Tech Tips

The Mastercam Launcher utility helps you set up desktop icons and give them special properties. If you work in a company using a Network license of Mastercam this will help ensure that you activate only the licenses you need while leaving others available on the system. To access this utility, go to the Start menu/All Programs, and find the Mastercam Program Group. Inside here, look for the Mastercam Launcher icon. You may find the icon in a subfolder labeled Utilities in earlier versions of windows. Note there are two primary areas of the launcher window: the upper portion designates what Platform (for example Lathe or Mill) is available for checkout. This also will determine what product level, such as Mill 2D or Mill 3D is to be used, and if that item is to be suppressed, made available, or made active at startup. Once you have your products and levels selected, you can move on to the Add-on section and set what licenses you want to have checked out when you use this shortcut. Options like Art, Mill Turn, and Productivity + can be enabled in here. Then you go to the middle of the page and select the Create [...]

Did you know that you can export your lathe tool assemblies from Machining Cloud and turn them into 3D Tools in Mastercam? Well, you can and this article will show you how to do it. First, go into the Machining Cloud app and then into the My Workshop section. From here, select the My Tools tab up at the top. In here you will be able to find all of your tool assemblies that you have created. Once you find the tool that you want to create in Mastercam, just select it and go to the Download Model option, then select the 3D Rendered Model selection. Next, go into Mastercam and launch the Lathe package. From here, click on the Turning tab at the top and then into the Lathe Tool Manager. Now you can right-click and select the Create 3D Tool option. This will now launch the new 3D Lathe Tool Manager and allow you to import your STP Models into the software. After going through the handful of steps of importing your insert and holder you will get a true rendering of your tool. In this new tool design manager, you can set the orientation of the tool in the [...]

This article will explain how to rename your linked machine files in Mastercam 2019. The MD_CD_PST_Rename C-Hook will automatically make backups of your original files and update the links between the new files that it creates. Here’s how it works . . . In this example, we have a set of machine files loaded in Mastercam. Imagine that your shop has three similar machines with slightly differing attributes. You can use the renaming utility to make three copies, then edit each one to have the unique properties that you want. First, go to Home/Add-ins/Run Add-in. A file open dialog opens pointing to C:\Program Files\Mcam2019\Chooks folder. Scroll down and select the MD_CD_PST_Rename.dll and click OK. Next, a caution panel pops up to assist with backup files. Since you already loaded a machine in the Mastercam file, that machine and its component files are shown in the source panel on the left. But, you could easily browse to any other machine, or machine type that you might want. The right panel has three boxes you can click in to set the names for the new copies. Note that you can click the configuration button at the upper right to set the data [...]

This article will cover how to install your new custom post processors in Mastercam. When you receive your new post processors from Cimquest they will be sent to you with a zip file and you will need to download that zip file to a convenient location on your hard drive. After you have this file downloaded, double-click on it to extract the files in order to see the components of your new machine and post-processor set. From here you will have a Control Def, a Machine Def, and a couple of post processor files that will all need to be placed onto your system correctly. Next, you will need to go to the Public Documents section of your computer. The location for your Public Documents drive is C:\Users\Public\Documents. From here you will be able to access the shared Mcam2019 folder. Now you need to make sure to place your files in the correct location. Your Machine Definition and Control Definition will both be selected copied and pasted into the CNC_MACHINES location. Now that these files have been placed you can go back and place the post files into the location that they need to go. The post files are located [...]

There have been some enhancements to the tools that make use of the dynamic gnomon in Mastercam 2019. In previous versions, some visual attributes could be altered, but the display would not preview your changes. Now in 2019, all changes preview instantly and a new plane grid viewing option has been added. After you launch the Dynamic Planes tool, left-click once to set the tool down in space. Right-click on a segment of the gnomon and the Gnomon Settings dialog box opens. Dragging on the Gnomon size slider will instantly show a preview in the graphics window. If you activate the new Show Plane option and toggle its secondary option to Show Grid you will see how these functions also offer a real-time preview on changes. Since these are global settings they can be adjusted anytime in any tool that uses the dynamic gnomon, like Dynamic Planes, Dynamic Transform, and Edit Plane from the Planes tab. These new features make an already powerful tool even more user-friendly and adaptable. Please be sure to sign up for our 2 Minute Tuesday video series to receive tips and tricks like this one in video form every week. More info at the button [...]

There is a new easy way to scale Mastercam solids, surface, and wireframe models from Metric to Inches and vice versa. This article will explain how to do it. Let’s start out with a basic Parasolid file in inch units (shown above). After using Analyze Distance, we can see the part size is 19.7. Now, we can go to the Transform tab, select the Scale function and select our model. There are two settings that help make the conversion. First, we should make sure that our style of scaling is set to Uniform. This applies the scaling uniformly across the part instead of different values for different axis. Next, under the Uniform section, there are three icons across the bottom of our scale. The first one is for Metric Conversion, the second is for Scaling to Inch Units, and the last one opens up the Scale Calculator. These options are only in the Uniform style of scaling. In older versions, we would have to type 25.4 into the scaling to convert the size to metric for us. Now, all we have to do is select the Metric Scale option and now this part automatically converts from 1.97 inches to the [...]

There’s a new function in Mastercam 2019 which will help you visualize part features with more clarity. Section View can be activated relative to any saved planes and you can choose multiple styles of display. You will notice some new icons in the Planes Manager and on the View Ribbon tab. If you click the drop-down arrow to the right of either icon you can see that section viewing can be applied to stock models, shaded entities, whether they be surface, solid or polygon mesh entities, wireframe geometry, and toolpath displays. Each of these can be activated or deactivated independently. The final option to Show Caps heals the section through. Next, to enable Section Viewing, simply check the box in the appropriate row for the plane that you want to use. When you click the Section View button the display updates instantly. Toggling the Show Caps option also instantly updates the view. Since View Sheets can capture all these settings it’s very easy to save and quickly recall highly customized snapshot of your working environment, showing sections through part geometry, toolpath, and stock models independently. You can even activate multiple planes to generate compound sections. As you can see, this [...]