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Table of Contents
Post Versions
To find what version a post is, first step is to check it's matching .mmd, which you can do with windows explorer preview or by right clicking and checking properties.
If you don't have the mmd to look at, or you can't verify the version of the mmd is the same as the pst, you need to look to the first line of the post.
Here is a list of the versions:
2021 = 23
2020 = 22
2019 = 21
2018 = 20
2017 = 19
X9 = 18
X8 = 17
X7 = 16
X6 = 15
X5 = 14
X4 = 13
X3 = 12
X2 = 11
X = 10
V9 = 9
V8 = 8
V7 = 7
V6 = 6
Which Version For Updating
When updating the posts, note that Version X8 was the last version that could update any prior version. Starting in X9, Mastercam only allows updating up to 3 versions back. That means, if you its Version X9 or above, you need to run multiple updates to get to the latest version. Here is what it looks like:
X8 updates X7 and all versions before X9 updates X6 thru X8 2017 updates X7 thru X9 2018 updates X8 thru 2017 2019 updates X9 thru 2018 2020 updates 2017 thru 2019 2021 updates 2018 thru 2020
Here is an example. Say you want to update an X7 post up to 2021. First, you can open 2017 and run your update. Then you can update your 2017 post to 2020. Then you can get it to 2021.
Troubleshooting Updates
Most of the time, just like any other type of error, look to the log to see what went wrong. There should be an explanation.
The post team doesn't often run into errors updating, because in general we watch the error log and fix it as we go. But users and some times the tech team might miss an error now that the log isn't opening when things go wrong as a separate text file. So users can easily miss important update problems and what you commonly will get is a tech guy asking why a post won't update without any warning messages indicating what went wrong.
What's happening in this case, 99% of the time, is the text section did not covert properly when moving from 2017 up. In 2018, the text section was converted to xml. If the 2017 file had a problem converting to xml, the entire post update just fails, with no warning. Most other failures have a warning so this one is most assuredly from the text section conversion.
Finding what went wrong is the next question. Often, its a tag that's missing. Either the opening tag, or the end tag.
this was the issue in the last one that came up. The end tag was missing in 2017 so it wouldn't update to 2020. It was missing [CTRL_TEXT_END] at the end
Troubleshooting MachSIM updates
Mach Sim can have a couple issues when updating. There are no good log files, so I just have a few things I check when some one says they are having trouble when updating MachSIM.
Some things I've run into:
Not all files made it to the new folder.
Keep in mind, just like when you run an update on a .pst that is already up to date, if you update a file that doesn't need it, you won't see it show up in the folder you are updating to. This is especially true of Mach Sim. A lot of the files in the machine folder will not make it, because they don't need updating. It might be a good idea to just copy the updated pst and psb files into the same folder instead of updating the whole MachSIM folder.
Folder/.pst/image files Don't have the same name
The name of the folder MUST match the .pst file. Also, if the image file has a different name, it won't have an image in the simulation window. That one's not critical, but good to know
