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     Ican't really share the file as everything we do is DOD / ITAR restricted but it isn't really file specific. The biggest issue is with turning operation tools, although I have the same issue with some milling ops. We do a lot of turning and the tools for that are terrible and I am constantly trying to trick the software into doing what I need it to do. The particular issue I was having when I wrote this post was in trying to turn an internal thread profile using a grooving tool, which I do fairly often on smaller diameters when I don't have a good boring bar that has enough stickout to do the thread relief on the back side of the thread. When setting up the profiling operation, the software gives me the error message above. I was able to make it work by creating a "boring bar" tool with the same edge profile as the grooving tool I am using to do the inside profile and then creating the grooving tool (with the same number and offset) to do the grooving op. I tried to use the grooving op for the profile, using the " sideways with partial stepdown" feature  but it wouldn't let me use a distance that is wider than the grooving tool for some reason, so I would have had to make 4 different operations just to make a single profile. 

     Obviously this kind of stuff isn't the end of the world and I am usually able to find a work-around but it is time consuming and very frustrating. For instance, with this particular example, why does ut wait until after I have created the tool, edited it for all of the parameters, picked all of the settings and geometry, offsets, diameters, leadins and outs, etc, and only after I hit OK to create the op does it tell me that I can't use that tool for this type of operation? I noticed on some of the milling ops it will give a warning about the tool but it will let me choose to ignore it, but for most cases I have had, it just tells me I wasted my time and have to start over.

     Hopefully that explains this particular issue. There are many issues that are similar ( and I can eventually figure out how to trick the software into doing what I need it to but it wastes and lot of my time and is very frustrating. The turning tools especially needs a lot of work. As I said in my original post, it was more of a rant than something I was looking for a solution to solve.