So where do you start to learn post editing?

[Gouge]

we have a few posts we got from our dealer many moons ago. They work but there are some quirks I'd love to edit out. I'd love to call our dealer but I'm not authorized, in fact there isn't even a phone in the CAD room and the only one who has one is the Dept manager. the last thing he wants to have to do is call to get a post modified so that we no longer have to spend a few minutes editing headers, and in certain instances, do a quick find and replace. So where do I find reference material do help me under stand what I'm looking at when I open a copy of the post in word pad? I took C++ a long time ago in school so i understand a bit about structures, but when I look at the post text is is all greek to me.

PS Still using V9, but the boss claims we'll be getting X soon.

[JIMMY]

You could ask in this forum for help by posting what you want to be fixed. That would get you going at work and than find some materail on posts. I will try to find some information on post help.

[Gouge]

I'll get some samples of the gcode output from work tomorrow. Then i can show/ ask what i need to change it.

thanks

[JROM]

It's easy to change the MC posts.
Pick the one that is closest to what you want and save a copy under another name. (DON'T MESS WITH THE ORIGINAL)
Then you can go in and start to flip some of the switchs and see what happens. Just get a simple operation that you know well and keep posting it over and over while you tweek your COPY of the post file.
I think 0 is off and 1 is on. I would also recomend that you only change one thing at a time so you see what the effect is on the G code.
Good Luck

[gearsoup]

^^^^That's what I've been doing all morning. I "think" I've finally gotten it to a point I'm satisfied with......

[Rekd]

Originally Posted by gearsoup ^^^^That's what I've been doing all morning. I "think" I've finally gotten it to a point I'm satisfied with......

Make sure you do one thing at a time then test it. If you change a bunch of stuff at once and something goes bad...

[gearsoup]

that's what I meant. Lot of stuff to go through. It helps when you have a large widescreen monitor. Big enough to run MCAM, post a program, and edit the post...

[Mike Mattera]

If your post is real old it may be a good idea to start with one of the newer posts that come with Mastercam, and use that as the "base" starting point. Your old post may be missing a lot of functionality that would be hard to add later (subs, rotary, etc...).

Mike Mattera

[ttx336]

Originally Posted by JROM It's easy to change the MC posts. Pick the one that is closest to what you want and save a copy under another name. (DON'T MESS WITH THE ORIGINAL) Then you can go in and start to flip some of the switchs and see what happens. Just get a simple operation that you know well and keep posting it over and over while you tweek your COPY of the post file. I think 0 is off and 1 is on. I would also recomend that you only change one thing at a time so you see what the effect is on the G code. Good Luck

I have done a lot of post editing in my time and I have had the benefit of taking a course many years ago from a company called Automation Intelligence for their Intellipost. I have been able to apply much of that knowledge to Mastercam posts and I also have had the benefit of training in C (C+ and ++ weren't even out then!), Pascal and Assembler to help with structure. I am curious, though, to know if y'all agree with this method of beginning a "new" post. Is it really as simple as JROM says? You just copy an existing post to a new name?

JROM: I really like your advice to leave the original and to only change one thing at a time. That really helps.

Also there is a very helpful publication that is also very hard to obtain called the MP Post Processor Online Reference Guide. That guide lists all of the data types, gives the NCI file G-codes (not machine G-codes) and so much more. Mine is for version 9 and much has changed so it is hard to apply sometimes so if anyone knows if there is a later version out please let us all know. This is, or was at least, only available on DVD and had to come from the dealer.

Don't get this confused with the Post Parameter Reference Guide, which outlines the changes from version 9 and is listed on Mastercam's website under Documentation.

By the way, speaking of Mastercam's Documentation, why is there no link to download the version 10 stuff? It tells you that it is only available in pdf but I don't see any way to get it.

[cnc-king]

the pdf is in your help menu
access the reference guide from your help menu

[ttx336]

Originally Posted by cnc-king the pdf is in your help menu access the reference guide from your help menu

Wow, I sure didn't know that! You are exactly right, I looked in the Help menu and the bottom selection is for the Reference Guide, but what I never noticed before is that if I click on the Contents (top) selection and choose the Mastercam Documentation link it directs me to the c:\mcamx\documentation directory. Though there is no direct reference to the MP Post Processor Reference Guide (which is why I never picked up on it before I guess) I navigated to the MP Post Reference directory and saw all of the pdfs that I recognize from the DVD. I still don't quite understand how the index is supposed to work, though. I couldn't get it to work in the DVD either so I just open the pdf for the appropriate section.

Thanks for the help!