Hmmmm, Looks like someone here has already been asking. Interesting. Thanks for nudge.

Does anyone know of any proficiency testing for MAsterCAM that we can give to employee candidates?

We're looking for something that is more closely oriented to MasterCAM. I wouldn't mind looking at the questions you have, though. I have a couple links as well for CNC stuff if anyone else is interested.

We're looking for a short (30 minute - 1 hour) test we can give an employee candidate to prove basic MasterCAM / CAM skills proficiency. Does anyone know if any such beast exists? Thanks

The PC is a 7th Gen Core i7 with 16gig. Video card is a Quadro K1200 current driver v431.70. 1TB 7200rpm HDD. Recently one of my guys started to complain about an intermittent pausing in MasterCAM 2018. When the user tries to move the model around the screen (pan, zoom, rotate, etc..) the GUI will intermittently pause. Like a wireless mouse with a near dead battery, almost. This happens whether he has a simple or complex model loaded. We've tried removing MasterCAM 2020, updated both the video and mouse drivers, replaced the battery in the mouse then replaced the mouse. Nothing seems to be out of order when we check OS performance during the pausing. Not seeing anything in MasterCAM process manager either. My tool maker believes it started around the same time we installed the beta release of MC2020 (around April). Any suggestions before I perform a full reinstall of MasterCAM 2018?

I've noticed that you're going to start charging for X+ with MasterCAM 2020. Can you give us a brief description of how this will work? Will the license be purchased though my distributor? Will it be included in my nethasp license file or will I have to setup a second license server just for X+? Will the software be licensed per copy or does the 400 euro/year cover all copies being run? Will formal documentation now be included? Will a method of support, aside from an unreliable forum, be created?

My guy on first shift forgot to close MasterCAM and log out at the end of his shift. My second shift guy open the file on another PC wrote his part of the program and saved the file. When my first shift guy came back in the next day he was presented with a Sim lost error which automatically saved his unedited copy of the file when he clicked ok.

Your network administrator will have to make sure that port 475 UDP is open from the VPN to the NetHasp server segement. Even if you set the IP Address in the .ini file, if that port is not open between the two networks you'll not be able to see the license. My suggestion, if you're using a standard HASP would be to run a remote desktop program like TeamViewer and work directly from your work Workstation.

Another mitigation of sorts, along the same line as your backup solution, is volume shadow copy on the file server. I have mine set to backup changes every 4 hours. At least I can get back the changes that were over written by my first shift user.

Last night one of my second shift users came to me complaining about a loss of work. He explained that one of the first shift guys had had the program he needed to work on open in MasterCAM on a different workstations and forgot to close the program at the end of his shift. My second shift user spent a few hours making changes to the same file and then saved. In the morning when my first shift user came back in and logged back on he was presented with a SIM lost error and an ok button to save his work, which he clicked. Because our files are on the network the action to save the file by my first shift user overwrote all the work my second shift user had done. I've reproduced this problem in both MasterCAM x9 and 2018. In both cases no file lock is placed upon the network located program. I've run Process Monitor (Sysinternals) to watch MasterCAM, and sure enough; MasterCAM opens network file, copies network file local (C:\users\<username>\AppData\local\Temp\MasterCAM 2018), closes network file, opens local file. Then during save it saves the local file and copies the file back to the network. I've gone through the MasterCAM config file a few times looking for a config solution. The only thing I've found that seemed close was "Use Windows Temp Directory" under Files. Unfortunately checking or unchecking that option does not solve the problem. For now my mitigation is to require my users to rev the program when saving.

Basically I set \HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\CNC Software, Inc.\Mastercam 2018\StartUp\UserCfg (string Value) to %USERPROFILE%\Documents\my mcam2018\CONFIG\my_default_config.config. I do this all at logon with Group Policy Preferences in Active Directory. Since any time a user loads another config it changes the registry key I force the change at each logon. If you're running a Windows Domain Controller with AD and you'd like a more detailed explanation of the GPP portion, let me know.

I facilitate about 15 MasterCAM workstations and 20 or so users who jump between the workstations. I've created on my network a secured location containing exact duplicates of the "my mcamXXXX" and "shared mcamXXXX" locations. These locations contain all of our posts, machine defs, control defs, config file, workspace, tool library, material library, operations defaults, and operations library. I use AD GPP User policy at logon to copy the default company config (which has all the network locations set) and workspace locally, set the MasterCAM registry to point to that config file, and create icons on the desktop for authorized MasterCAM users.

Let's say your company hires a new user who needs to run MasterCAM on the same PC you're using. How do they facilitate MasterCAM making it's initial settings in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE registry hive when that new user logs in and runs MasterCAM for the first time?

We've recently been receiving a lot of IT security questionnaires from our customers. They're wondering what we're doing to make sure their IP is protected from theft and prying eyes. One of the many questions across all of the questionnaires is, Do you use least privilege practices at the local workstation? My answer has to be no, because I give those who use MasterCAM local admin. I want to be able to change that answer to yes and I'd like to start by only giving MasterCAM users necessary access to the local computer. Can anyone give me a definitive list of locations on the local computer where MasterCAM needs write or modify access? For instance, on first execution, to which registry locations does the user need to write/modify? Are there any other locations that I need to keep in mind? Right now my list contains: %Program Files%\McamXXXX (Full Control) %SystemDrive%\Users\Public\Documents\shared McamXXXX (Full Control) %UserProfile%\Documents\my McamXXXX (Full Control) HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\CNC Software, Inc. HKEY_LOCAL_COMPUTER\Software\CNC Software, Inc. Thanks for the help.

I really hate giving my users local admin on the workstation and would like to work out how to get MasterCAM running without local admin. Does anyone know exactly what about masterCAM requires local admin privs? Thanks

I've recently upgrade one of our users on the Shop floor to Windows 10 x64. I was able to install MasterCAM X6 (It will be rolled out as soon as training for X9 is complete) and X+ for MasterCAM X6 with no issues at all. Software works great. MasterCAM X9 installed flawlessly and works great. But when I go to install X+ for MasterCAM X9 (As Administrator, with MasterCAM shutdown, after 2 reboots) on Windows 10 I get an Error. Error opening file for writing: \chooks\X+\lang.dll Click Abort to stop the installation, Retry to try again, or Ignore to skip this file If I hit Ignore the error just moves on to SetupSheel.dll. I've seen this error in this thread on page 20 or 21, but there was no resolution beyond "Install as administrator" and "close masterCAM". I understand I'm running Windows 10 which is a fairly new OS and the author of X+ may not have account for that in his install yet. If X+ is not yet supported in Windows 10, is there a workaround to get it running? Thanks -Craig

How do you manage multiple machines? i.e. Let's say you can access mastercam from 10 different computers on a network that prohibits roaming profiles. How do you easily move your config to all 10 computers after you've made a change? How are you assured that each computer has the latest config?

We have about 20 PCs running MasterCAM in our shop. Instead of having to locally install every machine I'd like to deploy over the network. Does MasterCAM have a network deployment pathway? Also, we'd like to create a network location for all config, keymap and post files. I understand those files won't be available during a network outage, but we're willing to take that chance. Not to mention if there's a network outage, there's no NetHASP. So network outages aside, has anyone been successful storing these files on the network instead of locally? Or maybe restore default versions from the network automatically during login? -Craig

Oh, I forgot... once we changed line 25000 to the correct path and filename within notepad everything worked fantabulously! -Craig

We had this same problem, and there seems to be a bug in the way mastercam saves the config file. Take a look at you .config file on line 25000. (Mill Machine Definition) and see if the path and filename for your Mill Machine Definition are correct. For us all the options within MasterCAM seemed correct but when we looked at the .config file in notepad the path was correct but the filename was incorrect. It was odd, and I still don't know why the config within mastercam remains correct even with an incorrect .config. -Craig

Is there a command line switch that will allow me to start Mastercam with a users config. I have multiple users on a machine running MasterCAM and would like to have Icons in each users "C:Documents and Settings" Desktop folder to start mastercam with their own configuration files when they are logged in. Otherwise I have users forgetting to change the config to their file saving over the default all the time and wondering why the changes to their config don't work when they restart. Thanks -Craig

Frustrating to the point of Customer dessertion. Why are we paying to Beta Test this software!?! I have guys on my shop floor that are trying to get work done but cannot because the software that we paid a CRAPLOAD of money for does not work properly. I am sick of getting notes on my door from my users informing me of 7 to 8 crashes a day, it's sickning!

Ugh, that figures. Ok, I will look into purchasing some 500 series cards. Dumb xxxx me, when I saw Quadro under the video list I assumed. Didn't even bother researching the NVS vs. FX. Oh well, live and learn. -Craig

I apologize, they are not 500 Series. Then are in fact Quatro NVS 280 PCI-E cards. and when I go into Display Properties->Settings->Advanced I see no Open-GL settings even in the Tab for Nvidia Quatro. -Craig