I haven't used FeatureCam(yet), but I wouldn't be scared to try to learn it. I have pretty significant experience in PowerMill and Tebis, moderate experience in 3ax WorkNC and beginner GibbsCam, and now I still feel like a beginner in MasterCam. If you can program in one, then you can learn another. Fortunately MasterCam has a good forum for help since many employers won't pay for formal in-class training(grrr...). If I end up looking for a new employer in a few years I will definitely look for PowerMill or Tebis again. I've been using MasterCam since June 19' and it still takes me DAYS to program something I could have done in 3 hours before while simultaneously running 2-3 mills. Fortunately for me, my job seems to mostly consist of implementing systems to build efficiency, cohesion and standardization. If only I had unlimited funds for this and everyone on the same page it would be much easier. I do feel like MasterCam is losing its market share to other CAM softwares. To my understanding, Fusion 360(similar to FeatureCam), is the fastest growing(market share gaining) CAM software, partially due to their very low cost, and their (free?) licenses to many schools and students. I've always welcomed change and challenges, and I think it would be to your benefit to learn FeatureCam, especially if you're younger, anything to build a resume is good in this industry.

Yeah I'm in the same situation. Last Quarter they had me get quotes and compare different verification softwares. Now when MMS sends emails about them we forward them.

I've had this issue many times too. Couldn't figure out how to resolve it. But oddly in a large file(for this shop 200-300 operations), sometimes it would pick and choose where it wanted to start. It would sometimes start many tools down the list then go back and do other things. I've since resorted to just using the Verify instead since I don't have these issues there.

This is a LOT more complicated than that and far more complicated than it should be in my opinion. But you need to familiarize yourself with the ActiveReports Designer. First you'll need to figure out what report you're using. If you're just using the basic Mastercam report then it is named something like "setup sheet(mill)". You'll need to find this file in your ActiveReports Designer. These are generally located in your shared documents. Something like C:> Users > Public > Public Documents > Shared Mastercam 2020 > Common > Reports > SST > Setup Sheet (Mill). Note there are a lot of .rpx files in here. Any file with a hyphen "-" at the start is a sub report in Active Reports. Go ahead and open your report. In your report you will see MACHINE-NAME under the Mastercam logo. This is the part you will need to change to have your file name instead. If you click on that window you get some options that pop up in the right window. Under the "Data" drop down, you will see two areas where it says DataField and Text. DataField is what references what it actually shows on your report, text is just for your reference in the ActiveReports Designer but I always keep them the same. Go ahead and change the values in these boxes to "MCXFILE-SHORT". Once you do this now it will show your file name instead of your machine name in that area of your setup sheet. You should at this point save it, but you don't need to overwrite it. You can save it as something like your company name 2020 setup sheet. Then when you want to make more changes you can always go into it and change things how you want, and you also have the original saved. Go ahead and go back into MasterCam now and create a setup sheet. Click at the bottom under Report Templates and hit F2, then find your new Setup sheet name. Now you should be all set. Let us know if you have any more questions.

It's a program not a file. Similar to Code Expert, and Active Reports Designer. However you can open your present tool databases in it. It's easily found in the start menu or search for it.

Mastercam icon. properties > compatibility tab.

I actually really prefer it. Aside from it crashing regularly it's really nice to use to build holders and assemblies in. I've been able to organize tool databases a lot easier in it as well. It's not perfect by any means but it's definitely a useful tool.

Yeah that's what I was thinking too. Wasn't sure where to add it in inside Mastercam. Might need to check your Renishaw program numbers for Haas but manually add in manually until your post is updated. I stole this from another forum but it should be something similar: "At the end of the tool cycle enter: G91 G28 Z0; G90 G49; G65 P9853 B1. T#3026 H.02; M1; H being your tolerance on the length. #3026 is the variable for what tool is currently in the spindle. You can substitute it with the numeric value if you wish." It might not be 9853. I'd look through your cycles. There's a couple different ones too and I believe P9853 feeds down to the probe. There might be one that rapids to like .25 above it.

I would try to remove solid history under model prep. I get a similar issue sometimes(screen looks the same but i don't know if its the same error off memory). Remove History usually takes care of it for me. Also holding down "enter" makes the bubble go away faster than clicking.

I hear you, it's nice to hear others think the same. I started at this company almost 4 months ago and they had nothing defined... at all. Every single tool used was custom created. Holders almost never defined except for rare occurrences on 5ax machines.. drawn with calipers and a scale. No feeds or speeds. Machines all have completely different tools in different pods for whatever job they're running. They don't realize how much time and money they're losing when it takes an operator an entire day to get a job ready to run that I could have done in a half hour 6 months into running and programming a machine. Seems like holders are all ordered by what is cheapest at the given day it's purchased. No clamps, vises, no fixture database. I've been trying to set all of this up while learning this software and program jobs but it's definitely been an uphill battle. But my biggest complaint thus far is Mastercam itself. I could program complete jobs before in 1/10 or 1/20 the time. Entire class A die upper or lower in a couple of hours, all OPs with all components. In this.. probably take me 2 weeks and I would still have lower quality programs. After 4 months I've been able to get a spreadsheet from purchasing with the long list of our "standard" tooling. Almost completely uncoated Accupro. But I go along with it and create a database but I'm the only one really using it. I haven't yet gotten around to getting holders. And it's still not nearly how I am used to or how I feel it should be. Jesus, drilling here I've gotta manually create a pile of operations every time and manually define depths, tools, using these state of the art jobber steel drills. Before I could just basically highlight the model and in 10-30 seconds have a hundred holes completely programmed. I've also been able to(thanks to you guys) successfully design setup sheets, and tool lists. Partially successful in setting up FBM and FBD, but not really good enough to utilize. Play around with machine definitions, machine controls. Unsuccessful in trying to setup virtual machining(beyond mastercam base machines). Successfully implemented viewsheets and utilizing planes and simulation better than each op separately on different levels(or files) with different geometry. Sorry for the rant.. just wish there were more like minded folk out there..work smarter not harder.

I THINK I figured it out. We were ready to do a fresh windows install. Time well tell but for some reason in the "right click on icon>compatibility> compatibility mode setting", it was running to be compatible with Windows 7. I unchecked that, applied and it appears normal... so far. I'll report back if I find something else. I told the IT guy and he said he clicked that because we were having an issue with the computer recognizing the HASP at first so he changed that.. never occurred that could have been the issue.

Thanks for the replies. The IT guy copied my entire profile over to the new computer. We thought it might have been an issue like that so we actually moved all of the mastercam files from the user file to the desktop when uninstalling and reinstalling mastercam and it regenerated all of the files and still no luck on speeding it up. As for integrated graphics, the 9900KF is Intels new line of chipsets that does not included integrated graphics at all, so we only have the RTX 5000 as an option. But i'll look into it anyway since it might be somehow getting confused still.

Hey guys, Got a new computer Friday, Having an issue we seem to have narrowed down to 2020. Components are i9 9900KF, Quadro RTX 5000, 32gb ram, M.2 SSD. We run primarily small parts. I try to verify one op and it can take 5+ minutes to load. Just 1%.....2%.... then once it does get to 100% it still takes a while longer before I can do anything in the Verify screen. My "old" computer with the same file might take 10 seconds before it's completely loaded and ready. That's an i7 8700k, Quadro P5000, 32gb ram, M.2 SSD. After messing with things all day, we finally decided to install mastercam 2018 and open an old file and check. 2018 simulator was just as fast as it should be in my opinion. We did uninstall 2020 and do a fresh install and do all windows updates available. I've played with just about any setting I could find but I don't think any simple setting would really account for it to be *THAT* slow. However in Documents > My Mastercam 2020 > Mastercam where I can set MastercamSimulatorDefaults there's another txt file there labelled "MastercamSimulatorExceptions" that's telling me I have some memory leaks. "DebugWin Log: Initialized McamSimulator - DebugEngine ubvs launcher init ubvs launcher init - not started ubvs launcher init - create new app ubvs launcher init - create window ubvs launcher init - run TrackedChange: ToolvectorVis ubvs launcher init Registered Cleanup All tracked managed memory has been freed ubvs launcher init Registered Cleanup Memory leak detected: Still referenced objects: 1: ModuleWorks.DataProvider 1: UBVS.ViewModels.MainViewModel ubvs launcher init ubvs launcher init Registered Cleanup Memory leak detected: Still referenced objects: 1: ModuleWorks.DataProvider 1: UBVS.ViewModels.MainViewModel Registered Cleanup Memory leak detected: Still referenced objects: 1: ModuleWorks.DataProvider 1: UBVS.ViewModels.MainViewModel ubvs launcher init" There's an excerpt from it. Has anyone ran into a similar issue they've had to fix? I can't seem to find anything on the forums yet.

Hey guys we recently had a mastercam 2020 launch training session and I convinced my team to create/change some of our programming standards. During the session the instructor was explaining the value of "leaving the part in the same place" and creating new planes. Before we were moving parts to the WCS and we were unable to simulate properly and all of our ops had separate geometry and everything on separate levels. We are also now utilizing viewsheets(yay). However we are having an issue now. Before when we moved the part to the global zero we had no issues posting 3+2 programs. Now when we are doing it, we are for some reason getting a G50 and the machine just errors out. I'm almost sure this is a post issue but we are told the post on our Mazak is locked..we are looking into this but presently we need a work around as we have programmed many many parts this way already and don't want to have to go and regenerate everything and change depths etc. SAVE ME! Thanks

Thanks for everything guys, I learned a lot through the Webinar video and on the forums about creating the setup sheets. I finished my setup sheets and they are working great thus far. However now one of my fellow programmers would like the tool list creation to be better. I see that both the operation manager tool list and simple tool list in the tool manager are different, and I have edited them how we like -- but one problem. The min and max z do not work within these tool lists.. as far as I can tell they don't work in anything in the MSC folder. I thought maybe just putting them into SST would work but it gives me wrong format when I set it in config. But thanks to this post I have greater understanding.. it is not working due to it not being an operation. It is like a partial operation in the MSC folder? I there any work around for this?

Hey guys, running Mastercam 2018 and attempting to setup FBD/FBM. I'm very new to Mastercam(~2 months), but I'm coming from softwares(Tebis, PowerMill, WorkNC, Gibbs) where I was able to implement a lot more automation than my new shop is doing(we don't even have standardized tooling here on most machines yet..) I'm having a few issues. 1) Taps - I went through my "FbmToolTable" and added tap drill diameters commonly used for the specified taps(generally how our model comes in). I can get FBD to work great by setting up the control definition properly and leaving the screen on "Features". Then when programming just right click > Hole Type > Tap RH then going through and assigning the proper finish tool if necessary. Problem is I would like to automate this more by utilizing the "Hole Mapping". For example we have many different customers and some of them might not use the same diameters as others. It seems I could setup MAP files for individual customers needs and speed up programming further. However many of my taps don't appear in Hole Mapping. Example: I right click, add, type .201 diameter, Tap RH, and my 1/4-20 tap does not show up as a possible finish tool. However my 1/2-13 tap does show up for my .421 diameter(I remember having this issue with the .421 before but don't remember how I resolved it, could be just because I started a new mastercam session and created a new blank plate to test?) Again, my "FbmToolTable" does have these set properly as far as I can tell. 2) Reams - Reams all look proper on "FbmToolTable" - under "tap drill required size" it has proper ream drill diameters. I didn't have to adjust those at all. In the future I would like to add options for -.001 press fit and on size slip fit. However when I am in FBM Toolpaths - Drill, all of my pilot holes listed are wrong. I've now spent hours going through the settings on here but I don't know where I'm wrong. For .125 reamer it wants to pilot .125. For .1875 it wants to pilot .125. For .3125 it wants to pilot .25. For .5 it wants to pilot .4375. for .75 it wants to pilot .625. I feel like it might have something to do with bore settings since it tries to ream as "Bore #1". But I can't be sure of this. I'm also wondering if it is possible to set this up as a Ream with a standard "Drill" function so it will rapid out? Or will I need to manually adjust that every time.

Sorry for the delayed response, I had reached my max posts per day of 3. Yes for some reason(I forget the reason) they want me to use TOP WCS for every OP instead of using the planes. My first couple of days here they just had me playing with the software and I was using the planes how you describe and I was told "no, no, no" Planes need to read "top, top, top" unless 3+2(I haven't gotten to multiaxis yet) I was eventually able to resolve my issue. The first few Ops I wasn't having any issues then I tried exporting the STL from the simulation(per instruction) and started having the issue. When I went back to exporting the stl from mastercam stock model, it started working appropriately. I think some of my tolerances in the simulation might be wrong because he doesn't have this issue.

Is there a video of this available?

Yeah that's not my problem at all. I am familiar with creating a stock model. We are machining very complex thin aluminum parts with very thin windows. For example: Op 1: setup, square and machine a slot down the middle for spring Op 2: flip it over, rough out stock and finish inside pocket where possible. Op 3: flip it back over, finish inside pocket first from this side, and then finish ouside 3d possible from this side. Add in holes and taps for next op. Op 4: Flip back over and 3d finish the outside here on a custom nest fixture I also need to create. My issue is going from one Op to the next op, keep flipping the job over and using the same stock reference. We machine one off parts to parts in the tens of thousands for a decade long but always need to be as efficient as possible.

I'm currently having this problem too using 2018. I just started at this company(and mastercam) 6 weeks ago. I have a lot of experience with primarily with PowerMill and Tebis, but a little WorkNC and Gibbs and some of these simple issues are extremely frustrating. The guy training me has never seen or had this issue before so it is making me look even worse. His method is always the same. Save the STL from the simulation, open the STL separately and orient it accordingly, resave it and use it in stock setup and in stock model. Says he has never had this issue in all of his years. That method worked for me for the first few OPs. But now 160 programs deep on the 4th OP I am struggling with this. I have tried your suggestion as right click > mill toolpath > convert to pmesh. moved the pmesh to a separate layer. But I cant select the Pmesh as stock in stock setup(for simulation). I tried File>save some then selecting it and saving as STL. Same hollow issue in simulation. I select the Pmesh as a "model" in the stock model and combined with the calculation time taking forever for just a few toolpaths it still comes in hollow(which doesn't even make sense to me). What am I missing to get these to work properly? Next step is starting the stock models from scratch on all the Ops and re orienting them and seeing if it will work a second time.