Company Changing Programs - Input PLEASE.

[Tyler Robertson]

http://www.kubotekusa.com/

 

Their website is.. minimal

[gcode]

I've never encountered KeyCreator in my job.

I've never even knew it existed except for people

who have mentioned it here.

We've got 4 seats of Autocad here but let the license expire years ago.

Recently Autodesk called about that and I told

them we used SolidWorks now.

She said, "I'm hearing that alot"

I remember reading an article in the early 90's

by some Autodesk bigshot who though solid modeling

was a passing fancy..I'll bet he wishes he could have a do-over

[Guest]

quote:

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minimal

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EXACTLY

 

[Jason B.]

Well for those who think the website is minimal, I need to know what your looking for that isn't there? Then maybe I can help you with what your looking for. It seems pretty complete to me.

[EazyE]

SOLIDWORKS IT IS -

[Guest]

quote:

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SOLIDWORKS IT IS -

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a "TRUE" CAD system instead of a toy(keycreator)

 

 

You will be pleased

[MotorCityMinion]

"I remember reading an article in the early 90's

by some Autodesk bigshot who though solid modeling was a passing fancy..I'll bet he wishes he could have a do-over"

 

Acad 2008 does solids and surfaces, inside the .DWG. From what I've seen, it's not shabby.

[gcode]

quote:

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Acad 2008 does solids and surfaces

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Autodesk does a good job with

solids now, but they lost a

bunch of market share while they

were playing catch up 8 or 9 years ago

[Colin Gilchrist]

I will say I've demoed Keycreator and it does have some very powerful features.

 

Being able to modify a "dumb" solid really is Lightyears ahead of Solidworks.

 

Keycreator is the new incarnation of CadKey and I think they did a good job adding some very powerful tools. That being said, I've only seen it used in sales demos, so I have no idea how it functions in the real world.

 

I'm also not sure it compares to Solidworks for Assembly functions.

 

I really do suggest that people at least check it out though.

 

John/Tom, have you seen any of the Siemens stuff for NX (I think) where you can cut/paste solid features, move/resize walls, faces, ect., On the Fly?

 

KeyCreator has some really cool functions like that.

 

From what I've heard, Kubotek has some really top notch engineers working under the hood. They are pretty big in Japan...

[Colin Gilchrist]

There is minimal infomation under "Products". If you want to see some of the cool tools for working with Solids, click on the "Technology" link. Then view the videos. There are categories for a lot of different tools.

 

Check out the "Real Geometry Editing" section. Look at "Faces" and "Features".

 

Really Powerful stuff, but the real question is, "How easy and well does it work in the real world?".

 

Jason B., have you used any of these "Real world editing" functions? Do they work? Anyone else?

 

Thanks,

[Guest CNC Apps Guy 1]

it's called Synchronus Technology. Just ask the CAD/CAM Jihadist. He'll tell you all about it; he knows EVERTYTHING...

[Colin Gilchrist]

I know of whom you speak James.

 

Seriously though, KeyCreator has some cool features that might be worth investigating for the right user.

[gcode]

quote:

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Synchronus Technology

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I've seen demo's.. never got to play hands on..

we let out NX maintenance expire about 3 months too soon ..

I can see it being very powerful in a design world.. but wonder about CAM.. a programmer shouldn't be modifying a customer's model too

much.. supress fillets, patch holes, stuff like that..

It would be very powerful for fixture/workholding design.

I also wonder about how they keep track of revsion history with power like that.

I'm looking forward to this years SW beta..

SW won't let NX get too far ahead before

they hit back.

 

[ 05-05-2009, 12:09 AM: Message edited by: gcode ]

[Colin Gilchrist]

I totally concur Gcode. This kind of stuff is realy only going to be useful for someone who does a combination of design/build. I still think the technology is pretty cool though.

[Guest CNC Apps Guy 1]

Yeah, I agree too. For the most part, a programmer does not need a full on CAD System, not that it hurts, because it does not, but if I had to choose between CAM features and CAD features, CAM's going ti win every time.

[Matthew]

I've used Keycreator (formerly Cadkey) for the last 10 years in a job shop environment. I used it to design jigs and fixtures and model parts from customer prints. I was able to do detail drawings, I had no problem exporting as STEP, or SAT files and importing into Mastercam. Any model I brought into Mastercam worked great from Keycreator. Being able to work with 'dumb' models was great for me. I could make changes as required without having to worry about a history tree. I even had better luck exporting STL files from Keycreator to use in Mastercam verify than I did from Mastercam (at the time, I'm sure it's better now). I didn't even entertain the thought of their Keymachinist addon. I already had Mastercam, and their product was too new and I didn't want to and had no reason to change. Nothing with it 'wowed' me.

 

My current place of employment is using Solidworks. While I'm not doing any of the designing, I couldn't imagine these guys designing their products in Keycreator. With the number of different people working on these projects, the number of changes, revisions, improvements etc over the life of the products, I don't think Keycreator would handle it as well.

 

Matt

[Jason B.]

quote:

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Jason B., have you used any of these "Real world editing" functions? Do they work? Anyone else?

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sorry guys. I've been out of town for a few days. Yes, I use these features a lot. It seems very easy for the most part. If (when) I get into an extremely complex part of the geometry it can sometimes make you find other ways of doing something but that's the nice part about it. there are many ways to get it done.

 

My business is probably about 75% design and 25% programming so I use it quite often. I design new products for a large array of customers. Everything from game cameras for Reconyx to Deck parts for Menards. And many things in between. It's a ton of fun and I enjoy it very much. I think it is because it is such a free forming modeler with not as much constraints as a parametric modeler. ?

[Colin Gilchrist]

That makes a lot of sense Jason. I think KeyCreator is probably a better fit than Solidworks for anyone who is their own Design Engineering where you are working on developing your own finished product. If you are just doing tooling on an existing part, Solidworks is hard to beat.