Hi,

First a bit of background: I'm using Solidcam 2015 in Solidworks. I have a lathe with an 8 tool turret, and I've created a matching vmid and machine description xml in machsim - I've been careful to make sure all the coordinates, axes etc match. When I simulate a CAM operation in machine simulator, everything looks ok, but all the tools are modelled with the cutting tip at the same point (where I've specified the station coordinates in Machine ID Editor and where I've put the tool in the machine simulation editor). This is what I'd expect, but I want to be able to offset the tools from these locations to reflect the geometries of the different tools.

I've tried editing the tool mounting (Tool Table -> Mounting -> Tool tip position), but if for example I add a 20mm offset, in machine simulation the tool is shown in exactly the same position in the turret, but the tool now performs the cutting operations 20mm away from the part. In other words the machine simulation doesn't seem to be aware of the offset. Any idea what I might be doing wrong? I can alternatively solve the problem by hardcoding the tool offsets in Machine ID Editor and in the machsim xml file, but this seems very clunky, and I'd have to edit both whenever I change a tool - I'm sure there must be a better way!

Any suggestions are gratefully received.

Thanks,

Luke

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