above i used usb code, and had the img link go to a url,i just put the picture up on our website and used that url. actually though i just recently figured out what was wrong with that tool. i had one arc connecting the top and bottom, so i had to break the arc in the middle, and now it verifies fine... wird... thanks for your reply though.

thanks for your reply. i think thats what im trying to do. i did that for some of our other tools, and it worked well, but with this tool when we go to verify it, instead of looking skinnier in the middle, it is fatter. this is how it looks in verify: however, this is how it is should look: it seems as though it is taking the other side of the tool and using that in verify...

we're back with yet another tool, but it is even simpler this time then the one we got to work before. this tool is very simple, but for some reason when we verify in mastercam, it seems to take the other side of the tool to create it. it looks ok in back plot, just in verify does it look wrong. the tool by itself basically looks something like this: thanks in advance.

no no, were not that out of it here. sorry, i guess i forgot to mention that the post had already been set to convert our tool paths to metric, but when he did this he forgot to convert the feeds and speeds. we had just gotten it and were in the process of testing when he left, and realized we needed that as well.

thanks for your replies. the only thing we wanted them to convert was our feed speeds, and the other reason i dont think it was an unreasonable request, is that they were still supposed to be setting up our post, when the guy we were working with left. thanks again.

hey, how is everyone. we are having some problems communicating with our mastercam dealers, and are not sure if it is us, them, or both. we had some problems in the past, they were resolved for the most part, and then our main post guy left, and had told us to email the general email adress for posts with any more problems we were having. we did so about 6 weeks ago, and just got a response today. to us, that seems like a very long turn around time, we needed the response to get our machine working. fortunatly it was not too much of a problem, we were able to fix it oursleves eventually, but it is more the point. the problem we were having was with our feed speeds, they needed to be in metric, but we were used to doing everything in english and did not want to put metric feed speeds into mastercam, we wanted the post to automatically change them. we asked the general posts email adress to please "put a converter for feed speeds [in the post] from english to metric" to us this seemed like a very clear cut question, but when we finally got the response he asked us to be more specific and what conversion factor to use. i am not sure how much more specific we could be here though...

ahhh... so that would explain it. thanks a lot. i will look and see if i can find any that will compile with plain old borland c++... thanks again.

yea, im not sure why i need PATH_MAX either. im just trying to learn this stuff, so what i was doing was trying to compile the sample file shapes.cpp, and that is giving me all of these errors. i downloaded the latest compiler, thanks a lot, i think i like it better... i am actually getting some new errors now... (it is never ending, sorry) for some reason i dont have the stdafx header file. i dont even know what this one is for, although that doesnt say much... the other new errors i get are with the stdlib header file, it says "templates and overloaded operators cannot ahve C linkage. any ideas? thanks for all your help.

thanks bulliness. i put that in, still got the error, so i opened up my limits header file, and path_max doesnt exist in it. do you know what it should be set to? thanks.

no, i hadn't been. i tried it, by typing extern #include "headerfile" but it said the #key was invalid, so i took it out, and it still didnt like it. i am probably using it wrong... thanks.

borland c++ version 3.1

i tried including limits.h, but it still gave me the same error... it occurs in about 9 different places, twice in m_lvars.h, and the rest in m_avars.h

#include what? i have included: m_vars.h, m_ncvars.h, m_menu.h, m_io.h, m_dbm.h, m_init.h what am i missing? thanks

james- there was 1 tiny little overlapping entity at the bottom of the tool. arrrrgh!!! thanks for all your help. -emily

never mind, i found that file, sorry. but now i am getting 3 other errors. the first two are from the m_vars.h file, and they say: "redefinition of 'FALSE' is not identical", and i get the same error for true. the third error i get is from the m_lvars.h file, and it says: "undefined symbol in 'PATH_MAX'" is there anyway i can fix these errors? thanks again.

hi, im trying to get started with some basic chooks. unfortunatly i dont have microsoft visual c++, so i am trying to use borland. when i go to compile my program, it tells me it can not open the header file windows.h. where can i get this file from, or why am i getting this error? thanks.

i think i understand why the first tool wouldnt' work. i put a picture of a tool we are trying to put in our library, that just will not work. it is probably the way i have it drawn or something simple like that. it is called: should it work.jpg thanks for your responses.

heh- i either spoke to soon, or more probably, i have another stupid question. the tool i am working on now does not seem to woek. the widest part of it is 2.194", the other one i tried out first was not even 1.5" wide, so i am wondering if it is because it is so much wider. i have checked it multiple times, and it is connected everywhere, and there are no splines, it is made of 4 arcs and 9 lines, so i am not sure what i am doing wrong, although im sure its something easy... thanks again.

james-thank you thank you thank you! i think that has been most of our problem. that makes so much sense, and it works...i guess this is why we need to get to class. thanks again.

thanks keith, i guess that is the only other way. we are trying to do as little calculating as possible around here to try and get rid of all errors... thanks again.

hello, we are having some problems with our dove tail tool. when we draw our part we draw the top of it, and we give mastercam the bottom diameter of the dovetail. however, if say we are cutting 3/8" deep the bottom of our cut ends up being what we want the top to be, and the top is too narrow. the only work around we have found is to calcuate what our diameter of the dove tail would be 3/8" up on the dove tail and give that to mastercam, but that means that for every depth we choose to cut we have to change the diameter. is there another way around this? thanks.

thanks fred. i did this, and our tool seems to be ok. i think the problem we are having is that mastercam does not seem to scale our tools. so that once we have drawn it and scaled it down so that the radius in 1, when we go to actually use it and our real radius is say 2, it will not scale the tool up, rather it seems to offset it from the part 1". the reason this is slightly problamatic to us is that we can not see if the tool is cutting the wood properly or not. does this make sense? are we the only ones with this problem because we are over looking some extremely simple detail? thanks a lot.

thanks Kenneth Potter. im so glad to see that we are not the only people so frustrated by this. when i called cnc about our problem, which by the sounds of it, was nothing compared to others here..., they told me i should have known when purchasing mastercam that it may require a better video card, and that i was just out of luck. so thanks agian.

never mind, i must have deleted them by mistake, but i added them again, problem solved. easy fix. sorry

hello, i recently was playing with my mill8.cfg file (wich may not have been the smartest thing but...) and since then everytime we try and make a tool path, any tool path, not just a contour cut, it says: 'counour(2D)' not found in your operation defaults file: C:MCAM8MILLOPSDEFAULTS.DF8. if i click ok, it lets me continue, so it is not a fatal problem, but annoying none the less. i guess this is why i should back up these files before i play... thanks.