Mastercam 2023 Released?

[gcode]

That was nothing on the V5 release. There were times when you would start it, and it would hang, and then crash. There were graphics issues, and toolpath issues. It was a trainwreck. LOL

Didn't V5 have MCTV, the prelude to Verify?
I think it was a third party addon
I used V5 for 3 semesters at a local community college, but never did real work with it.
I bought Mill Level 2 and Lathe Level 1 in the later days of V7.
MCTV was gone by then.

I had so much trouble with V7 lathe they gave me a full seat of V8 beta with solids
just to shut me up.
The V7 beta cycle lasted nearly a year and my full ride seat of V8 died.

I was like a junky who had lost his dope.
I had to pull out the check book and buy a seat of Mill level 3, then a few months later
I bought the solids addon.

[TSmcam]

V9.1 SP2 MR0304 comes to mind.

V9.1 SP2 MR0304 was one of the most rock solid releases ever. I still have that installed on a notebook here somewhere.

[TSmcam]

Didn't V5 have MCTV, the prelude to Verify?
I think it was a third party addon
I used V5 for 3 semesters at a local community college, but never did real work with it.
I bought Mill Level 2 and Lathe Level 1 in the later days of V7.
MCTV was gone by then.

I had so much trouble with V7 lathe they gave me a full seat of V8 beta with solids
just to shut me up.
The V7 beta cycle lasted nearly a year and my full ride seat of V8 died.

I was like a junky who had lost his dope.
I had to pull out the check book and buy a seat of Mill level 3, then a few months later
I bought the solids addon.

Woah, that is a flashback! Yea, MCTV! It was a simulation module, I think done by a third party from up in CT somewhere, and it was horrible. About as useful as a bowler hat with sleeves.

Funny isn't it, looking at how far we have progressed.

[Brian]

Started with V4, then learned CADKEY sometime later.

Wow-CADKEY! My introduction to CAD was CADKEY7 running on a 100Mhz 486 with 20 MB of RAM! I think CK7 set me back $495 at the time (some sorta sale as I recall). I *vaguely* remember seeing an ad for it in the back of Machine Design magazine (or maybe it was Design News....?) and figuring that I ought to get going with this CAD stuff!

Once I got up to speed I really liked it, but it was a little challenging at first as I had just about ZERO experience with PC's. I remember they provided tech support thru a forum on Compuserve....dialup on a 14.4 modem, then 28.8, and then cooking with gas on a 56K!

Like Archie Bunker said: "those were the days!"

[Brian]

...an early customer (back when I was "cranking handles") happened to be a (ahem!) "non-licensed" CK user, and it turned out to be fortunate for both of us. I was reasonably proficient in CK by then (he struggled somewhat, and really wanted to stay on the board), and he liked that he could just give me his (unfinished) designs on a floppy and say "go make this" instead of having to do drawings, get quotes, etc. We'd discuss things, I'd detail stuff as needed, make parts and assemble things and we'd figure out if the contraption was going to work or not! Good times for the most part, punctuated by occasional bouts of "why did I ever think this was a good idea, anyway?"

I'm enjoying reading what you MC folks are posting about the early days....amazing how much better all of our tools are these days, but also that the work has gotten harder at the same time. Keeps you on your toes, certainly!

[Brian]

Off on a *slight* tangent, here's a link to an interesting site about the history of CAD:

http://images.designworldonline.com.s3.amazonaws.com/CADhistory/85739614-The-Engineering-Design-Revolution-CAD-History.pdf

The site was originally hosted at Cadhistory.net, but that link seems to have gone dead. Most of this stuff happened well before my time (thankfully!), but it's great to see how far things have come.

Cheers, Brian

[champshire]

My introduction to Mastercam was V9.1 i believe. It was used in a shop back when I started out of high school in 2003. I used it on and off for about 4 years until I changed jobs. Then it was 4 years of Featurecam. Started at my current job 11 years ago this month on X5. Been on every release since then.

It's funny, I found an old laptop at work with X5 still on it and opened it up a couple months ago. I looked at it and compared it to 2022 and said to myself "How did I even use this back then?" It's amazing how far things have come in just the last 11 years. We bitch about it, but it provides us a means to feed our family and keep a roof over our heads. When you step back in time and look it's a real eye opener for sure!

[Brian]

Yeah, it's amazing what you can get used to...you get the latest whiz-bang whatever, and you're amazed at how cool it is-and then a few years go by and you're so over it! Kinda amazing to see the stuff you can do with todays mid-range s/w, when 30 years ago you couldn't do this at all w/o a DOD sized budget!

[Jim at Gentex]

Yep.
I think everyone from my era had a set of CADKEY installation floppy disks at one time or another!

I started using Mastercam in the early 90's when we got our first CNC mill, a Fadal VMC 4020.
(btw... it's still here, and it still runs!)

But before that I ran manual machines.
I remember thinking CADKEY was the coolest thing back then because I could look at the CAD model of the part I was making on a manual Bridgeport mill and find angles and dimensions that weren't on the print with a few mouse clicks instead of doing the trig with a pencil & paper, and calculator. 

[gcode]

A blast from the past

This is an old thread from eMC, so old it predates the Off Topic forum and thus survived when Off Topic
was chucked down the memory well.

[JParis]

A blast from the past

This is an old thread from eMC, so old it predates the Off Topic forum and thus survived when Off Topic
was chucked down the memory well.

That was right about the I joined emastercam......sad, a few names there are no longer with us 

[gcode]

My first programming software was PencilCam aided by an HP RPN calculator.
I had some macros worked up for it that solved bolt circles and arc endpoints
for hand coding endmill tool paths

Then it was Anicam 1.0 which ran on an NEC workstaion, 12" four color screen, two 8" floppies
64K of ram and no mouse. All inputs were done with keyboard. I bought it used for $300.
One disk was for data storage and the second ran the executable. The second disc wore out
frequently and I eventually scrapped it when I could no longer buy 8" floppies.

I moved on to Anicam 2.0 which ran on an IBM PC, it had a mouse and a real color monitor!!
Tek Soft was next. It became Procad which I believe is still around.
By this time I was taking Mastercam V5 at a local community college but I never used V5 in a work environment

In the late 90's Procad started buying their code from India and Procad 97 was an unusable crash fest.
While struggling with that mess I was invited to a V8 rollout event and ended up buying an entry level version
of V7. Over a couple of years I upgraded the seat to Mill L3/Lathe L1 with solids. I've been with Mastercam ever since.

[Leehound]

The first cad/cam I used in the early nineties was Powerstation. Its still being sold: Powerstation

Not much has changed other than going from DOS to Windows based.
I think I found it from an ad in the back pages of Modern Machine Shop, also MSC used to sell it.

[CNCAppsJames]

I remember that thread... Nobody from CNC ever did chime in and give us a version timeline.

[Jeff]

I'm still waiting for my "Free Swag".