Thanks to all of you for these wonderful suggestions and your offer to help!! I am using Mill Level 3 and my Version is 9.1 SP2. I uploaded a file called ribbing.zip to the FTP site: ftp://www.ppcadcam.com/Mastercam_forum/MC9_files/ It gives you an idea of exactly what I am trying to achieve. In the Op Manager the "B Mold Base Ribs" group shows you how I am doing the ribbing presently using surface machining and 2D and 3D contour passes to start and clean up the rib. The surface finish contour "roughs" down at .003 Z depths along the whole surface leaving -.032 stock (wont allow for full radius negative stock allowance). Obviously this works but since it requires 3 separate operations and construction of surfaces and extra wires, it would be more effective to use wire geometry only and apply a toolpath once. The "Experiments" group shows some of the suggestions you all advised this time and 3 weeks ago as well when I first posted this problem. The closest solution I found was EX #2 - the 3D contour chained both ways. It zig zags and plunges down in Z at the plunge rate. Only thing is that it feeds back at the same Z level wasting precious time. EX #3 the lofted wireframe is a beautiful toolpath only it feeds down in Z instead of plunging and violates the wire geometry in corners. The ruled (EX 4) is obviously no good unless there is another way to do it and the swept (EX 5) I had some trouble with but seems like a potential winner - it plunges down at plunge rate but again it violates the corner and doesnt turn off comp, so it only offsets left or right. Thanks again for your offer to help and consideration for my problem. There is no rush to reply, whether tomorrow or after Thanksgiving. I have to go out now anyway and won't be back on this board till Mon nite. It's amazing, I've been an MC user over 4 years and theres no end to the constant discovery of the untapped wonders of MC! Best Phil

Yes, I was the one who asked about ramping down at plunge rate and I got a lot of really good answers, but no answer for ramping down on a 3D contour. In other words a bi-directional 3D contour that plunges at plunge rate instead of rapiding up to retract plane. Maybe this will be in V10? Or on the wishlist? This may seem like a picky issue, but not to my bosses. They care for the life expectancy of their VMC's and all that rapiding in Z (maybe 1000's per night for deep ribs) can damage the Z ways over time. Anyway, plunging instead of rapiding saves a great deal of time & $. So instead of coming in in the AM and seeing your ribbing tool still going up & down, you could be finished and ready for the next operation. Thanks for the info mill, Phil

My boss is a SW user but he said he has had trouble with splitworks. Among others, it wouldn't allow the application of draft along stepped surfaces, which shouldn't be too difficult.

We do a lot of ribbing ( that is, cutting of deep ribs). 2D contour work great with the ramp option turned on so it zig zags and plunges down in Z at the feed rate to the next Z level rather than rapiding up a million times. However for 3D contours, the ramp option is greyed out. Is there a way to activate the ramp option or to plunge in Z at plunge rate for 3D contours? If not will this feature be included in version X? Thank you for all the ribbing

Thanks all I'll try out Mold Plus. If it can help in the laborious process of separating cores & cavity and redesigning poorly designed un-moldable parts, then it's a winner. That process involves changing draft angles, adding seal-off and shut off details, getting rid of corner fillets (for machinable line geometry) etc. I now use MC solids to trim a mold base to a sheet solid. To automate the surface picking process, can I select all surfaces from a top view and change the color? Can I do this in MC or do I need Moldplus for this?

Thanks all I'll try out Mold Plus. If it can help in the laborious process of separating cores & cavity and redesigning poorly designed un-moldable parts, then it's a winner. That process involves changing draft angles, adding seal-off and shut off details, getting rid of corner fillets (for machinable line geometry) etc. I now use MC solids to trim a mold base to a sheet solid. To automate the surface picking process, can I select all surfaces from a top view and change the color? Can I do this in MC or do I need Moldplus for this?

See my "painful" comments on your reply to my last entry. Boy is this forum addictive. I was supposed to go to bed 2 hours ago cause I get up at 5AM. When my boss sees the red eye, I'll blame it on Mastercam!

Thanks for the pain. I just did a search on moldplus while waiting for replys and found the opinions here is that it kicks xxxx. I may want to go that route. Do you know if it works with solids (or will in the future)

Yes I just did a fresh install of 9.1 sp2. When I installed to a mcam9.1 folder with the old mcam9 directory still in the root, it dumped the mcam.cfg and a bunch of other files in the mcam9 folders. I uninstalled everything and 9.1sp2 works like charm!

Anyone have mold designing experience in splitting cores and caviities to design a mold from a part. Do you have better results in solids, surfaces or wireframe? Do you find MC solids robust enough to do the job with complex parts? Anyone using Moldplus? A big hello to my buddies here and a thank you for answering my little flurry of questions. I'ts a bit late now and I start work at 7 AM so I guess I'll be back on this forum tomorrow. Thanks again, Phil

When I bring a solid part into MC and I want to get rid of (or change) some of the fillets I found that the "find features" operation usually doesn't find many fillets. Especially the fillets along tangencies. Is there a way to select and remove all the fillets even the tangent ones?

The model seemed stable after I added a 5 deg draft to a couple of walls. The solid manager did not report any problem or unstable solids. However when I reopened the file, all the operations performed after this drafting operation were "X-ed" out and placed after "stop Op" and I lost all the work I had done this afternoon. The error message read that it couldn't recognize the draft face, couldn't regen operations - something like that. Please advise.

Thanks Rekd & others. The Ramp option works great. Most importantly it plunges down at the plunge rate and feeds across boths ways back & forth! But the ramp option doesnt work with 3D contours which is ultimately what I need. But thanks again for the great tips! Phil

By trial & error I found it! Create a vertical ruled surface following the contour with a check surface on the bottom and drive a surface finish toolpath bounded on one side of the surface with "stock to leave" set to .001 smaller than the radius. It works! But I wish I could do this more simply with 2D contours. Will this feature for rib cutting be in Version X? Anyone know?? Phil

Thanks Crazy, but I looked at your file and it still retracts and rapids over to the start point even though it ramps down between each z level. I need a two-way contour going back and forth in the material so as to avoid extra time retracting and rapiding back to start point. Zig-zagging in Z. Any other suggestions? Phil

I need to create a bidirectional contour toolpath with multiple depth cuts. In other words one way contouring is: plunging down, feeding across the chained geometry in one direction then retracting up to clearance and then rapid to start point and repeating until it reaches the final depth. Bidirectional is: plunging down feeding one direction along geometry and then plunging down at plunge rate to the next depth specified in depth cuts and feeding back in the other direction and "zig-zagging" until it reached the final depth. Can this be done in MC? Can it be done with 3D contours? I tried it with 'keep tool down' but it didn't work. Thanx Phil

Thanks Zero, I'll have to try it. But I've often used regular Surface Project to project a 2D contour or pocketing toolpath down onto a set of contoured surfaces. It has always worked beautifully. For engravings and such I would usually do a spiral pocket routine working from the inside out and project it. How is Project Blend different? Happy Holiday Phil

As a daily user of both MC and Powermill, if I tell you the truth, I may loose some friends here. Anyway, here's the low-down for an objective evaluation: Actually they are both great systems in their own unique way. Powermill rips, theres no doubt about it. For speedy calculations of scallop and other fine finishing toolpaths there is nothing in the world that compares. What takes 10-20 minutes in MC may take only 1/2 a minute in PM. No kidding! PM has the greatest toolpath editing features - instantanoeous on-the-fly boundary, planar and sketched toolpath editing - it outperforms MC's toolpath editor hands down. For 3D collapse rest machining boundary control it works for any and all surfaces I've encountered by creating my own rest boundaries. PM also can work on combinations of STL and nurbs surfaces at the same time. But PMill can't perform 2D & 2-1/2D well at this time. MC can copy and array multiple toolpaths while PM can only copy one-by-one. MC can combine 2D and 3D operations which obviously can't happen in PM. MC has vastly more features for precision control, surface selection, geometry manipulation, etc. PM is vastly more expensive and combined with the CAD part, Powershape (which is excellent for surface creation) is very 'high-ticket'. Hope this helps in your evaluation and in MC's improvement. BTW, I just discovered point filtering which greatly cuts time and file size in MC's 3D toolpaths. Phil

Zero babe, Your gonna suck me back in here again which might cost me my marriage this time. What is "Project Blend" and where can I find it? It sounds sweet! Phil

So sue me! Sorry I have been incommunicado for the past 6 months, but I wanted to share some great finds with all my buddies here. I had been getting file sizes of 50, 100, and one over 400MB and code files up to half that size, when I invoked the great "Scallop Finishing Toolpath", mankind's greatest invention since the wheel. My tolerance setting are usually .0005 and stepovers of .005 to .010. When I changed the default collapse resolution of 80% to 50% or finer, the toolpath would come out much smoother, but the files would be even larger. Then my MC distributor, Cimquest turned me on to point filtering the 2nd greatest invention. Now I filter to .001 or 2:1 and files are now smaller than 1/4 of the size!!! Phil

Hi Elad, Been so busy with OT and other things that I haven't been on the MC forum for the past 6 months. How are you??? I thought you were called up for active duty. Please email me. Lots of things happening. Will talk. Phil [email protected]

Mickey, Creating a lofted surface from a parralel finishing toolpath backplotted and saved as geometry?!? Wow, it seems as if you're trying to bail out the ocean with a thimble! When I was designing molds, I was presented with similar problems. I would get a solid part or finished part surface and had to design the core and cavity or a Vacuum forming tool from it. Sounds like you're gig is something like making a vac form tool. If you cant offset the surface to the desired wall thickness a more reasonable and direct approach than turning the STL into surfaces is to try to create a solid from your original surface and then shell it out to the desired wall thickness and then toolpath it. If it's possible to enclose the original surface into a "mold base" or block to create a "watertight" boundary, then you can stitch it into a solid in V9 or in many other CAD systems. Once you have a solid, it's easier to shell and manipulate to your final size. Hope this gives you some food for though Phil

Hi Jay, Are you saying that you can do all these things with V9? Or are they available in 8 and I'm just missing them? Let me back up a sec, I can do all these things, but in a round-about way. Say I want to split a model, I would make a copy and extrude cut one side, and then the other in the copy. So you are saying I can do this quickly with a line or plane in V9? I can't creat a disjoint body by either extrude cut or boolean subtract in V8.1.1. Are you saying I can do this in V9? And then make them separate solids? Thanks for the tips. Yes....Yes... I know I gotta keep buggin my boss to get V9 already! Phil [ 03-18-2002, 09:36 PM: Message edited by: Phil Orenstein ]

I enjoy the simplicity and intuitiveness of MC's solid modeler. But I find it missing some useful basic features coming from a background in AutoCAD solids and MDT. Are these features in V9 or coming out in the future or did I miss them now in 8.1.1? 1. Splitting a solid by a line or plane or by curves, lines and arcs. 2. Copying or moving a feature, boss or hole etc. on the solid model to another position on the same face or different face. 3. Extending a face 4. Separating a solid model composed a non-contiguous parts into separate solids. 5. How is the surface stitching function in V9? Has anybody tried it yet? Thanks in advance for your answers. Phil Orenstein

Thanks for clarifying this. At our shop we try to get AI files from the customer because they contain the vector outlines. But when we have to deal with jpgs gifs and tifs, we use the raster image as a reference for drawing the vector outline in Illustrator. Raster 2 Vector seems like a good approach. I wonder if Engrave chook works better with raster images as you previously said it does with importing vector geometry from AI or EPS files as in the case of the Corvette logo. How does Raster 2 Vector work? Do you import the raster file (jpg, bmp etc) into MC and R2V then gives you the resultant edges as tiny lines ? Phil