The CIMCO Edit product lineup got a refresh on September 1, 2026. CIMCO Edit Standard is now CIMCO Edit Core, and CIMCO Edit Professional is now CIMCO Edit Ultra. Existing licenses carry the new names and capabilities forward automatically with the next update.
Core is the bigger jump of the two. Standard never included Backplot. Toolpath visualization and simulation always required a Professional license. Core changes that, adding Advanced NC editing and full backplotting and toolpath visualization, both formerly Edit Professional-only.
Ultra keeps everything Professional had, GPU-based Solid Simulation and CAM integrations, and adds verification and collision reporting capabilities that used to require the Machine Simulation Add-on. This article covers that addition: what Collision Detection Reporting, Enhanced Safety Checks, Over-Travel Limit Reporting, and Advanced Stopping Conditions do, how they work in Backplot, and where Machine Simulation still adds value.
How Verification Now Works in Backplot
Before Ultra, running Backplot gave you Solid Simulation, a Simulation Report listing errors by line number, and the ability to click an error to jump to it in the editor. Without a Machine Simulation license, that report never mentioned collisions or travel limits. An Edit Professional user watching a simulation had the visuals, stock removal, tool motion, but no structured report catching a tool passing through a fixture or a rapid clipping stock.
Ultra changes what populates that same report. The workflow is unchanged: open Backplot (Ctrl+Shift+P), same NC program, 3D view, and docking pane layout, same Simulation Report. What’s new is that collisions, over-travel conditions, and stopping-condition events now show up there without a Machine Simulation license active.
Collision checking is CPU intensive, so it doesn’t rerun on every keystroke. The Check collision and limit errors button reruns detection on demand, so the report reflects the program as of your last click, not necessarily your last edit.
Collision Detection and Safety Check Settings
Ultra’s checks are governed by the Collision Settings in the Simulation tab, the same Settings section that has always controlled simulation behavior. A few settings are worth understanding before trusting the defaults.
Collision checking per model decides whether checking stops after the first collision found for a component pair (Find One) or keeps looking for every instance across every pair (Find All). Find One is enough for a first pass to confirm a problem exists. Find All is better for understanding the full extent of a known one, at the cost of speed.
Tool/Workpiece Collisions is easy to misconfigure. The tool touches the workpiece constantly during normal cutting, so leaving general checking on floods the report with expected flags. Scoping this to Rapid Moves is usually the more useful setting, since an unexpected rapid-to-stock contact is what Enhanced Safety Checks is meant to catch, while cutting-move contact is often expected and better verified through Stock Compare.
Collision Step Size and Cutter Allowance exist because checking can’t be truly continuous. Step Size sets how often the simulation samples the toolpath, smaller catches more but runs slower. Cutter Allowance compensates for the small margin of error in triangulated STL geometry, letting the cutter come within a set distance (a tenth of a millimeter, for example) before a false collision is reported.
Holder-to-stock checking, one of Enhanced Safety Checks’ two named conditions, depends on the holder geometry defined per tool. A tool set up with a generic or missing holder profile in the Tool Manager gives the check nothing accurate to compare against. Worth confirming on any setup that hasn’t modeled holders carefully before.
Hidden model collisions decides whether a model hidden for visibility, a fixture plate turned off to see the part clearly, still counts in collision checking. Leaving this on is the safer default, so hiding a model for a clean view doesn’t also quietly disable checking against it.
Over-Travel Reporting and Stop Conditions
Over-Travel Limit Reporting flags moves that ask an axis to go further than the target machine physically allows. This is a different failure mode from a collision: a move can be clear of every other model in the scene and still be invalid simply because the machine can’t reach it. Travel limits are machine-specific, not visible in the program itself, which is why this has always been hard to verify by eye, especially for shops running the same post logic across several machines with different envelopes.
Advanced Stopping Conditions turns all of this into something the simulation surfaces automatically instead of something you hunt for. Tool And Models stops the simulation on a collision. Travel Limits stops it when an axis exceeds its range. Optional stop conditions tied to M00, M01, M02, and M30 control where a review pauses rather than flagging errors.
The practical effect: verifying a program becomes an active review instead of a passive watch. The simulation stops at the exact move, in context, with the report already showing what triggered it.
Where Machine Simulation Still Adds Something
It’s worth being precise about what Ultra’s checks cover, since the announcement frames this as capability moving out of the add-on, and that’s true for only part of what Machine Simulation offers.
Everything above operates against the toolpath, tool, holder, workpiece, and whatever fixture or stock geometry is present in Backplot. None of it requires a 3D machine model. Machine Simulation is built around configuring an actual machine model under Machine Models in the Editor Setup and simulating against its kinematics, which brings a Geometry Manager showing the machine’s Head, Table, and Base, collision checking that includes those physical components, and simulation that reflects how the specific machine actually moves.
For a shop verifying against stock, fixtures, and tool geometry, Ultra now covers a meaningful share of what used to require the add-on.
For a shop that needs to know whether a spindle head clears a machine enclosure, or whether a machine’s kinematic path creates a problem the toolpath alone wouldn’t show, Machine Simulation with a real machine model is still the tool that answers that question.
Ultra narrows the gap considerably. It doesn’t close it.
Getting the Most Out of Ultra’s New Verification Tools
Scope Tool/Workpiece Collisions to Rapid Moves first; it does the most to improve the signal-to-noise ratio of the Simulation Report from day one. After that, check holder geometry in the Tool Manager, since Enhanced Safety Checks can only catch a holder-to-stock problem if the holder model is accurate.
What this addition doesn’t do is replace machine-specific kinematic verification. If your real risk is a physical collision involving the machine’s own head, table, or enclosure, Machine Simulation remains the right tool for that.
Have Questions or Need Help?
Check out our CIMCO Edit product page for more information.
If you want help reviewing your Backplot and Simulation settings, or want to talk through whether your shop still needs the full Machine Simulation Add-on, please contact us.
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