“Well, I Just Don’t Like the Way it Looks.”Īnother great thing about the ribbon is that you can customize it, resize it and even hide it.
Pro Tip: You can also avoid clicking by simply hovering your cursor over the ribbon and using the scroll wheel on your mouse to switch tabs. To customize your keyboard shortcuts, click on the small arrow on the far right on the left corner of the ribbon and select “Customize Ribbon”.
You can customize these shortcuts for quick access to your most used functions. For example, typing Alt+ W+E will open the Wireframe tab (“W”) and the Line Endpoint function (“E”). Mastercam has preset key commands that you can use to access each function. Doing this will reveal the keys associated with each tab. If you prefer to use your keyboard to access a function, press the Alt key. It will display the path to follow in the ribbon to locate any given function. If you are still having trouble finding a function, use the wonderful Command Finder search tool. Some icons display related functions in drop-down menus to avoid crowding on the toolbar. “The new interface is so much easier to read because there is also text underneath each icon,” added Stauffer. Also, when you hover your cursor over the function’s icon, it will provide, not only the name of the function, but a brief description of what it does. To add even more to its navigability, the tab system organizes content by only showing a tab in its entirety when it is selected. The ribbon interface in modern Mastercam, much like Microsoft’s ribbon, organizes each function into logical tabs based on activity, so you can find them easier. “And their expectations are based on other software, such as Microsoft.” “We aren’t competing just against our competitors we are competing against our customer’s expectations,” said Meghan West, President of CNC Software, in the promo video for Mastercam 2017.
To make Mastercam’s interface modern and approachable for all its users, CNC Software implemented a ribbon interface for Mastercam 2017, inspired by Microsoft’s software, to gain a competitive edge. “The buttons were so small, so small! It was like reading hieroglyphics,” said John Stauffer, a longtime Mastercam user and MCAM Northwest’s Applications Engineer. The only way to identify each icon was to hover over the icon and it would only reveal the name of the function, not what it does. To locate each function, you had to remember its icon, rather than its name. These tiny images represented functions in Mastercam and were not sorted in any particular order, making it a lot more challenging to find a tool that you needed. Much like the first toolbar used in Microsoft Word and WordStar in the 1990’s, versions before Mastercam 2017 had a toolbar that contained a barrage of icons surrounding the graphics window. “I Won’t Be Able to Find the Features I Need to Use.” We hope that responding to our customers’ most common reasons for not upgrading their Mastercam software will ease their anxieties about updating.
Because of their reservations towards the newer interface, some users are spending thousands of dollars to stay on maintenance to get reseller support for X9 and earlier versions, even though they have full access to the most current version of Mastercam. We understand how the radical change of interface post-X9 makes users feel very hesitant to keep their Mastercam software current.
AKA: The interface that looks like the Microsoft Windows toolbar that has existed for the past
This change will be monumental, as all X9 users will soon be forced into learning how to use the “new” Mastercam ribbon interface. The release of Mastercam 2021 means the discontinuation of all support and maintenance for Mastercam X9, effective immediately after 2021’s release. With the expected release of Mastercam 2021 within the next few months, many shops are anticipating setting aside time for training and upgrading their machines to the new software version, while some shops plan to maintain their “business as usual” approach by avoiding the hassle of upgrading once more.įor shops still running Mastercam X9, we have some news for you. In this MCAM Northwest blog, we explain how the modern ribbon interface is easier to use than loyal X9 users believe it to be.Īs you may have heard, the highly anticipated Mastercam 2021 Beta was launched in February of this year. The release of Mastercam 2021 means support for Mastercam X9 will inevitably be cut off.