[Gregore]

Does madcam have any preference for video card? Any that I should avoid? I do not see system requirements on the madcam web site.

[svenakela]

A real good one!
Rhino doesn't suffer too much from a standard video card but the cutting simulator is much better working with a good OpenGL card. I know there are a few that causes problem, you should send a mail to Joakim and ask.
In general, if you skip the mail, a good gaming card performs really well. if it causes trouble it will do so pretty right away and if that's the case just return it for a better one.

[Gregore]

Thanks , is joakim back yet? I was also wondering if madcam uses some of the video card for calculating tool paths . The reason I ask is I just got a new computer for the mill with the i5 chip and it seems to do tool pathing really slowly compared to my Mac that is using the first gen. Intel chip , but my Mac has a high end video card or high end at the time I bought it.

[svenakela]

I don't think the tool path generation is on the GPU at all, only the simulator. Check your settings, did you change the number of threads for calculations? Set it to the number of cores you have.

[Gregore]

I have it set to the core # , some thing else must be wrong a small part about the size of a dime with .o1 mm step over and using drive surfaces is taking about 45 minutes to do the tool path calculations my Mac was doing it in less than 10 minutes . Any one know if madcam was set up to use GPU calculations? If so I will spurge and get a nice tesla card from nvidia . The computer that I am using now has no video card , yet.

[svenakela]

There is only GPU involved when doing simulations. Trust me on this one.
Do you really have the same settings, tool tolerance, depth of cut etc?

Upload it somewhere so I can reach it or send an e-mail with the model to MadCAM, Joakim is back at the office.

[Gregore]

Joakim got back to me with some new settings for rhino and madcam , they helped a lot, now the tool pathing is down to a few minutes at most. Also it made a smoother cut surface. I was using the settings recomended in madcam.

[svenakela]

Joakim got back to me with some new settings for rhino and madcam , they helped a lot, now the tool pathing is down to a few minutes at most. Also it made a smoother cut surface. I was using the settings recomended in madcam.

And the settings are?..

[Gregore]

this is what he sent me. not sure why the 180 in the max angle window , but I went ahead and used that number , I had been setting 0 in the space.

[svenakela]

And don't forget to set the Rhino settings in your default template, they will otherwise jump back to the old values when you create a new model.

[Gregore]

yes they do keep going back to stock settings .... how do I save them as a default template?

joakim also added this this morning.




There are two things that will affect the accuracy in madCAM.

1) The mesh settings in Rhino. You can set the maximum distance edge to surface from 0.001 to 0.01mm.
In some cases, you can set the maximum edge length. By default this is set to 0, but you can set it to a value somewhere around half your cutter diameter.
This is to avoid visible facets on long shallow curved surfaces. You can preview the result in Rhino by using "flat shade" option when you render your part.

2) The tolerance that is saved with your cutter (0.001 to 0.1mm). If you set smaller tolerance, it will make smoother toolpaths, but it increases the calculation time.
For example: You can set 0.05mm for your rough cutters and 0.005 for your finest finishing cutters.

[Dan B]

Open a new empty file. Set your tolerances, then "save as template". You might want to organize a few default layers while you are at it.

Attachment 196358

Then when you open a new file, pick this new template and your settings will be there.

Dan

[svenakela]

...

Then when you open a new file, pick this new template and your settings will be there.

Dan

Or replace the default template when saving.

[Gregore]

thanks that will help.

another question: does the model need to be made with the desired mesh settings or just have the mesh settings correct when the tool pathing is made? I have a whole bunch of models from years ago that are with stock mesh settings.

[Gregore]

I think I figured out that old models open with their mesh settings , seems I can then change them to the new ones.

[svenakela]

Yep.

[AvB]

Does the "absolute tolerance" setting in the Units of Rhino Preferences have any effect on the accuracy of toolpaths, or cause problems if set too small? The recommended above is 0.01 but I followed someone's recommendation to tighten it up to .001 and I think it's been taking longer to do the toolpaths.

[Dan B]

It will definitely make your calculations faster if you use 0.01 instead of 0.001. Would it make a difference on the finished product? Yes, but it would be so subtle that it wouldn't warrant the increased processing time. I would stick to the tolerances outlined in the madCAM help file when setting up your template file.

Dan

[svenakela]

I agree with Dan, unless you have a temperature controlled room and a CNC grinder you will get nothing but a slow computer.