, the min-max view was in the Mastercam code editor, not Cimco. Our lathe PC has been nagging about low disk space for a while and finally did something about it and then launched Cimco (7) and voila, all the machine DNC settings were gone! There were only a list of BLANK entries in the DNC setup list (see picture). Hopefully this is fixed in V8.

Becoming more and more hesitant about upgrading..do these bugs ever end? The lathe plane bug already scares the s**t out of me...

Well I have used only domestic ERP products and can't really praise any of them.. you constantly keep getting some stupid Visual Basic error boxes when trying to do the most mundane tasks. These software must make the easiest buck with the least amount of effort put into actual software development.

If it's a Fanuc control (16i-T or newer), use continuous threading (G32). You can chain G32 commands, first line for the cylinderical part and the second line for the lead-out taper. Dunno how to do it on Mastercam, likely need a custom post.