[StephanWenger]

Hi forum,

First posting here, so please bear with me if I violate any etiquette. I posted a similar message over in the imsi TCC user forum, but did not get any reply. Perhaps the community here is somewhat more active? Let's see:

I ran into a problem on a rather complex part, but was able to isolate it as follows:

As for the environment: the same behavior observed on fresh installations on two different PCs with XP and Vista, TC 15.2 built 48.1, TCC freshly installed. Both PCs are stable production machines.

To reproduce the problem, one can follow these steps:

1. create part, 6" by -6" by -1, one tool: 3/8" flat end mill
2. create circle w/ 5" diameter inside part, center coordinates 3, -3
3. create island by using a rectangle and arc, and cut lines, as shown in TCC tutorial 2, Step 2, substeps 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12. Reactangle and arc are small enough that, when combined, there is enough room between the circle and the resulting polyline (i.e. the part is machineable with a 3/8" cutter).
4. select flat endmill 3/8"
5. select pocket milling
6. select circle as outer contour, and polyline as inner contour. Hit the finish-flag.

At this point, TCC crashes. Something that seems to resemble a reasonable toolpath flickers in just before the crash. Then a window "Unexpected exception" opens. When pressing "details", I get a traceback that includes addresses in "CAMBool3d.dll and CAMMillPacket.dll.

With a rectangle as the outer contour, the problem does not occur.

Is this a known problem? Would anyone be so kind and try to reproduce the problem? Any suggestions?

Best regards, Stephan

[cmnewcomer]

Stephan,

I was able to reproduce the bug and got the same symptoms you reported. I'm using TurboCAD/CAM 15 also.

This is the first time I've been able to get it to crash though.

Best Regards.

Carl

[StephanWenger]

Thanks, Carl, for your input. Now that this has been reproduced, I will try contacting Imsi to see if they are aware, and/or of there is a remedy beyond designing around. I'll keep you and this forum in the loop on any developments in this regards.
Regards,
Stephan

[CurtisBarclay]

Stephan,

I've used TC for years and think it's a great program. But TCC is something else!! I use TC 14.2 Pro and TCC 3.5 plug in and it will crash everytime I use it, when it does I have reboot my pc.

I have been able to complete only one project and that's it. So if you find out anything please let us know.

Regards,

Curtis

[DonF]

I not sure if it helps but I fond this a free 2.5d program. http://www.gsimple.eu/index.html don't know if it has bugs too!

I have TC15 and wanted to get TCC but not spending my money on it till they get some bugs worked out.
I posted a question about TCC on the TC 16 forums a few weeks ago. Asking when they were going to fix it. http://forums.imsisoft.com/forums/in...319&CFApp=200& The more voices the better. I really think they are loosing allot of customers due to TCC.

[StephanWenger]

Hi all,
an update: last Friday, I submitted a trouble ticket to Imsi. Almost immediately I got an automated reply that the ticket was submitted, with a status "not yet viewed". Over the weekend, the status changed to "viewed". I consider this good news; someone is at least reading tickets over there. I plan to give Imsi some time to react before taking any other action.

DonF: thanks for your comment. I choose TCC mostly because it is nicely integrated into the TC environment; that seems not to be the case with stand-alone CAM processors. With respect to the latter, my previous experience is that "you get what you pay for"---which makes me a bit nervous about even attempting shareware/freeware and investing time into the learning curve. I guess, for now, I will stay with work-around solutions; that is, use TC manually to manually create those tool path geometries where TCC crashes, and use path milling to create G codes for those.

Curtis: thanks for your feedback, and yes, I will keep you all in the loop. However, I'm not certain that the type of feedback you provided will help Imsi to hunt down bugs. Perhaps, if you have the time, you may wish to follow a similar approach as mine, and attempt to isolate problems, have them reproduced by the community, and then report them to Imsi? This seems to me a route that avoids being viewed as a random Imsi-basher, and also provides real information for them to fix problems. (I have been in the software development business myself, and believe to know how to create tickets that the responsible software engineers jump at to solve---if their management let them. Unreproducible, unverified crashes do not belong into this category).

Regards
Stephan

[CurtisBarclay]

Hi Stephan,

I apologize if I gave the impression that I was IMSI- bashing, I'm not at all. I've use TC since V6 and I wouldn't even think about using anything else. I reported my situation yesterday also, along with the error file in TC and today IMSI viewed my ticket. I also sent an e-mail to one of the developers of Turbocad who has helped me in the past but he didn't have anything to do with TCC, so he might not be able to help.

If I hear of anything at all I'll be sure to along the info.

Regards,

Curtis

[StephanWenger]

Hi all,
the trouble ticket has been updated to the status "resolved", without resolving much (at least from my viewpoint). I was informed that
a) the problem is known, and
b) Imsi plans to work on a fix, but probably not on a schedule I would call accelerated... Quoted from the email:
"Currently I don't have information when this bug is fixed. Probably it will be fixed in the next version of CAD/CAM for TurboCAD v16. It might be done in the current year."
I'm not holding my breath, but instead will use work-arounds and/or look for alternatives. If additional information becomes available, I will revive this thread.
Regards,
Stephan

[CurtisBarclay]

Hello again everyone,

Like Stephan, the answer I got may not help too much but I won't really get a chance to see if I can resolve my problem until the weekend. But at least it's not the same answer that Stephan got.

Here's the response I got;

"Dear Curtis,

Most likely TurboCAD v14 User Interface Style is set up for TurboCAD running in your PC. I would recommend that you try out TurboCAD v11 UI style and check if the problem shows up. The option TurboCAD v 11 UI is available in the UI Theme panel which comes up when clicking Tools | UI Themes... If this doesn't make TC working more stable it may mean there are some other causes in your system. For examle I would recommend that you enlarge the virtual memory setting to 4 GB. The cause of the problem might be in the videocard driver and/or printer driver installed in your PC. For that case I would recommend that you check if these drivers are up-to-date and update them if necessary. The cause of the problem might be also in the hardware accelerator of the videocard. I would recommend that you bring up the Properties panel for the monitor&videocard (do double click Display in the Control panel window, open Settings panel, click Advanced there to bring up needed panel), play with settings for the mode of the monitor and hardware acceleration (on Troubleshooting panel) to solve the problem."....

My question is, does anyone understand any of this?? If you do, please clue us in!

Curtis

[DonF]

Curtis: thanks for your feedback, and yes, I will keep you all in the loop. However, I'm not certain that the type of feedback you provided will help Imsi to hunt down bugs. Perhaps, if you have the time, you may wish to follow a similar approach as mine, and attempt to isolate problems, have them reproduced by the community, and then report them to Imsi? This seems to me a route that avoids being viewed as a random Imsi-basher, and also provides real information for them to fix problems. (I have been in the software development business myself, and believe to know how to create tickets that the responsible software engineers jump at to solve---if their management let them. Unreproducible, unverified crashes do not belong into this category).

Regards
Stephan

I didn't think he was bashing. Telling it how it is helps the company produce better products. You want to hear/read bashing go to the TC forum. This isn't free software - people pay good money and if there is a problem you have every right to voice the problem and help others avoid your choices. TCC has been pretty much ignored while TC has improved leaving a big hole in IMSI's lineup.

[StephanWenger]

Hi Curtis,
please see inline.
Stephan

Hello again everyone,

[...]

Most likely TurboCAD v14 User Interface Style is set up for TurboCAD running in your PC. I would recommend that you try out TurboCAD v11 UI style and check if the problem shows up. The option TurboCAD v 11 UI is available in the UI Theme panel which comes up when clicking Tools | UI Themes...

This is the TC's user interface selection (inside TC). I have no experience with this, but I think it should be self-explanatory.

If this doesn't make TC working more stable it may mean there are some other causes in your system. For examle I would recommend that you enlarge the virtual memory setting to 4 GB. The cause of the problem might be in the videocard driver and/or printer driver installed in your PC. For that case I would recommend that you check if these drivers are up-to-date and update them if necessary. The cause of the problem might be also in the hardware accelerator of the videocard. I would recommend that you bring up the Properties panel for the monitor&videocard (do double click Display in the Control panel window, open Settings panel, click Advanced there to bring up needed panel), play with settings for the mode of the monitor and hardware acceleration (on Troubleshooting panel) to solve the problem."....
[...]
Curtis

This is Windows fine-tuning. In order to walk you through those settings, we would need to know the windows version you are running, and also some of the parameters of your PC: how old (roughly), how much memory, what video card, etc.
Feel free to contact me in private, and perhaps we can walk through this by phone over the weekend.

Regards,
Stephan

[Dean448]

I gave this a try and couldn't get it to fail but I'm not sure if I'm using the correct geometry.
Anyone know what this should look like?

[StephanWenger]

Hi all,
[...]
I'm not holding my breath, but instead will use work-arounds and/or look for alternatives. If additional information becomes available, I will revive this thread.

Following up as promised. I downloaded a trial version of TC17 and the CAM add-on a few days ago, and played with it, using my old files. I could not reproduce the crash anymore on any machine I tried.
Problem solved.
Stephan

[ynnek]

Sorry I did not read any of these posts earlier. I have been a TC user since v3. I have been using the CAM plugin since v15. I have had very few crashes with the plugin. Being 2.5D, it is a bit limited, but all in all I think it is a very good program for the price. Granted, the parts I am cutting out on my router are very simple, as you can see here on my youtube page - YouTube - memphismachinist's Channel
I am one of the beta testers on the TurboAD User Forum, so feel free to email me or post a PM on the TurboCAD User Forum if you need any more assistance.