General

The ‘General’ section of the Tool Use Tab is collapsible/expandable and enables you to do the following:

Specify the Machining environment:
- Select a 'Tool library'
- Select a ‘Stock material’
- Edit the properties of the chosen ‘Machine'.
Control the Cutting parameters:
- This is the the way that CAM Assist determines and uses the feeds and speeds associated with the selected ‘Tool library’.

For more information on each of these features, see below.

General section

Features

Machining environment

For the machining environment, you can:

Select the ‘Tool library,' the ‘Stock material,’ and the 'Stock material alloy’ from drop-down lists.
Edit the properties of the chosen ‘Machine'.
Use the ‘Cutting parameters’ options to control how CAM Assist determines and uses the feeds and speeds for each tool in the selected ‘Tool library’.

General section with expanded Machine section

The following table describes each ‘machining environment’ feature of the ‘General’ section, as shown in the above screenshot.

Feature	Description	How to Use

Feature	Description	How to Use
Tool library	Lists all of the Mastercam tool libraries available to CAM Assist.	Click the down arrow to select from the Tool library list. Click to refresh CAM Assist (if you change the selected Tool library). Click to select a system-level folder containing tool libraries.
Tool Summary	Shows a summary of the tool, including the following: Number of tool assemblies - the number of tool assemblies in the selected ‘Tool Library’. Number of tool assemblies for material - the number of tools in the selected ‘Tool library’ that can be used on the selected ‘Stock material’. For a guide to getting your tools into assemblies, watch the YouTube video Quick shortcut to create tool assemblies in CAM Assist for Mastercam.	This feature is display only.
Stock material	Lists all of the materials that you can use in CAM Assist (see Supported Materials).	Click the down arrow to select the Stock material.
Stock material alloy	Selection list of the alloys for the material in the field above. Note - Stock material and stock material allow are persistent fields.	Select the drop-down field to select the alloy for the chosen material.
Machine	Shows the machine that will be used for the part. The machine is configured within Mastercam but there is a set of properties that CAM Assist requires to compute toolpath strategies. Follow the instructions to the right to check/amend the CAM Assist ‘Machine properties’.	Click the down arrow to the right of the machine name. ‘Machine’ will expand to display the required Machine properties. The properties can be amended as follows: Enter the value directly into the box. Use the up/down arrow to increment/decrement the displayed value. After ensuring the properties are correct, you may click the up arrow to collapse/hide the Machine properties.
Cutting parameters	You can use the options here as a quick way to control how CAM Assist determines and uses the feeds and speeds for each tool in the selected ‘Tool library’. For more information on the options, see Cutting Parameters, below.

Cutting Parameters

The following table describes each ‘Cutting Parameters’ option.

Option	Explanation

Option

Explanation

Only use feeds and speeds from the tool library

Depending on the level of configuration for feeds and speeds within the Tool library, results for CAM Assist’s computed toolpath strategy may be limited.

For each tool in the selected ‘Tool library’:

If there are feeds and speeds, CAM Assist uses them.
If the feeds and speeds are missing, CAM Assist will not use the tool.

Use feeds and speeds from the selected tool library

For each tool in the selected ‘Tool library’:

If there are feeds and speeds, CAM Assist will use them.
If the feeds and speeds are missing, CAM Assist will generate them.

Use CloudNC Cutting Parameters only

For each tool in the selected ‘Tool library’:

Even though there may be feeds and speeds, CAM Assist will not use them.
Instead, CAM Assist will generate all of the cutting parameters.