Mastercam CAD usage Survey

[Jim at Gentex]

Thanks Don.

 

Downloading now.

 

I'll play around with it later but for now I have parts to get out the door so I don't have to work tomorrow!

[Don S at Barefoot CNC South]

Wow Jim multi tasking on a friday!

[Troy Gossett Indepak Inc.]

Is there any way to for the machine sim to use .mmd to define the machine. I noticed it will read .xml can the .mmd be convereted to .xml?

[Bruce Caulley]

No. This machine sim is just a bolt on that doesn't 100% tie in with MC. It is that same as the machsim in NX4.

 

Bruce

[Greg Williams]

quote:

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No. This machine sim is just a bolt on that doesn't 100% tie in with MC. It is that same as the machsim in NX4.

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Are ya sure??

 

I know that this Moduleworks machine sim is in Cimatron as well as Mastercam but in NX3 UGS have there own Machine builder similar to Vericut. So have they changed in NX4?

[Bruce Caulley]

Almost sure. I had some demos of camworks, solidcam and NX4 a while back. One of them definately used this machsim and one of the others used the advanced 5 module. I'll dig up my notes to confirm.

 

Bruce

[William Grizwald]

Bruce,

While not MCX specific... NX4's machine sim is very integrated into their system. You use Machine Builder which ties into Post Builder. That said it is not reading actual gcode (at this version) but the UG/Apt source. Sort of like MC using nci files for simulation. Great for checking. I wish all cam systems had this feature.

 

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Bill

[Bruce Caulley]

DOH! Checked notes. Not NX4, must have been camworks or solidcam.

[Greg Williams]

Machine Sim like the advanced multiaxis stuff is written by Moduleworks. they sell to a number of CAM companies including Mastercam

[Thee Dragracer1951]

While on the subject of cad usage inside of mastercam...

I have Solids, But am not sure at all why...

What I would REALLY like is the ability to modify my geometry like in Solidworks. You see, I do a lot of prototyping and most of my design data is done in Solidworks. Rev changes are usually conveyed to me as an email request to change such and such feature. It would really speed up the process if I could alter the sketch or solid feature and save it as a rev change

I know I can import all the ops into a new file with teh new geometry but then I have to reassign all the ops to geometry.

Or am I missing something?

Please tell me that I am.....

[Guest]

Jim,

 

You can use Mastercam Direct to take your models with the feature tree straight into Mastercam.

 

This gives you access to the feature tree and allows you to modify in MC. The downside is there are functions in Solidworks that MC does not support so when you bring the part in, you may not always get the correct result.

 

Feature recognition should help you with this. It does not do well with Solids at the moment, I have seen written that it's handling os solid in MR1 is supposed to be markedly better.

 

That should help what you are trying to do immensely.

[Thee Dragracer1951]

I have to go out to the shop this morning to run some parts so I'll give that a try.

Thanks

[Josh T™]

Parametrics would be really cool!

[Matthew Hajicek - Singularity]

Why wouldn't we want one program that does everything, including kinematics, FEA, etc. If you don't want to use a feature, don't use it. Or don't buy that add-on, as I'm sure certain features would be.

 

One program to rule them all, and in the darkness bind them.

[Colin Gilchrist]

Matt,

 

If you want one package for everything, spend $60,000.00 for one seat of Catia V5 with the NC package. Then you can spend $15,000.00 a year on maintainence.

 

Every year.

 

Nuff said.

[William Grizwald]

"If you want one package for everything, spend $60,000.00 for one seat of Catia V5 with the NC package. Then you can spend $15,000.00 a year on maintainence."

 

Colin,

This is in no way to debat who's got the better system but...

 

I hear this all the time. It's getting old .

Do not use Catia as a comparison. Use UG. As one who has used UG for 8 years and MCX for the past several months, I can say withtout a doubt that should be the comparison (if there should be any).

 

Ask around what the costs are (not here) for similar features. They are NOT that far and in some cases equal to MCX. That is why MCX must be improved in the cad side. It's the industry's "dirty little secret".

 

CNC Software needs to remove the wall between solids and explicit geometry very soon. Simple assemblies would be the next right step. Kinimatics for machine sim will kill your computer if it is not assembly based.

 

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Bill

[gcode]

quote:

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Ask around what the costs are (not here) for similar features. They are NOT that far and in some cases equal to MCX.

---

I have owned a full seat of Mastercam for years

so I'm famililar with its costs.

My current employeer recently took the NX plunge.

By the time they added up purchase costs, maintenance, training and post customization,

the price per seat was double the cost of Mastercam and the bills kept rolling in.

 

I came in at the tail end of the adventure and didn't get enough NX seat time to give it a fair trial. I somehow got onto the CC list for accounting emails though and the amount of money involved was stunning.

I will say one thing for NX, they have the best salesmen on the planet

[William Grizwald]

gcode,

 

Interesting how things are perceived. In the deal I was negotiating, the base was about the same. Training is extra as is the post (but I've done enough to do them myself). The maintenance is a bit more. But, I should also add you can dump Solidworks at that point though so there is some savings... Enough about the other guys... It is what it is... The folks liking each will use each.

That all said, cost of MCX is not an issue where I work and that was the deciding factor.

 

Just give me true solids with faces I can change colors! It's so much easier finding features. I hate creating surfaces just to highlight them. My parts are 12' long with little tiny holes and slots all over!

 

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Bill

[Don S at Barefoot CNC South]

Ok so who won????

[b_daddy]

[Don S at Barefoot CNC South]

Bump

[gcode]

quote:

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Ok so who won????

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In my shop, SolidWorks/Mastercam X2

I don't know what happened to the 25 seats of

NX4.

[William Grizwald]

Don,

 

I posted the reply last night but it's gone today...

 

The company uses Mastercam.

 

--

Bill

[Don S at Barefoot CNC South]

quote:

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Ok so who won????

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The sweatshirts I meant

[Midwest]

Maybe they are shipping with the calendars....

 

 

Last year they started a thread on 12-19-05 , one year ago today.