Mastercam optimizing

[DaveSki]

I serched the forums but didn't find anything pertaining to this.

Ok at work we use a mixture of Mcam.. from 8, 9 and just upgraded to X2 design only.

We have 3 pcs useing Mcam8 mill 2 useing 9.1 and just buily a new system for our designer. He uses 9.1 design and mill and working on the switch over to X2 design.

So heres my question. Two of our pcs are a little on the low end older but do pretty good for toolpathing. I myself have been useing 8 for 3 years and 9 for the last year or so.

If you go to the screen configure screen under allocations, we have bumped the settings on that page. They did this before I started working at my current shop so so I assumed this was a benificial thing. We've been working with some rather large stl files lately and been having some memory allocation errors So this got me thinking.
Is there a benifit for changeing the allocation setting or a suggested setting..
any info on this would be helpfull. I'm mostly concerned about 8 and 9 for this as X2 is a new two us.

Ok question two.
As mentioned above I just built a new rig for our desinger.

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale 3.0GHz
Intel board
4gig PC2 6400 ram
120g sata 3 hd
250 sata 3 hd
MSI NX8800GTS 320M OC GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB 320-bit GDDR3 PCI Express video
Duel 22' LCD monitors
plus all the other bells and whistles cd dvd burners ect

With this system we have Mcam 9 design, mill and X2 design, we haven't used X2 enough to notice its only been installed a few days. The whole
system is only a week old. But anyways Mcam 9 acts sluggish and pauses alot on it. If you minimize it may take a minute to maximize it, or swicth to another program Rhino, MS word when you come back to MCam it freezes or pauses, repaints the current view.
I talked to our dealer, he suggested checking the mcam updates, we're running 9.1 MR0105, so thats good. He also suggested looking at the video card setting for optimizzing it to run wiht solid works but I don't see any opptions for this.
Any suggstions as for a fix?

I don't post here much but I do troll the forums alot. and enjoy all the information. Thanks in advance for any help.

[ObrienDave]

Having had to deal with Mcam since V6, I am going to try to help you.

Prior to McamX, Mcam is a resource HOG!
It will take over the computer.
On slower PC's, it does NOT like to have other things running. PERIOD!
I do not recommend running Solidworks or any other CPU intensive app at the same time as Mcam.
McamX is MUCH better at sharing CPU cycles with other programs.
As far as Mcam V8 or V9 settings go, my rule of thumb is...
50% physical memory for database.
25% physical memory for toolpath.
Above that it begins to choke.
In McamX you cannot allocate more than 50% physical memory. PEROID!
As far as large databases go I have one with toolpath that is over 650MB.
I have another database without toolpath that is over 825MB.
So, both will handle large files, if you play with the allocations a bit.

Good Luck!

[Mike Stevenson]

That's because Mastercam is a DOS program that doesn't have a clue what memory management is.

[Mike Mattera]

ObrienDave's advise is solid. If you parts ar only wireframe and not surfaces/solids you can even reduce the Database amount. I generally don't go over 70%. Total memory.

You have to leave some memory for Windows to run the PC.

Another thing: Probably wouldn't hurt to run a Disk Optimization. Sounds like this system has been in service for a while and I'm sure the files are scattered across the hard drive. Optimization will improce the access speed a little bit. Everything counts.

Mike Mattera