SolidCam Post Editing - Drill Cylce zpos incorrect

Hello,

Long time lurker, first time poster, be kind :-)

I've recently purchased an old Hass VF-0E, and have been evaluating a couple of different CAM packages. I like SolidCam and will probably go that way, but the evaluation post is not 100%.

The part I'm having dificulty with is getting the drill cycle to specify the pre-cycle Z level correctly. It works fine in the internal solidcam simulations, so I'm convinced it is the post getting it wrong.

Let take this part I'm working on, with "Milling Levels - Upper Level" set to 60, and "Safe distance" set to 5 I expect to see a Z65. on the line preceeding the G98 G73 etc etc.
Instead I get Z0. The next line of code then treats that level as the return level (G98) and so we have rapid down and x.y. moves whilst down. Umm a little dangerous :-) Especially when I only wanted to drill 33mm. Carefull running of the program in air before hand highlighted the issue and I've manualy edited any code that include drill cycles.\

If I uncheck the option in the drill operation "use cycle", the output is correct. Sure I could do all my drill cycles in code instead of drill cycles, but that makes for longer messier code, which I'd like to avoid. Takes long enough to transfer files to this old girl without adding more code to the eqn.

In the gpp file, I can see that this is where the Z0. output comes from, and it is refering to the zpos variable, but I'm not sure where that zpos comes from:
@drill
; Handle output for drill cycles
local logical skipZpos
skipZpos = false
if job_type eq '3-d drill' and prev_command eq '@drill_point'
skipZpos = true
endif
if !skipZpos
{nb,cDrZp'Z'zpos' 'cDrZs}

Where does the zpos string come from? is it straight from SolidCAM or is it processed within the GPP? Maybe it should have somethign differnt along the lines of "Z_upper_level+Safedistance", I'm makeing up those terms of course.

As you probably gathered I've not got the first clue about GPP editing. In the little I know about other programming languages I normally expect to see a comparision following an IF command, in this GPP there are IFs without questions, by that I am asking where is the question when the line reads: "if !skipZpos"

I hope someone out there can help educate me a little on GPP editing, the documentation in the evaluation version is a little light - seaching for terms from with the gpp doesn't often return a result.

Gratefully yours,
Sean

Post Processor Training Course - YouTube
Watch the video and edit it yourself
Good luck :)

Thank you imachining-6061, you did it. At about 28mins is there is a little gem, it talks about "trace", once I found out about the ability to Trace what is being output from SC I fixed it in 5 mins. I replaced 'zpos' above with 'drill_upper_z'. Not sure if it is technically the correct approach, BUT I get the GCode I'm after.

Much learning will be had by turning on trace in the gpp and disecting the output.

Cheers,
Sean

yes, you can even use several 'trace' instructions, for example: