X or Pro E?

[Bocho]

OK, Here's the deal. I have a 9:00 meeting on Wed. the 14th to try to convince my compnay that they should get 2 full blown seats of Mastercam as opposed to Pro E. We do mill, wire and lathe, with live C. I have used MasterCam since ver. 6. (8 yrs.) How is the learning curve on X from 9.x? Can I get a really good translator for Pro E since that's what our engineers use? I hear that the learning curve on Pro E is oppressive. Any thoughts? Sorry the thread is so late, but I know that there have to be some good replies for me by morning. Help!!!

P.S. Thanks Dave Thomson

[Guest CNC Apps Guy 1]

Hey Tim,

 

Learning curve for Pro/Man is formidable. In all honesty with your background in MC they would be foolish to change course now. Ask the Pro/E dealer about post processors... :rolleyes, and their cost. You WON'T be getting those for free, and if they are free they surely won't generate good code. As for the Pro/E Translator, it works quite well.

 

JM2C

[DavidB]

We have 5 seats of Pro-E.Our Engineering department give me .step files for MC.

I looked into the Pro-E convertor and made the decision it was not worth the $.I have no problem from my point of view using the .step files for machinig.

As for Pro-E the uses here find it very unuser friendly.We changed over to Pro-E at the start of the year,we where using Solid Edge.

Another Management only decision

I have not looked at the Pro-E machining side and I wouldn't bother to be honest.We are on maintanence with MC and I just recieved MCX.There is a learning curve with X and I still have not used it for a job on the shop floor.More because im chicken

.

MC V9 does everthing I need.3 and 5 axis machining and C-axis Lathe work with live tooling.

Good Luck

[Saultspics]

We used proE to machine parts a few year back now we design with proE machine with Mastercam.

The problem tha we had was our engineer was doing both the design and the tool paths and the shop was waiting for G-codes to run. I was over the shop at that time so I look at some programs to program with proE was one of them. With Pro E the learning curve is very hard. We got a 30 day test with Mastercam Within that 30 day I was doing all of the programing for the shop. Now I use both Pro E to design with and Mastercam to program the tool paths.

[HevyMetl]

Our model shop uses pro/e pro/man next door for all of the mill work because they do many DOE's and multiple variations on a theme. Pro/man works well for that because once you have developed a toolpath any dimensional changes will automatically regenerate. With mastercam you have to bring in a new model and then reselect all of your geometry from your already developed toolpaths and regenerate the toolpaths. I do mainly one off stuff in the mold shop. I design all of our molds and electrodes in pro. I then export a step solid into mastercam and we are off to the races. I can usually have toolpaths and machines running before the boys next door have their manufacturing models completed in Pro. We have tested time after time and proven that mastercam is faster for one off programs. With that said Pro destroys MC when it comes to making quick changes to the model and having toolpaths ready to run at the click of a regeneration key. This is all conditional on the individual that set-up the manufacturing model and how careful he was in selecting his references.

 

+1000 to James POSTS for Pro are expensive, and not as easy to go into to make minor changes and tweaks. When we get a new machine we have to contact ICAM and they start working on a post. They already have most of them developed, but they still charge you for the full development costs everytime they build you one. We had a post developed for our 3 axis makino and wire edm last year and they nailed us for approx. $9000.00. But as they will tell your every case is an individual. They are solid posts and work very well.

 

Lastly as the long winded one keeps typing. Try going to the Pro/e website and find a forum like this. What you do find are a bunch a arrogant aholes that like to tell you what you don't know, but never seem to be able to solve any problems. Their tech support is lacking. When you do finally get through to them it takes about three call backs to get an individual that can answer a question without ready his problem solving flow chart.

[Bocho]

Thanks all,

Heading out the door with a little more ammo. Some folks at work are on my side including foreman and lead-man. We'll see...

[Bocho]

Bump.

We're getting a demo for X ,so I'm still open for any other comments on advantages of X over ProE despite having ProE in engineering department. Thanks all!

[stevieboy]

I used Pro/e, Pro/mold & Pro/Man for 9 years

and really like it, the learning curve is not as steep as it use to be since Wildfire hit the market, Pro had been losing a lot of market to SW

till Wildfire came about, Wildfire has a 5 star rating..OK as for Pro/man and X ... I think Pro/Man is easier to use, But I grew-up on it.

Mcam 9 I think is the best for what it does..

Cam....

But, for my money Pro's the way to go

That's my .02

 

Stevieboy