I am not sure you actually can say Downloadable, but what….
CNC Software made there latest release in the Mastercam series available for download today on Mastercam.com……….Yep MastercamX4 is official. 6 month since MastercamX3 Maintenance Release 1, so what have CNC Software been up to these months?
Dynamic Gnomon
Starting out with the “What’s New” pdf, it is pretty clear what CNC Software is selling this release on, and from 1st look of things this is a enhancement. A 3D gnomon, triad or “What’s up, down, left and right” thing that you can use for translate and rotate geometry, but more encouraging it is the new way of setting Tool Planes, Construction Planes and as a Solidworks user, setting WCS (“Work Coordinate System”) looks like this could be the end of “Save As” Parasolid in Solidworks.
Wireframe Feature Recognition in Chaining This is the intelligent running in your software, you chain one shape and the software within user setup parameters such as Identical, smaller perimeter or bigger perimeter it will include those chains for you. I can see this being powerful on a big cavity mold where the WEDM programmer is sitting crossed eyed starring on the screen at similar shapes tossed in every direction.
The clean new windows came
As suspected the menus there was introduced in FBM and FBD back in August 2008 with MastercamX3 (called tree-style dialogs) is now standard for 2D Mill toolpaths. I am looking forward to explore these further, I’m not sure if you can call it an improvement but it defiantly have a more clean and wizard like feel to it.
The lathe department got……
The news is……..the capability to create a simple 2D turn profile from a complex Solid model. Control feedrate on the 1st plunge, Corner dwell on finish passes, and Multiple Chains Grooving Option plus more….
You can swing your router around…….. More control with Bump Nesting (a feature that also should be available in WEDM) it will let you copy, rotate, move and delete the part geometry within you nesting area, and also the cutoff nesting has gotten a Horizontal and Vertical control function.
Thread you WEDM and burn……….
Here I hope you got an Agie and are using Agievision because it has received its own customizable interface. Mastercam Wire will show familiar Agievision parameter pages, With this no Agie child will be left behind.
1st Impression
From a install standpoint everything went pretty smooth thanks to a sharp John Paris on emastercam.com who quickly got the steps for the post update documented.
I am looking forward to play a little more with the “triad gnomon” and go through some of the tutorials, and there will for sure come more from this side of the camp fire in regards to opinions about MastercamX4.
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