"High end" cam software

[Michael Reynolds]

Hi all! I've been listening to our cad staff talk about high end and low end cad software, and they're saying that acad is low end and UG is high end.

What about cam software? Please don't get me wrong, I LOVE mastercam (I teach both UG cam and Mastercam, and don't think much of UG cam). But what are your opinoins of the high and low end cam packages? Can yall's give me a range from (high to low). Example: Bobcam to Mastercam?

Whadaya think?

Very respectfully,

Mike R.

[Allan Brown]

Based on price, performance, or perception?

[Michael Reynolds]

Good question, Dave! I'm just wondering about this, so I'll say all of the above. I only know two systems (UG and Mcam), and I'm not planning on switching. Like I said I'm just wondering.

Thanks!

Mike R.

[Trevor Bailey]

When I first started using MC, I was making proto golf clubs & putters. The guys that were in the shop before me were already using UG. From day one, I was able to go from part file to programming to machine cutting in literally half the time it would take those guys. Then to top it all off, my parts always looked better and the "finishing" guys really liked that. I got bought lunch ALOT.

Just my personal experience with the CAM side.

[Guest CNC Apps Guy 1]

High-End Translated - CUMBER$OME, EXPEN$IVE, and EXPEN$IVE.

MasterCAM Translated - Excellent Value, Logical Layout(except for Solids being on the Main Menu, that makes NO sense whatsoever, you don't "Solid", you Create a Solid - IMHO), Intuitive and somewhat easy to follow.

"Economy CAD/CAM" Translated - You get what you pay for.

Now, UG, Pro/E, and CATIA, are extremely powerful Design/Engineering Tools. They are able to create and test things that boggle the mind, but when it comes down to "CAD to Machined Part", I can beat them Hands Down with no question. 2 Axis through 5 Axis Milling, Lathe Stuff, not a problem.

As for Mastercam's competition, well looking at Gibbs, I could never figure it out. I could figure out CATIA Machinist but not Gibbs. So much for "User Friendly".

EdgeCAM, well, I'll just say there is a reason they closed all but one or two of their Technical Centers in the US and now Tech Support is handled for the entire US from Michigan (somewhere in the Mid-West at least).

Surfcam, their VAR network has almost completely evaporated. Gone in a couple of years IMHO.

Esprit, limited even with their VBA stuff, it makes too many decisions for you. It lacks serious horse power for High-End milling. I hear their Lathe Package is quite comprehensive though I do not know anybody personally that uses it.

Work NC - NOCAD last time I heard. Won't even work for me no matter HOW powerful their CAM is. Their Hig Speed Machining routines are quite nice.

PowerMill. Lots of nice High Speed Machining features.

SmartCAM - DOA!

CAMAX - DOA!

SDRC - DOA!

CAM Works - Doesn't!

Camsoft - Seemed pretty weak the couple of times I've watched somebody program with it.

That's all I can think of righ off the top of my head for now.

JM2C

[ Dave Thomson - corrected some UBB code ]

[ 12-19-2001: Message edited by: Dave Thomson ]

[Barry]

I feel that James is right there with his comments I dont have much personal experience with most of them but the only two i would consider for cam other than mastercam are WorkNC and Powermill. Easily the only two comparible with MasterCam.

Barry

James you pulled a couple out of the weeds there.

Almost forgot they once were alive!

[bryan.davis]

Looks like the ones you missed off your list James are those who are actually a serious competitor to MasterCAM...

Delcam and Machining Stategist... both these packages are moving forwards in leaps and bounds, Ive not had much contact with MS, but from what Ive seen and heard of Delcam, well if I had to set up a CAD/CAM suite from scratch again Im not sure which way I would go

[Kenneth Potter]

I running Between Mastercam & Cimmatron(MOstly Mastercam)

Cimmatron is NOT user friendly but its very powerful with the cam ,cad & solids side. Support sucks. Not many shops use it cause its to complex. Mastercam always gets my foot in job shops front door.

[ 12-20-2001: Message edited by: Kenneth Potter ]

[Allan Brown]

Bryan - James mentioned PowerMILL, which is Delcam's milling package.

Strategist is developed out of the UK, and must naturally must be more a presence there.

[Guest CNC Apps Guy 1]

I apologize for not puttting DELCAM in front of PowerMILL. I believe I gave credence to their High Speed Machining strategies.

As for Cimmatron, if you're into a UNIX look and feel, have at it. Good luck trying to get even fair support and fuggedaboudit if you've got a full 4 Axis application. See these guys are too busy tooting their own horn in all the industry magazines to help you the customer out.

JM2C

[Trevor Bailey]

I got a demo version of the Delcam. The powershape was pretty good. I, however, was not impressed with the milling package. I would even go as far as saying that I would use Gibbs before I would use Delcam. For everything that MC can do, I would take on any competitor with their own part file. That is using mill & lathe. I am not a wire person, so I can not comment there.

[Zero]

I have not used any other cam program besides MC.But I have used acouple of diferent cad programs like solid works, rhino, and have seen alias sudio and pro-e.Mc in my opinion deffinatly is the most user friendly of them all.You can't beat MC as far as geometry creation.It's so simple and you can create any kind of geometry with ease.Sometimes I find that using MC and rhino together to create 3d part files works pretty good.RHINO HAS SOME SURFACE OPTIONS THAT I WOULD LOVE TO SEE IN MC LIKE RAIL REVOLVE AND A COUPLE OF OTHERS(hope someone at the mc factory is reading this).Most of the time they will create pretty much the same surface with very minor differances but Rhino most of the time will make a better swept surface with less geometry espescialy when your sweeping an arc along a 3d curve and it starts of large and ends up small or vice versa.When jumping back and forth between programs though, you sometimes lose entities.

But if you want the best cad program and you have the time to learn it(which I hear takes a little while),Alias studio kicks everyone elses butts!We have a client that gives us both alias and pro-e files and you just cant beat Alias in my opinion.The files are always clean and rarely do I have problems with them.

[gcode]

I'm working in a shop that has a copy of

HyperMIll from Desualt (France???)

It runs inside AutoDesk Mechanical Desktop.

(like CAMWORKS runs in SolidWorks)

I run a seat of Mastrcam so I haven't spent much time with the HyperMill.

It looks very powerful and very difficult to use.

They've spent $51,000 on it and they don't even have all the options!!!

[kwolf]

Hypermill from Openmind software (germany),it's very powerfull and I heard they developed cam for catia too.

I don't think CAMWorks is a weak competitor.It has automatic feature recognition, and in latest version it supports machining in assembly mode, it supports clamp definition .It has powerfull simulation .Besides many users find desingning in SW much easier than any other software and the software itself is very easy to use.But I don't think they have any 4 or 5 axis machining available.

BTW does anyone works with Anvil? How about VX Vision? I heard VX Vision is an ideal CAMD .

[gcode]

For the last 2 weeks, I've been programming some

prototype parts that were supplied to me as SolidWorks files. I import the SW solid into Mastercam and go to work. Of course, the engineer has changed the design about 10 times while I was still programming. That means a new import and

rechaining etc etc etc. After about three times around the block with this routine, I can really see the attraction of CAMWORKS. Edit the model regen and post!

It would be really nice if Mastercam could import the SolidWorks feature tree along with the solid.

That would have eliminated 90% of the trouble I've been having lately. In hindsight, I should have taken the trouble to build the model as a Mastercam solid. That way the design changes could have been done quickly without having to reimport a new solid.

[ 12-19-2001: Message edited by: gcode ]

[Guest CNC Apps Guy 1]

quote:

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I don't think CAMWorks is a weak competitor.It has automatic feature recognition

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. The reason that I feel that it(meaning feature recognition) is weak because it only works somewhat well with prismatic parts. I can create avery simple part that will cause the software to do some pretty funny stuff (funny to a machinist anyway).

Sorry but their software CANNOT make better machining decisions that I can I don't care what the sales geek(that only knows how to do his demo parts and not real world parts) says. I think GOOD feature recognition is about 3-5 years away still (at best). This goes along with the "Magic Machine" button everyone is after. The best decisions still are made by humans. IMO

quote:

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It would be really nice if Mastercam could import the SolidWorks feature tree along with the solid.

That would have eliminated 90% of the trouble I've been having lately. In hindsight, I should have taken the trouble to build the model as a Mastercam solid. That way the design changes could have been done quickly without having to reimport a new solid.

---

Wait and see. But you didn't hear it from me.

[ 12-19-2001: Message edited by: James Meyette ]

[Phil Orenstein]

I few years ago I undertook a CAM evaluation as a former user of NC-Polaris, excellent in concept for MDT users, but very buggy, seeking to upgrade to a better system. After looking at Mastercam, Surfcam, Visi-cam, UG, Hypermill, we chose Visi-cam, definitley not the wisest choice. After Mucho problemo, we switched to Mastercam and have been happily using it for the past year. It was such a relief, that "happily" is quite an understatemnet. Now I use Powermill and Mastercam. Don't knock Powermill. It is the fastest in 3D calculation time and has some powerful editing features that I haven't seen anywhere. Overall, I still choose Mastercam overall, the closest thing out there to the silver bullet.

Phil Orenstein

[Kenneth Potter]

Hypermill from Openmind software

OOOOhhh Nooooo that That Autocad bolt on !!!!!

I flat out dont like it at all Autocad HypermillEEEEEChhhhh

[Guest CNC Apps Guy 1]

quote:

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Don't knock Powermill. It is the fastest in 3D calculation time and has some powerful editing features that I haven't seen anywhere.

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I've seen some of the toolpath calculation times on some complex molds for it and it is impressive as is their variety of High Speed Machining strategies available. Fortunately Mastercam is getting faster calculation-wise, and they are offering more tool engagement options in pocketing and surfacing. I used to model my toolpath to get the loops and stuff and it would take a considerable amount of time.

When V9 becomes available, check it out. It has some new stuff in ths area and you may be impressed.

JM2C

[Phil Orenstein]

Yes, I am definitely a Mastercam enthusiast and looking forward to V9. In fact the more I utilize other packages, the more new features I discover in Mastercam. For instance just today I used a scallop finishing strategy with many separate boundaries to cut facets into a smooth contoured surface.

What do you mean by saying "I used to model my toolpath to get the loops and stuff..." Do you mean creating geometry for contour toolpaths and turning off cutter comp so it travels on the line? Or are you referring to another method of modelling toolpaths?

Curious

Phil Orenstein

[Guest CNC Apps Guy 1]

Well, before Mastercam had any High Speed features, looping on and off the part, etc... (so as not to make "jerky" motion at the machine) I would create geometry to get the toolpaths I wanted. So for starters, I would do for example a scalloped toolpath, backplot and save the geometry. The motion where it would engage the un-cut material would be somewhat jerky at the machine so I would create arcs between the passes (which is done automatically - with the proper switches/buttons flipped now) and chain the toolpath as a contour. Very tedious, and time consuming but necessary at the time to keep from breaking tools cutting in H13 @ Rc 48(ish).

Also, before Mastercam could cut surfaces, (V3 or so, been so long now I can't seem to recall), you pretty much had to model anything special you wanted the tolpath to do.

[kathy]

Boy oh Boy, gotta just jump right in on this one...

The only reason to justify the 'high end' system is to integrate the design and manufacturing. If you build parts to print or an electronic dataset model, the design source is inmaterial.

In a perfect design workflow, the part is designed, the manufacturing data (tooling, molds ect. )is driven from that part model. The documentation (drawing) is derived from the model. So, if you design in ProE or Ideas, draft in Autocad and machine in Mastercam, the potential for duplication of effort and error is increased. If your parts are simple, than maybe this isn't much of a factor.

The bottom line is that every product and maufacturing process carries it's unique requirements for what tools will do the job best.

However, I program a product (satellite panels) where the Autocad to Mastercam processs is just killing me. The knowledge that I need to capture - 'feature' just isn't available. It's only 2 1/2 axis machining, but I need extensive requirements for each hole. Solidworks, Solidedge, Inventor just won't help me because of the limitations in Mastercam. Think of designing and drawing a schematic in Autocad - all you get are lines and arcs. Yes, you can label that set of zig-zag lines as a resistor - BUT... is there really a value attached to those entities? When you place a resistor into a Mentor Graphics schematic - that component has a value that will impact the other components.

Almost 10 years ago, I designed stuff using UG and at that time it was heads and tails over the Autocad's, Solid...'s of today. ProE dosn't impress me, and Ideas is by-by. So, I would love to get my hands on UG!!

jm .02

Kathy

[ 12-21-2001: Message edited by: kathy ]

[Scott Bond]

Good morning all

The day is comeing ,,,"high end" will include us.

 

If anything can go right it will at the best possible moment.

[ 12-21-2001: Message edited by: Scott Bond ]

[Guest CNC Apps Guy 1]

quote:

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....It's only 2 1/2 axis machining, but I need extensive requirements for each hole....

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Is the detail information related to the "hole" in the AutoCAD file and not coming into the Mastercam file?

[Tim Holston]

Hi new to the board looks real good.

I have used a few for mill and wire from Smart Cam to Pro-e and find mc to be the best overall for quickly changing the parts or the toolpath. I mostly make 3D electrodes. I haven't used the wire in a long while anybody useing it now.