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CAD/CAM Mastercam’s “CAD for CAM” Design Tools Provide Flexibility and Ease of Use

By Niraj M Wanikar, Chief Editor, CNCTimes.com, 2018-05-01 13:18:00

Mastercam is known for precision NC programming, but it also delivers a suite of shop-tested design tools aimed at getting parts on and off the machine as quickly as possible. Powerful modeling tools include not only 3D surfacing and solids, but hole-filling, direct editing without a solids history, geometry repair, and much more.

Mastercam Design streamlines and simplifies modeling and editing geometry. It also supports advanced geometry creation, including solid modeling, hybrid machining, NURBS curves and surfaces, 2D and 3D associative dimensioning, surface extension, blending, trimming, splitting, variable filleting, solid modeling, and hybrid modeling to complete your jobs quicker and more efficiently.

A few new enhancements to Mastercam 2018 Design are:

Angle Sweep
To improve the creation of more complex wireframe functions and when creating or editing primitives, there are now on-screen sweep and rotate controls. These controls can snap to the AutoCursor positions of existing entities, including tangencies. Additionally, the controls recognize horizontal and vertical snap positions based on the gnomon orientation.

Solid Sweep
Solid Sweep has more options and controls, and now supports 3D Along curves in addition to 2D. New alignment options have been added to control the alignment between your profile and the Along chains. Profile geometry now easily runs along sharp corners, giving you greater flexibility and precision when modeling. If any sharp corners are encountered, Mastercam miters them.

Hole Axis
Hole Axis is now easier to use with a large number of holes, especially holes with matching diameters that are selected as a group. New Direction options allow you to change the direction of the holes easily, and new Orientation options determine the direction of the top of the holes.

Other Mastercam 2018 Design Improvements:

  • To make Roll and Unroll results easier to predict, a new gnomon-based rotation control is now available, allowing you to visually rotate the seam to see how geometry will respond, as well as snap to AutoCursor positions.
  • Easily translate from inches to millimeters, or from millimeters to inches, when using Scale.
  • Align Note is now available as a Drafting function, allowing you to move existing notes and labels in a way that is more organized and easier to read.

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