Thad, if you want feel free to send it here also if I may have a look also for you. Regards Brad

Thad, I'm more curious though if the export is breaking the solid arc faces into 180 degree segments before hand. I agree with the statement of not creating anything until I have a clean model in and representing what I need and then only create the entities that I need to manufacture or create from. Why clutter the table and make it harder to get to the meat and potatos!

Thad, where are the stp files coming from? Is it an export setting from the previous software outputting the file? J/C

I can see under the control def settings for mill arc (not necessarily for imports though). Anyone else?

I've been lurking here lately looking at trying my hand at some c-hooks and trying to pick up on the VB world of things. I've tried to absorb what I can from the great people here have given and eventually found something I hope helps others maybe in my same spot to give back. I found a neat little web page that goes to the basics of VB script basics and just thought to share. VB Script Tutorial Thanks to all so far I appreciate what you've shared and use it everyday!

Just curious if you've tried different tool holders to do the different steps? Such as a different holder for tramming and a different holder for the cutter. Do you by chance have scales on the machine also?

Thanks John! I'm flattered and honored you were thinking of us. Yes it'll be a year in April (20th) and things are going great. She's fitting in very well and doing great. Nothing really startling other than the occasional pre-teen kid stuff that some removal of priviledges doesn't seem to cure =) On another note the MN attorney general's office is currently investigating the agency for a various number of reasons along with the department of human services. Myself and several other families couldn't take it any longer as we helped other families struggle and listen to this place threaten to halt their adoptions for various reasons which were truly unjustified or unfounded. http://www.ag.state.mn.us/PDF/PressReleases/RAI.pdf I plan on posting in the off topic side here someday to fill in and thank everybody for their prayers and support while we went through it. Thanks for the input on the post John!! Best regards Brad

Can anyone help me figure out how to get the output of the posted file to be 5 decimal places? So far I've set the MC config system chaining tolerance out and have tweeked the post in the general vtol settings as shown below but all I get is 4 places not 5: General Output Settings # -------------------------------------------------------------------------- sub_level$ : 1 #CD_VAR Enable automatic subprogram support breakarcs$ : 2 #CD_VAR Break arcs, 0 = no, 1 = quadrants, 2 = 180deg. max arcs arctype$ : 2 #CD_VAR Arc center 1=abs, 2=St-Ctr, 3=Ctr-St, 4=unsigned inc., #5 = R no sign, 6 = R signed neg. over 180 do_full_arc$ : 0 #CD_VAR Allow full circle output? 0=no, 1=yes helix_arc$ : 0 #CD_VAR Support helix arc output, 0=no, 1=all planes, 2=XY plane only arccheck$ : 1 #CD_VAR Check for small arcs, convert to linear atol$ : 0.01 #CD_VAR Angularity tolerance for arccheck ltol$ : 0.002 #CD_VAR Length tolerance for arccheck vtol$ : 0.00001#System tolerance maxfeedpm : 500 #Limit for feed in inch/min ltol_m : 0.05 #Length tolerance for arccheck, metric vtol_m : 0.00025#System tolerance, metric maxfeedpm_m : 10000 #Limit for feed in mm/min force_wcs : yes$ #Force WCS output at every toolchange? spaces$ : 1 #CD_VAR Number of spaces to add between fields omitseq$ : yes$ #CD_VAR Omit sequence numbers? seqmax$ : 9999 #CD_VAR Max. sequence number stagetool : 0 #0 = Do not pre-stage tools, 1 = Stage tools use_gear : 0 #Output gear selection code, 0=no, 1=yes max_speed : 15000 #Maximum spindle speed min_speed : 50 #Minimum spindle speed nobrk$ : no$ #CD_VAR Omit breakup of x, y & z rapid moves progname$ : 1 #Use uppercase for program name (sprogname) mi1$ = 2 #Force G54 style work offsets _________________ Sorry if it's a simple question but I'm stuck with this and for whatever reason it's kicking me butt. Thanks Brad

When we use Cimco to send to one machine in X2 it will work for a week or two and then we get an error message Hasp not found. Anyone else get this?

Hi All, our VAR got ahold of me and suggested we look at the nethasp.ini files for any differences. Believe it or not there was, I was able to do a copy of the one to the other and we are up and running. Thanks all for your quick replies!!

Hi Bryan, thanks but we did and it is a network hasp. The nethasp.exe is set as it should be I believe. In the nethasp.exe it does not recognize the hasp either.

We've just started updating our pc's here to xp and are doing a fresh install of X2. The first pc we've done is giving us the warning message of: "No Answer From Nethasp License Manager (15)" Can anyone shed some light on this please? I've got a call into our VAR for help but just thought to ask here also. We are current on our maintenance and the other thing is X2 is running on a couple of other pc's. TIA Brad

If you have high speed internet download it from Mastercam's web page. I did and it works great. Big download though, 400+ mb file if I remember correctly.

The help menu in solidworks should be the best source for you on that Rob. There are sample parts to go thur diferent things. Have you checked the help file by chance?

We're having nethasp issues here as well..... we can still run V9 but V10 doesn't even see the hasp?? I've tweeked my nethasp.ini file to the same settings as the V9 file but with no results.

Ok Ok, I'm gonna get into trouble about the select to bread....... OOps

Edit Trim/Break Break Many pieces According to the help section in there you can select to bread to lines or arcs. In the demo mode I'm running I can't get it to do it. See if you can. good luck

I've had great results with the Roku but what are your uses going to be?

http://www.engineersedge.com/ maybe this will help =)

Tom S., contact your local reseller and go see a demo. It is really impressive, i liked a lot of the changes. If they won't do it somebody here should be able to email you something I would think.

Squash just the profile or entities you need. Switch your Cplane to the correct view you want to creat to and creat geometry in a 2-d plane that fits what you need. Just some ideas off the top of me head

Foolsh, in my experience it's how you and the edm person pick up and set up everything. If you mill the top then you have to mill everything in relation to it the same also. It becomes a matter of what works best for you and your machine and operations thru your shop. You really need to take the time and establish a system that **ALL** are familiar with in house. You don't want to be having one edmer picking up a trode one way and another picking up a diferent way when especially your picking up a third way to manufacture the part. They need to follow how you orientated the cut and pick up the same as well as the fact that you need to use an appropriate method that they can utilize on the sinkers. This may sound like a lot but it is the fundamentals that allowed me in my previous experience to go from a 5 man shop with manual sinkers to over 30 people and 3 charmilles with 40 tool changers with a robot tool changer on one of our high speed graphite centers. Take a hard look at the geomtery your cutting and where it needs to be when your done. If you can see that then you can cut it many diferent ways, finding the most efficient way is the key to your next raise on your paycheck.

Laser mics but do you need to inspect in the machine during opps or post production for validation?

Thanks Gcode and Pete, I'm not trying to pressure anyone. Just curious here because our design department is SW and in the shop were MC. We usually wait till the 1st SP of SW is out before we go to a full install on everyone in the office. Management there also likes to know and be up to date on MC and the compatibility with SW. We've really come to depend on that feature for the versatility within the shop and office with file coordination. Thanks much Brad

gcode, are you beta testing both? Does X read or convert the direct SLDPRT file? Just curious, Thanks Brad