I’m a Mastercam user. I've been using Mastercam pretty much everyday for the last year. Lately I'm spending most of my time programming in Mastercam X2 MR2. Mastercam has no graphical toolpath editing, it’s solid cut part rendering is horrible, it’s Machining Operations Manager often loses operations when you have many operations in it. Mastercam slows to a crawl as your file gets larger especially when you use Transform Toolpath. Mastercam's user interface is so bad that a dual monitor setup is mandatory. Even when you have dual monitors you can’t do something as basic as moving the Work Coordinates System Manager dialog box to the second monitor and you can’t leave it open. If you move the backplot dialog box to the second monitor it disappears. Same with the Chaining Manager dialog box. Mastercam is easily the market leading CAM system in the U.S. and yet its technology and user interface are third rate in many regards. I don’t do lathe work. I guess that's good because Mastercam doesn’t support verification of synchronized turrets.
Don’t get me wrong, Mastercam has got some very good features but it’s got a long, long way to go to be what it should be.
The best place to post a question and get help is unfortunately the e-mastercam forum. I say unfortunately because CNC Software, the owners/creators of Mastercam, has found a way to pretend the e-mastercam forum isn't their official forum. Unlike Delcam, who runs all their own forums (and does a great job of it!) CNC Software has their Canadian VAR In House Solutions run the Mastercam forum and what their web master has done is create a forum where he coddles and encourages cliques. Post what I have said above on E-Mastercam and your going to feel the wrath of the Mastercam clique gang of idiots that CNC Software secretly wants to protect Mastercam from legitimate criticism. Complain too loudly and you can bet your last dollar that the thread will be deleted or locked. Compare this to the Delcam forums where you can criticize their software products like FeatureCAM, Powermill and Powershape and never feel the wrath of a clique or Delcam!
To make it even worse our Mastercam VAR, San Diego CADCAM is absolutely horrible. Exorbitant prices, poor quality training, many companies I have spoken to have been left in the lurch with improperly developed post processors from San Diego CADCAM. No one I talk with has good things to say about San Diego CADCAM. Naturally you can't complain about your VAR on E-Mastercam because it's against the rules. How convenient.
If you’re a new Mastercam user there are some alternatives to dealing with these clique idiots and getting quality help for a piece of software that's far from perfect and needs better documentation and videos done for it.
This guy teaches Mastercam and his videos are free. Great for the newbie:
http://eapprentice.net/lessons.html
Jayson Kramer posts as cadcam at www.cnczone.com in the Mastercam section of CNC Zone and often makes free videos. His videos are first rate. You will have to put up with lots of ads at CNC Zone as the owner is a whore who views advertisers rather than posters as his first priority. Don't even think about posting legitimate criticism of a company advertising on CNC Zone. Especially if it's BobCAD more correctly known as BobCRAP.
Mike Mattera's training CD's are first rate. He use to work for a Mastercam VAR but it should come as no surprise CNC Software found away to screw him over and he now sells Edgecam.
http://www.tipsformanufacturing.com/html/mcam_prdt_orders.html
Steve Arteman has just started making Mastercam training CD's. Steve is a very knowledgeable user. I don't own any of his Mastercam training but intend to purchase his surfacing CD soon. Steve Arteman also sells Mike Mattera's Mastercam CD's.
http://www.cad2cam.net
If you don't have the Mastercam Getting Started Guide I highly recommend you print out the Getting Started Guide .pdf like I did and spiral bind it. Well written and lots of good info.
Have an issue that you want CNC Software to fix/know about in Mastercam X2 MR2? Leave a comment and if it's a legitimate issue I'll add it to the list and give you credit. There is no doubt that CNC Software is reading this blog along with all the idiots who make e-mastercam the clique that it is. Just remember, the blame starts at the top with CNC Software who condones this nonsense to protect themselves from users who have every right to be pissed off.
Monday, May 12, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Man your so right!! Finally, thought I was the only one who felt about masterramp (ramp=disaster in dutch)this way.
They managed to let you pay 1500 euro's in a year and the only thing they do is fixing bugs that should be already be fixed.
They only care about how "windows"looking mcam is but it's just the old version in a new jacket. The chaining is hardly visible, the interface old fashion and not intelligent. You can't change common settings (like rotate, every time it's on copy instead of move). It remember things you don't want it to remember and visa versus.And the only thing you see on the website is that they are the world leading camware. May be they mean crapware?
With 4 seats of Mastercam X2 MR2 SP1, all on different hardware, all of us experience the following problem even with very small files:
Mastercam will fail to regenerate a dirty machining operation and put the user into a wait mode. It will allow us to save the file but regeneration of the dirty machining operation won't work. Finally, the machining operation will regenerate after you have wasted a fair amount of time waiting and trying to regenerate it. During this time Mastercam appears to be hunting for something.
Closing and restarting doesn't help. I'm going to try rebooting my machine tomorrow if it happens to see if it's any better. The problem is random and not repeatable. Sometimes I can go all day with no problem. Sometimes it happens 20 times a day.
I'm really hoping that Mastercam X3 has a much more robust Machining Operations Manager than Mastercam X2 MR2 SP1.
I agree with you completely about chaining being hardly visible! I believe the problem lies with Mastercam's graphics engine which I think really sucks. I constantly have to refresh the screen or Pan to get the wireframe to redisplay properly. There is no excuse for the poor quality of graphics in Mastercam. Most applications with good quality graphics license Techsoft 3D HOOPS but CNC Software doesn't seem to think good quality graphics are important.
If you get a chance I would appreciate if you visit my new blog at:
http://jonbanquer.wordpress.com/
and post this comment because I think others need to read what you have to say.
Thanks again for taking the time to post what it's like for you to use Mastercam. I appreciate it.
Jon Banquer
San Diego, CA
Post a Comment