Practical Modeling

Mastercam gives your shop the best possible foundation for shop-tested CAD tools. From wireframe and surfacing with associative dimensioning to solid modeling, Mastercam ensures that you’re ready for any job.
Most Mastercam products include wireframe and surface modeling with solids available as an add-on. These practical CAD tools are also available separately, letting you focus on design without tying up a programming seat.

Efficient Wireframe Geometry

Mastercam’s streamlined CAD engine makes design work easier than ever before. Each piece of geometry you create is live, letting you quickly modify it until it’s exactly what you want. Further, with traditional functions consolidated into a few simple clicks, Mastercam simplifies the creation of even the most complex parts.

• Multiple point and line creation techniques.
• Efficient arc, circle, and fillet functions, including filleting at every corner in a chain of entities.
• Create splines on surfaces using a variety of functions including surface projections, surface intersections, edge curves, slicing curves, and parting lines.
• Create pre-filleted shapes to save time.
• Change widths, styles, and colors globally or for a single entity.
• Quickly modify parameters such as line length and arc radius after creation.
• Fillet or chamfer corners easily.
• Extend lines, arcs, and splines.
• Quickly translate, mirror, and scale (uniformly or with separate factors in X, Y, and Z).
• Offset entities by a given distance.
• Associative dimensions update as you change your model.
• Extensive CAD editing tools, including unlimited Undo/Redo.
• User-definable drafting grid simplifies detailed construction.
• Customizable AutoCursor™ snaps to commonly used construction points.
• Automatic parting line calculation for mold making.
• Analyze single points, between points, angles, and entire entities.
• Simplified and improved work coordinate system makes it easy to work on a model without having to move it in 3D space. Your new planes and origins are easily transferred to your G-code.
• Save a description with your part for record keeping.
• View thumbnail images of parts for easier browsing and loading.

Powerful Surface Modeling

Surface modeling remains one of the best ways to create 3D organic shapes. Mastercam delivers a powerful set of surface design tools that give you straightforward control over the fine detail of even the most complex job.

• Create parametric and NURBS surfaces using loft, ruled, revolved, swept, draft, and offset creation methods.
• Fence and Net surfaces expand your modeling power.
• Trim single and multiple surfaces to curves, planes, and surfaces.
• Easily extend and split surfaces.
• Smart extension for trimmed surfaces avoids pitfalls with traditional trimmed surface extension.
• Flexible surface filleting offers constant radius fillets and point-and-click variable radius fillets.
• Automatic parting line calculation for mold making.
• Create, edit, and manipulate realistically shaded surface models.

What Mastercam Solids Delivers

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Practical Power

Solid modeling is transforming the way parts are designed. Now you can bring that power right into your shop.

• Faster modeling of parts, molds, and fixtures using integrated solids, surfaces and wireframe.
• Greater flexibility in accepting outside models.
• Solids machining with access to Mastercam X’s powerful CAM functions.
• The addition of Solids turns Mastercam X into a true hybrid modeler.
• Based on the industry-leading Parasolid® kernel, Mastercam X Solids delivers powerful solid modeling with an eye for production.

Solid Modeling for Manufacturing

• Mastercam Solids gives you powerful, streamlined solid modeling for practical design.
• Fast solids construction using familiar modeling techniques.
• Powerful revolve, extrude, loft and sweep commands.
• Easy shelling and thin-wall creation.
• Boolean addition, subtraction and common volume calculation between solids and surfaces.
• Fast, efficient chamfering and filleting, including useful face-to-face fillets.
• Draft solid faces.
• Create sheet solids that can be thickened, shelled, and more.
• Trim solids to a single surface or to multiple surfaces using sheet solids for maximum design potential.
• Freedom to model without part constraints.
• Hybrid modeling interaction between solids, surfaces and wireframe.
• Quick and easy tool boundary silhouette creation from solids or surfaces.

Flexible Hybrid Modeling

Flexibility is crucial to efficient part design and programming. Mastercam Solids lets you mix and match modeling techniques. Need to add surface or wireframe elements to a solid? Want to quickly add solid components to a complex surface model? Now it’s easy. Mastercam Solids gives you the speed of solids, the power of surfaces, and the simplicity of wireframe. You choose the right tool for the right job.

Precision Tools for Flexible Design

• Sew multiple surfaces into a single solid.
• Mastercam’s Solid Feature Recognition identifies features such as fillets and holes on imported solids and adds those features to the history tree.
• Delete and add solid faces for easy solid modification.

Solid Machining Made Easy

Mastercam Solids is a fully integrated add-on to Mastercam CAD/CAM products. When combined with Mastercam Mill, Mastercam Solids gives you the ideal way to machine your solid models. Import, create, and program your solids in the same easy-to-use interface, with full access to all Mastercam’s powerful programming tools.

The Mastercam Mill / Mastercam Solids combination gives you full associativity between your model and toolpath. Make a quick change to your model, and get an updated toolpath with a single mouse click.

Solids gives you freedom unavailable with other types of modeling, such as removing your model from a solid block to create a mold.

Mastercam Solids combined with . . .	Design	Mill Level 1	Mill Level 2	Mill Level 3
Create import and export solids, surfaces and wireframe
Single interface for design and NC programming
Fully associative 2D machining directly from solid
Fully associative machining of single solid faces and single surfaces
Fully associative machining of unlimited complex solids and surfaces together as a single model

Open Access to Solid Models

• Import Parasolid® , SAT and Inventor™ files as solids, surfaces and/or wireframe.
• With optional STEP and Pro/E® you can import solids as solids, surfaces or wireframe.
• Export Parasolid® and SAT files.
• Open SolidWorks® and Solid Edge® files directly, and even import history trees using the free Mastercam Direct links.

Part Management and Detailing

• Solids Manager for efficient operation tracking, reordering and editing.
• Data including volume, surface area, and center of gravity.
• Automatic multiple view solids layout with hidden lines.
• Point-and-click dimensioning as easy as wireframe

What’s New

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A Focus on Flexibility and Ease of Use

Whether your shop gets files from an outside source or designs them in-house, modeling tools are an essential element in prepping a file for machining. Mastercam X4 Design delivers efficient new tools to the entire Mastercam product line.

Dynamic Planes

Mastercam X4 offers a quick way to define your construction planes, tool planes, and work coordinate system. You can now easily define the desired plane using an interactive graphical gnomon to establish the plane’s origin and orientation.

Xform Dynamic

Translate and rotate geometry in a single, easy to use function. The control is right on the screen along with your geometry.

Wireframe Feature Recognition in Chaining

You only need to chain an example of the geometry that you want to use, click a button, and Mastercam automatically finds and chains all other occurrences of the geometry.

Trimming Visual Cues

To help you predict the result when working with the Trim, Extend, and Break function, Mastercam X4 provides visual cues so you can see what will happen before selecting the transformed entity.

Viewsheet Improvements

You can save every option on the status bar (except for Groups) as part of a Viewsheet.

Other Enhancements

• Level manipulation, such as Delete, Cut, Renumber Level, inside the Level Manager
• A new user-customizable Setup sheet called ActiveReports™
• Surface Filleting improvements
• And much more

More Information

For more information please visit the Mastercam Design Tools Mini-site