how to set the origin in Mastercam

[jchal3]

Hello everyone. I am not a cnc wizard by any stretch of the imagination. I have a cnc router that I like to mess around with, and am having a little bit of trouble. I use Mastercam to produce my g-codes, but I do all of my CAD work in Solidworks. I have recently learned that it is fairly easys to take a jpeg file, and convert it into a dxf file using adobe illustrator. The problem that I am having is that when I bring it into Mastercam to make the g-code I can't figure out how to get the origin to "attach" to one of the points of the dxf. When using solidworks, I just draw my part off of the origin and then it transports just fine, but with the illustrator drawings that have been converted to dxf, I haven't figured out how to do that. I'm am sure there is a simple solution to this problem, it has just escaped me to this point. Can someone please tell me how to attache the orign to a point in my dxf drawings?

Thanks for the help

[emonje]

<sorry, pressed submit twice, crappy net speed>

[emonje]

MC calls co-ordinate systems "view"s.

Assuming you're on MCX, use WCS (tab located in the lower left part of MC screen)--> View Manager-->Geometry. Then select two lines to define xy plane, i.e., your machine bed. Once you've done that you'll be given a small window asking for the name of the "view" that you just created. You can set the origin of the new "view" by clicking on the arrow button on this window.

Also be sure to turn Settings-->Config-->Screen-->Display WCS axes on so that you can readily see where your origin is.