Mastercam 8 Common Functions 1 Mill Tools 3 Lathe Tools 5 Dimensioning & Programming 7 Drawing & Dimensioning Grading 9 The objective of this handout is to familiarize you with Mastercam, and provide a quick reference to some of the features. Some useful info to help streamline your experience: • The underlined letters in the menu words are “hot” keys for the particular function. You may navigate the menus from the keyboard while drawing the geometry with the mouse, it is very efficient running Mastercam this way. • It is a good practice to turn on the number pad since we are keying in values frequently. • “Auto-cursor” snaps to end points, midpoints, and centers of entities. • Right clicking the mouse displays a drop down menu of common functions. You can shut off auto-cursor from this menu. Sometimes auto-cursor is too sticky when entities are close together. • You do not need to be too accurate selecting entities. The cursor is sensitive enough to select an entity without needing to be right on top of it. • Selection of entities using “polygon” instead of “window” is useful when the entities you want to select surround other entities that you do not want. This feature allows you to create a random shaped “selection window” around the particular entities that you want. • ALT-W turns on viewports. This is useful for viewing the top view, front view, and an isometric view all at the same time, especially when backplotting a toolpath to see the Z depths and tool movement. Viewports can also be accessed from the Main menu through the Screen menu, Next menu, Viewports button. • ALT-H displays a help window for the current function you are working with. • The functionkeysare also very useful. Allowing youtoturnonthe axes,zoom, unzoom, fit, and other functions without needing to use the mouse. 2.008 Design & Manufacturing II 1 Mastercam 8 Used by permission from CNC Software, Inc. For educational use only, not to be copied.Commonly used function keys: F1: ZOOM F2: UNZOOM F3: REPAINT F9: SHOW X0, Y0 AXES ALT F1: FIT ALT F2: UNZOOM by .8 ALT F3: CURSOR TRACKING F10: KEY ASSIGNMENTS LIST The button bar across the top has most of these functions. Trimming Always select the portion of the entity you want to keep. The portion of the entity on the other side of the intersecting entity will disappear, resulting in trimming the portion you click, to the intersecting entity. Follow the prompts at the lower left of the screen. Level Main and Visible are most commonly used. Creating your geometry on level 1, and drafting on level 2 works well. You can then make your drafting invisible when you run toolpaths. Color This displays the color pallet for changing the colors of entities. The system defaults to green (#10) for geometry. It also uses certain colors for showing that you have selected an entity, or for showing a result of a transform. Toolpath feed moves are blue (#11). When you perform transform function, the system identifies the selected entities as a “group” with the color red (#12) and identifies the transformed entities as a “result” with the color purple (#13). Group and result designations are saved with geometry. Rapid movements of toolpaths are yellow (#14). A selected entity is white (#15). Geometry brought in from Pro Engineer, or Solidworks may be white, change it to green so the color white can be used as intended. If you want to change the default color it is suggested that you use colors other than 10 - 15 to minimize confusion. Branch Points Branch points are located where the endpoints of three or more entities meet. Branch points are not automatically created at intersections. You must break the entities to make them branch points. To create a branch point, use the Modify, Trim, or Modify, Break functions. Drafting Globals Use this to alter the way dimensioning is displayed. To get to the screen, from the Main Menu go to Create, Drafting, Globals. It will display screens for altering drafting settings. See Dimensioning, and Editing dimensions on page 7. 2.008 Design & Manufacturing II 2 Mastercam 8 Used by permission from CNC Software, Inc. For educational use only, not to be copied.Mill Tools Tools Manager lists all the tools in the tool library, or in your current job. The tools in the Trktools library are the available tools we have setup for the EZ-Trak mills. Clicking on the column headings will sort the list. Generally you will only be accessing this list to get a tool to use. Double clicking on a tool will bring up a graphic display of the tool, showing its length, diameter, and clearance, along with the holder dimensions. Parameter screens allow the editing of how the tool is to be used, such as depths of cut and step-over amounts for roughing as well as speed and feed for the tool to use. These are already setup to fairly good values to minimize tool breakage. Please refrain from editing the tools; if you believe you may have altered one by mistake please let us know so we can refresh it. 2.008 Design & Manufacturing II 3 Mastercam 8 Used by permission from CNC Software, Inc. For educational use only, not to be copied.Mill Job Setup It is important that the toolpath configuration list has the boxes checked as they are in this screen shot. It is not necessary to fill out the X, Y, Z fields. Most important is that you do not want to assign tool numbers sequentially. If they are assigned sequentially the machine will pick up the wrong tools. Open this window when you first start Mastercam Mill. From the Main Menu, Toolpaths, Job Setup. 2.008 Design & Manufacturing II 4 Mastercam 8 Used by permission from CNC Software, Inc. For educational use only, not to be copied.Lathe Tools Lathe Tool Manager lists all the tools in the tool library, or in your current job, depending on what screens you have opened you will get either one or the other. The tools in the Ltools library above, are the available tools we have in our machine. Hovering the mouse over a tool will display a pop-up graphics view of the tool to aid in choosing the correct tool. Clicking on the column headings will sort the list. Turning off the filter will show all the tools. Generally you will only be accessing this list to select a tool to use. Highlighting a tool by clicking it once, then clicking OK, will select the tool for the operation you have chained. Double clicking on a tool opens the