Problem Creating Closed Rectangles in Mastercam X4

Hi,

This may be a Newbie problem but i can't seem to find any answers. I am trying to draw a rectangle around a part i have imported into Mastercam X4 (imported from STEP file created in Solidworks). This is to make a pocket that had bosses in the middle but i want to clear over the edge (so the rectangle is larger than the outside of the part.

Every time i draw a rectangle where i would like it and then try to select the profile for the outer boundary of the pocket operation the rectangle is like it is made up of two curves, Mastercam wants to make two paths out if it and then tells me that the profile is not closed and will not work for the pocket operation. Is there a way to link the four lines of the rectangle together to make a closed profile, or some other way to accomplish this?

Any help is appreciated,
Thank you,
~Zach

sounds like your issue is with chaining (selecting) a rectangle and not creating the geometry.

there are a couple ways to do this. for a beginner, when the chain dialog pops-up, just ensure the little check box is checked next to "wait". Then click in CCW or CW order the start point of all four lines.
verify that only one chain is showing in the chain manager.

First, Edit>delete>delete duplicates. This ensures you don't have over lapping entity's.

You can use the trim/break/extend button to close geometry with gaps in it.

Magnify the corners of your rectangle and make sure that they actually meet. If they don't, extend them to meet. Another thing I often do is to select the geometry and then select join.

I'm way behind on on my MasterCAM version, but back in the good ol' days, if you built a rectangle by offsetting lines from existing geometry and found it wouldn't chain, it was because the lines were at different Z levels. Check the Z coordinate of each end of each line segment.

Dennis

Oh man, i don't know what i am doing wrong.

If i zoom in as far as i can it looks like the corners are intersecting

I started by deleting duplicates

I tried to check the "wait" box. i have never used that before. but it still selects one and then does not count some lines as being in the chain.

I tried extending the ends 0.1" so i could see them visibly overlap and it still would not select around the corner. just one line at a time.

i try to select two lines and use the "join" button and master cam has a popup saying "Selected entities cannot be joined"

As far as i can measure all lines are in the Z=0 plane.

Any other suggestions for me. please forgive my ignorance of Mastercam i just started using it this year, i have been a Solidworks user up until now and Mastercam is still somewhat foreign to me. Thanks again.

Are they trimmed together? No idea what join is, but in X6 everything had to be trimmed, and it wouldn't always tell you when it wouldn't trim, either. Don't assume that just because they look like they touch that they are actually connected.

Long shot as I don't do a lot of cad. Could it be the resolution i.e. .00000001 number of decimal places set in preferences.

When you zoom in it looks like its joining but its not, but reduce the resolution to .00 say, and it works out.

I had this problem trying to find arc centres to type positions from cad drawing to a conversational control.

For me it was a number of decimal places causing the problem.

X-form Project will project all selected entities to a level plane in case you created some 3D geo.

Use the Trim To button

Well it looks like the problem was me. I tried some other things today and it turns out that when i insert a rectangle as a sketch and select a Pocket operation all it takes is one click of one line and Mastercam X4 will read that as a closed loop. So by me trying to select all edges myself i was actually confusing mastercam. I think i got it all figured out now. Thank you everyone for the help.