Sufcam 7.0 --> V3 --> V5.2

[chmillman]

Hi all,

Back in here after long, long time... Haven't used Surfcam in about 5 years now, left off with V3 when I changed jobs and didn't have a mill anymore. Now I do again, and since I'm now in a university environment I finally got an EDU copy of Surfcam to play with...

Anyway, funny and sad to see how some stuff (particularly UI) never changes... Still the same old:
Windows 3.1 style icons and dialogs
Non-modal dialogs for things like layers and Cviews
Awful display quality compared to most 3D programs
Inability to import things like layer names via IGES

(except for the first item, this is pretty much the same since I started, that is with Surfcam 7 in 1997... I think it got the toolbar icons with Surfcam 99 or 2000...)

OK, I got it for toolpath programming, but still... you would think that after all these years they would have paid a tiny it of attention to modernizing the UI... Most other CAM programs have. Oh well...

OK, to my questions... minor so far...

1) I cannot for the life of me get it to shade with wireframe. I get one or the other, but not both... any clues here? (I have Win Vista 64 with an i7 and a GTX 280 video card). I guess Surfcam doesn't use OpenGL anymore - it's now direct-x?

2) The "append" file setting in options does not seem to stick here - it always goes back to being blank... Known bug?

TIA, --ch

[moldcore]

Welcome back! Best advice I can give is to save often and exit and restart every couple of hours.

Hey if it isn’t broke why fix it? Or improve it? That seems to be Surfcams answer to everything.

There should be three icons on the tool bar for display mode. One for wire, one for shade with wire and one for just shade. If they’re not on your tool bar then I don’t know what to offer for advice since Surfcams tool bar is not customizable. Yes Surfcam uses DirectX.

I’m not aware of an “append” option under options. On the file open window there is a check box at the bottom. Are you saying that this box doesn’t stay checked? Mine does unless you exit Surfcam and restart.

Corrected:
Just checked this again and it's NOT staying checked. I thought I used this the other day and it stayed checked. Must be a bug.

[chmillman]

There should be three icons on the tool bar for display mode. One for wire, one for shade with wire and one for just shade. If they’re not on your tool bar then I don’t know what to offer for advice since Surfcams tool bar is not customizable. Yes Surfcam uses DirectX.

Yes, those are the ones, they're there, Wireframe and Shaded both work, the Shade+Wireframe one here also shows shaded, but I get no wireframe...

I’m not aware of an “append” option under options.

Options>Files>Paths... See attached image. You can set it to always/never or to remember the last setting with a default to checked or not checked when you start. This used to work the last time I used SC...

--ch

[moldcore]

The shade with wire will not show wires if there is no wireframe entities on the visible levels. It will not show the flow and edge lines of surfaces if that is what you’re looking for.
All the years I’ve used Surfcam I never noticed that option under the file paths option window before. But I can’t get it to stick either no matter what option I use. For me it’s best to leave it blank, I don’t want it to append my files 99% of the time anyway.

[chmillman]

OK, thanks, that answers my question... yeah, I was expecting it to show me the surface flow lines and edges... I was hoping it would work like Rhino... OK, I was dreaming...

In the deep, dark past, I always used it in wireframe only mode, but I thought I would like it better shaded now... given that I'm used to the killer surface display possibilities most 3D CAD programs now have.

As far as append goes,
I append stuff all the time - following is why... I don't use Surfcam for modeling (who could?), I use Rhino. For everything. I consider it a drawing interface for Surfcam. I have the model open in Rhino parallel to Surfcam and I do any mods in Rhino. Then it's one button poke in Rhino to send it out (IGES) and Open/Append in Surfcam to bring it in. It's almost copy/paste, except that Surfcam makes you poke several buttons that don't respond to keyboard input...

So in general I had IGES set to always append and SCPRT set to not...

Anyway, thanks for the answers, back to work, MPost is done, I'm ready to test...

--ch