CAM future?

[Bob W.]

Thats a pretty good list of bugs. Imagine of the users of that program had to wait 6-8 months to get updates for those... Wait a second, thats us Mastercam users.

 

I think Mastercam under estimates the importance of customer service and they had better be looking over their shoulder. When a company emerges with a comparable product and excellent customer service there will be a mass exodus.

[Thee Rickster ™]

quote:

---

Some guy actually said out loud that because he could not re-size one of his windows it "... was because Mastercam was not a true Windows app...". People with no clue should just remain silent, lest they speak and remove all doubt.

---

James, you make a good point.

 

So why is it that i have talked (during the last Month of My MC woes) about 10 different programmers

using other software;

-cimatron

-work nc

-VX

-esprit

-surfcam

-couple others( i didn't take notes)

 

and they have virtually Zero issues? There issues

 

All of the ppl i talk to are my mold making

colleagues that do relatively the same and in most

case way bigger more complex molds than I.

 

Mastercam has major bugs right now and someone/team at CNC has got to the bottom of

it.

[billystein]

i saw a demo of edgecam at westec.

it is pretty much like fbm. i think it is more developed than fbm but i really dont know that much about it. the fact that mcam is putting a lot of time and effort into fbm leads me to believe that this is the direction of cam. at least for the short term. i can imagine the power of mastercam toolpaths combined with fbm and with a little refinement. the possibilities could be powerful.

 

billy

[Watcher]

quote:

---

What's even more remarkable is that

this webpage is available to the

public. You'd think it would at the very

least require a maintenance username

login

---

That's IMHO one of the smartest marketing tactics that Peter Jensen and his team has developed. It really works.

 

quote:

---

I think Mastercam under estimates the importance of customer service and they had better be looking over their shoulder. When a company emerges with a comparable product and excellent customer service there will be a mass exodus.

---

Some years ago PTC has witnessed this phenomenon (Because of their $ucked support) when many of their customers switched to SW... they have improved the support substantially ever since, but IMHO PTC still being a huge corporation that cannot successfully offer a decent support considering their resources/economical power. However they are great at grabbing the money in our pockets... Pro/Engineer it's a great product, but if you have a bug with a toolpath, you have to convince they that another 1000 users will suffer with the problem as well, or you will get a polite excuse... and even when you do so... you surely will wait at least 2/3 datecodes to get a fix (6 months)

 

It seems to me that the future in CAM is going to be at the solutions developed by small software houses like Cimco / HSMWorks, CAMplete. From my experience, the bigger the structure behind a software, the poor is the support that is offered for it. Amazing, isn't it?

 

Cheers to the freedom of the small software houses… hope they keep growing thinking like they do these days...

[LEONARDDL]

Do you guys remember when software developers tried to perfect their software instead of shoving the next gadget into it.

 

I have several clients with current maint. agreements and a shelf full of MCX products collecting dust while they use MC8 or MC9, because things that worked well for years no longer work in MCX. If its not faster to use, easier to teach, or more reliable, whats the point. Dynamic plane, dynamic tool path and FBM

I consider to be must have features. Especially dynamic plane, it is the feature I have been looking for to persuade my clients it is worth the effort and cost to upgrade. It solves the biggest and most time consuming part of programing for a novice programmer. But when I show them how powerful these features are, they dwell on the bugs in things they have been using for years. Things that make them profitable. In CNC software defense I admit these are small job or tooling shops with level 1 or 2. Not really their customers. All they want is to be able to open their Solidworks file or SAT file, import operation, plug in the geometry and post. Kinda what Ray Kroc did with McDonald's. With 230 machine shops in a 30 mile radius (not counting 4 major aircraft company's), we seldom get an employee with more than a 85 I.Q. It virtually has to be moron proof. I have made a good living in the past 5 years automating and streamline mastercam and their machines for these company's. I have one shop where every body in the shop can program a routine part with little or no machining background. I test everything I do multiple time before I let a client touch it. The few times a bug has been caught by my client, I was truly embarrassed. It is this lack of humility that bothers me the most.

[Hardmill]

quote:

---

All they want is to be able to open their Solidworks file or SAT file, import operation, plug in the geometry and post. Kinda what Ray Kroc did with McDonald's. With 230 machine shops in a 30 mile radius (not counting 4 major aircraft company's), we seldom get an employee with more than a 85 I.Q.

---

quote:

---

From: KANSAS

---

Hey Dorothy wake up your not in Kansas no more.

 

LOL, Nice way to speak of you clients.

 

 

PEACE

[LEONARDDL]

It's not my clients that I speak of most of them are highly gifted intellectually. It is the employee pool I am talking about. Wow Ive never heard that Dorothy joke before very clever.

[gcode]

quote:

---

Wow Ive never heard that Dorothy joke before very clever.

---

Please don't encourage him.. he'll get a fat head and become impossible to live with

[Hardmill]

quote:

---

Please don't encourage him.. he'll get a fat head and become impossible to live with

---

Me ??

 

 

PEACE

[Mjölnir]

quote:

---

distributed computing

---

No kidding? They can do that?

[Mjölnir]

quote:

---

So why is it that i have talked (during the last Month of My MC woes) about 10 different programmers

using other software;

-cimatron

-work nc

-VX

-esprit

-surfcam

-couple others( i didn't take notes)

 

and they have virtually Zero issues?

---

I concur. My employer has more seats of Cimatron than Mastercam and Cimatron has recently (within the past couple weeks) been upgraded. The only complaint so far was a configuration issue that was in the past taken care of automatically by the installer which had to be done manually this time around.

[Watcher]

For those ones interested in meeting the inventors of adaptive clearing algorithm, which is bundled in Cimco HSM Performance Pack, HSMWorks. For who does not remember, Adaptive Clearing was the predecessor algorithm of Surfcam TrueMill, Mastercam Dynamic Milling, Volumill... etc... As far as I know they have helped to develp many of the new/improved algorithms of HSMworks... including 5 axis swarf...

The blog of these two mathematicians has a plenty of civilized rant... as well as a bunch of info regarding CAM algorithms, new developments, old bugs and limitations, trends, CAM math, challenges to get paid... very worth reading!

 

Freesteel

 

How are you paid

 

Adaptive clearing

 

[ 11-09-2009, 07:38 PM: Message edited by: Watcher ]

[john316]

.

 

quote:

---

Please don't encourage him.. he'll get a fat head and become impossible to live with

---

Too late!!

 

Now his head matches his body.

 

Interesting thread. It started out looking suspicously JBish but it has some good info in it.

 

.

[Solidworks Jobb]

Hej alla ni som söker CAD jobb,

 

Om du har några av följande erfarenheter:

- PDMS

- Microstation

- Inventor

- Solidworks

eller erfarenhet av CAD Engineering

 

och om du vill arbeta i Norge eller Sverige, besök vår vår hemsida:

www.solidworkseurope.com

 

Tack.

[ak762]

google translation in English:

Hey all you who are looking for CAD work,

 

If you have any of the following experiences:

- PDMS

- MicroStation

- Inventor

- SolidWorks

or experience of CAD Engineering

 

and if you want to work in Norway or Sweden, please visit our our website

[GI George]

quote:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So why is it that i have talked (during the last Month of My MC woes) about 10 different programmers

using other software;

-cimatron

-work nc

-VX

-esprit

-surfcam

-couple others( i didn't take notes)

 

and they have virtually Zero issues?

 

_______________________________________

I used to use VX, in the begining it was a big PIA. They would have bug fix releases that would also contain new functionality. It was like they were in too big of a hurry to come out with something new they would not check and make sure basic thigns worked before releasing it. We were in the habit of waiting till mid releases before upgrading. I have heard that it has gotten alot better.

[Thee Rickster ™]

GI

 

It is way better now, my buddy is a VX reseller here in my town and he says so...

[GI George]

Rickster,

 

I really liked the cad side, going from surfaces to solids was simple. The quick mill tool paths were nice. The biggest complaint with cam was the verify was so slow.

[Guest CNC Apps Guy 1]

MANY software companies do not publish enhancement/bug fix lists. CNC is not exclusive in this matter. On Esprit's Web Forum Download section, the latest release 2010 SP02, it is stated that "A detailed list of issues corrected or features added to this release will not be provided."

 

Rickster, I am playing with Esprit 2010, and have succeeded in crashing it more in the last few weeks, than I crashed MC during the whole X4 Beta Cycle. I have no doubt that this is due to ME not knowing what I'm doing.

 

I'm not ready to throw stones at Esprit.

[Thee Rickster ™]

Your company has to much cash to throw away