Hello everyone. I am running Solid Works 2011. Why can"t I open the solid parts directly while in Master Cam? I used to be able to and now it says " can not find parasolid data in SolidWorks file. I am still running MasterCam X4. Too busy to load 5 I hope that is not the issue.
Thanks in advance.
I hate to hear that Fred. But at least I have my health..... Thanks for the answer
Pretty much anything is more advanced than Mastercam.
Jon Banquer
San Diego, CA
Were you using an older version of SW when it worked before? I ask because your X4 might not open SW2011 files.
so you would need an update for your X4 to open them. I have the same issue with Surfcam, then I go to their site and download there patch for the newer SW.
John,
Could be due to the newer parasolid version in SW2011. I know we have issues at times when the parasolid version is much higher than the MasterCam version. I only export parasolid files (do not send native SW files) to the shop but it gives me the same message. If you are sending them as parasolid try setting your parasolid output version back to and earlier version I keep mine set at 12.
MasterCAM X4 will not open native SW 2011 files, you need X5. But, as others said, just save as a parasolid and you are good to go.
I'm able to open SolidWorks 2012 files with Mastercam X5. Mastercam X5 was released before SolidWorks 2012 was available. The reason I think I'm able to do this is because SolidWorks 2012 is installed on the same machine. Maybe this will work for X4 and SolidWorks 2011 if they are both installed on the same machine?
Not sure how much any of this really matters in the real world because, at least for me, Mastercam usually ends up coughing up a hair ball and won't regenerate the solid. This applies to any part that has anything other than the simplest history tree. To deal with this nonsense I have to use the Mastercam No Hist C-Hook to dump the history. When it becomes a dumb solid all my solid problems in Mastercam magically go away.
As a side note:
I've yet to figue out how Mastercam For SolidWorks can even be a SolidWorks gold partner. Integration of Mastercam into SolidWorks is horrible and after all these years Mastercam lathe and wire are still not available in Mastercam For SolidWorks.
SolidWorks 2012 has been available for months and Mastercam X6 For SolidWorks is still not even released yet.
Jon Banquer
San Diego, CA
Bad news, you will have to save your part in a parasolid file or STL and bring it in to MasterCam that way. We had the same problem and it became such an operational deficiency we replaced MasterCam X3 with Solidcam. SolidCam is so much more advanced than MasterCam its not even funny, the tight integration is proving itself to be a key asset to our product development.