As I wrote back in early June when MastercamX4 hit the street (link= MastercamX4 is Downloadablde )that the new Dynamic 3D gnomon is going to be one of the new function that is going to carry the ship heavily loaded with expectations and maintenance fees. Yes I do actually like this function. Eliminating half a dozen of steps importing Solidworks files into Mastercam is worth a pad on the back to CNC Software.
Old School If you have not had the pleasure of upgrading to MastercamX4 and you would like to know how to import Solidworks into Mastercam without your model ending looking at you upside down, check out this previus blog post where importing into Mastercam was what we did Play-Good Part1, Solidworks into Mastercam
Punk Rock 2009 School….way…
Our 4axis tombstone drawn just as we like to view things in Isometric view in Solidworks 2009.
There is going to be enough of screen shots in this post, so I hope you forgive me for not include one of the “Open File => *.sldprt”.
You can quickly see that the imported Solidworks file is screwed in regards to viewing it in Isometric. Having you tombstone located correctly in regards to the planes you are going to knit toolpaths to is more than “Best Practice”. You will see that “Dynamic plans” is already cozy located on my ever growing “Right Click” menu. Want to customize your “Right Click” menu? Work Flow is THAT imporent!
As described in MastercamX4 is Downloadablde depending on where you pan you cursor over on the Dynamic 3D gnomon will activate different direction for the rotating axis and origin of rotation. We are 1st. going to snap the gnomon to origin, what was not lost doing import. Notice how our solid turns transparent for ease of working with the gnomon. 2nd. we are going to click the letter “Z” what will let us rotate that axis around the “X” axis and end up with the “Z” axis going through our tombstone and be center of rotation.
Next we are going to grab the “X”axis and spin it -90 degrees around the “Z”axis. This is going to give us our correct Work Coordinates, so now hit the “Green” check mark, and the “New View” dialog box greets us.
Name your newly created view and check “Set as WCS” (Work Coordinate System). Then click “Green” check mark and that opens up your View Manager.
Your new view is created and good to go, but just because we have a busy 4 sided tombstone we are going to snap our fingers and create the remaining planes needed for programing by clicking “Realetive…” and selecting the planes we want associated to our new view.
Our model is now sitting just as it should for ease of programing. CNC Software made things better. Creating reference coordinate system in Solidworks is not the biggest hazel, however this was something Mastercam needed to handle, and X4 does :-).