Whats New in Mastercam X3 Posts

This document is a companion to the main Whats New document. It covers changes to MP and your posts for
Mastercam X3.

Post enhancements
Post debugging changes
Enabling the debugger
Running the debugger
Change to Control Definition Manager

Changes to parameter output

New parameter read functions now available for X3
.OPS files no longer created
Nesting information output to NCI file
Additional machine definition information output to NCI file

Post enhancements
Mastercam X3 includes the following MP enhancements. Note that you do not need to update existing X2 posts
to use them with Mastercam X3.

Post debugging changes

The traditional post debugging switches such as fastmode$ are no longer supported. Instead, a new post
debugger is available.
The debugger is a separate, powerful program. Complete information on how to use it is available from the Help
menu when the debugger starts:

Enabling the debugger

The debugger button will not be available unless it is enabled in the MCAMX Control Panel Applet.
1. Start the Applet from the Windows Start menu:

2. Select the Enable Post Debugger option:

Running the debugger

To run the debugger, click the Debugger button in the Post processing dialog box:

Change to Control Definition Manager

The Control Definition Manager switch that supported fastmode$ has been removed.

Note: The fastmode$ variable is still available to support the post scaling options (scalex$, scaley$,
scalez$). Since the the control definition setting has been removed, you need to set the value in your .PST file;
for example, fastmode$ = no$.

Changes to parameter output

Operation parameters are no longer output in a fixed sequential order. This means that routines in your PST file
that depend on parameter output order can no longer be relied upon. This change will only affect a small
percentage of posts that have been specifically customized to work this way. Such routines will need to be

modified so that they do not rely on this logic. Consider using the new post functions described in the next
section to directly query parameter values.

New parameter read functions now available for X3

Mastercam X3 post developers now have two new parameter read functions at their disposal: rparsngl and
rparsprm. These are derived from the current rpar function.
Use rparsngl to retrieve a single parameter value. It works similar to rpar, except that you do not need to
reserve an entire implied array of variables. The general form of the function is:
return = rparsngl(string, val)
where
return is the variable that will store the desired parameter value.
string is the string to get the parameter value from.
val is the index number of the parameter to read.
Use rparsprm to retrieve a specific range of parameters. The general form of the function is:
return = rparsprm(val1, val2)
where
return is the first variable in the implied array that will store the desired parameter values.
val1 is the index position of the first parameter in sparameter$ that you want to retrieve.
val2 is the total number of parameters to retrieve.
Note that for both functions, you are responsible for ensuring that the type of the user-defined return variable
matches the expected type of the value returned by the function: either string (for example, sreturn) or
numeric.

.OPS files no longer created

The .OPS file (operation parameters) no longer exists in X3. Mastercams default posts used to check for the
following CD setting:

(parameter number 18171)

This check will be removed from our default posts and is no longer needed in any other posts. These options
have also been removed from the Control Definition Manager.

Nesting information output to NCI file

Sheet and material information for nesting operations will be output in new lines 20501 (material name) and
20502 (sheet parameters). Sheet information is output for each sheet change notification in the NCI.
The output format for the new codes is detailed below.
20501
string (material name)
20502
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
The following table summarizes each parameter:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12

sheet length (X dimension)

sheet width (Y dimension)
sheet thickness (temporary placeholder)
sheet corner (1 = lower left, 2 = lower right, 3 = upper right, 4 = upper left)
sheet number
sheet instance
integer pad
integer pad
integer pad
real pad
real pad
real pad

Additional machine definition information output to NCI file

New NCI codes 20600, 20601, and 20700 are now being output, principally for support of Mastercam
MultiTasking. Users of other Mastercam products will see these codes in their NCI output, but can disregard
them.