surfcam VS. Mastercam

[Jerome]

Hey all give me some reasons to convince my boss to get another seat of Mastercam. He uses Surfcam, and The other guy wants to use Mastercam. It is a wash we need a new seat of something! We currently have one each Mastercam and Surfcam.

 

Give me reasons to convince him!

[Quickmike]

Have him check out the smurfcam forum then have him check out this great forum. It should not require any more effort than that.

[mchin-pilot]

Jerome, what do you use these sofwares for?

2D,2-1/2D

3D,Mold Making

4 Axis

3+2

OR at last 5Axis simultanious

 

It may depend

[Jerome]

2D, 3D and soon 5 axis. We make Carbon Fiber compression molds, and machine carbon fiber second ops.

[Jerome]

Oh My mistake we do have two seats of Surfcam and one of Mastercam. I used Surfcam and it does not compare to Mcam in ease of use. You can not even inport solids into Surfcam, only .IGS which is silly to me.

[John White WLM&T]

"Have him check out the smurfcam forum then have him check out this great forum. It should not require any more effort than that. "

 

Do the amount of posts here speak to weak dealer support? Software work arounds? Bug report/fixes.

 

Would a quiet forum mean software that works?

 

John

[Guest]

Just be careful when you consider John White's postings.

 

If you look at the balance of his posts, it is more than obvious he is only here because he has an axe to grind.

 

 

So while he is more than allowed to voice his opinion, I would suggest you take it for what it is worth.

[htm01]

quote:

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Would a quiet forum mean software that works?

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no, probably people that don't!

[Dan@home]

When it comes time to hire a person that knows Cad/Cam. There are allot more people out here that know Mastercam.

[Chris Rizzo]

- Do a head-to-head challenge with him on a couple of parts!See which is faster and gives a better toolpath. Both take the same solid model....err wait he can't import it from the get-go.

 

- Also if smurfcam doesn't have hst in both 2d or 3d, it's no longer in the ballpark.

 

- Both pose a similar question and see who can get an answer faster.

 

-

quote:

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Do the amount of posts here speak to weak dealer support?

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How about because it's the most widely used cad/cam pkg in the world.(See for yourself) More users, more questions.

[mchin-pilot]

The definition of "Ease of use" lies within the skill of operator. The truth is once the operator learns the tools/buttons where they live and how they operate, the Software becomes easy!!

 

Now for 2d 3d Both softwares are alike.

Surfcam has little better 2D Strategies.

Surfcam had long ago TrueMill which is mastercams now so called Dynamic Milling.

 

For 3 Axis they both are same. Surfcam has simply layed the strategies but MC has strategies scattered in two places ( Normal and High speed) Having said High speed but results may not be great.

 

If you have 5 axis and are going to use toolpath 5 axis for your parts, then MC has more strategies.

 

Jerome if you buy 1SC then you have 1MC and 3 SC,,,sure one day you will oudate MC and will need 1 more SC.

what about buy 1 more MC and have 2 SC and 2MC seats. That way you have power of both.

....2cents

[John White WLM&T]

And now for some current news from Cimdata.

 

 

The worldwide five most rapidly-growing CAM software vendors on the basis of revenue received in 2009 as compared to 2008, were OPEN MIND Technologies, CG Tech, Delcam, DP Technology, and Dassault Systems. However, OPEN MIND Technologies was the only vendor to achieve positive growth as all other suppliers were either flat in revenues or experienced a decline in revenues.

 

CIMdata is projecting that the five most rapidly-growing companies in 2010 will be C&G Systems as a result of a merger of Graphic Products Japan and Computer Engineering Inc., SolidCAM, Geometric Tech, DP Technology and OPEN MIND Technologies. It can be noted that OPEN MIND Technologies and DP Technology are the only two companies expected to be among the top five most rapidly-growing companies in both years.

[Joe788]

John, you realize they are talking about revenue growth, don't you?

[Joe788]

^^Edit, of course you realize it, because you read right through this in the same press release and intentionally left it out of your quote:

 

quote:

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The 2009 rankings on the basis of industrial seats shipped by brand were Siemens’ PLM Software NX,

CNC Software’s Mastercam

, Dassault Systèmes’ CATIA, PTC’s Pro/E, and Planit Holdings’ EDGECAM.

---

LOL!

[frostfritt]

I did run SurfCam and Mastercam parallel for a while.

I have no experience of the latest versions of SC and no at all 5 axis but here are my thoughts.

SC has its 2D/3D Truemill for years and that is way best on the market and no one come close to that. http://www.surfware.com/truemill_technology.aspx

You get weary much CAM for the money if you buy Surfcam. The price is good.

Even other toolpath are better than MC and some MCX5 news have been in SC for years. SC is easier to get start with the first time, You are up and run with nearly no skills. You have to do a lot of configuration in MC to get it to work and there is a lot of user traps to learn how to avoid.

3D toolpath is better in SC but easier and faster to program in MC.

Importance of basics like WCS handling and operation importing has always been obvious for SC (Surfware)since first day. CNC just woke up on that but priority on bugs like cnc00066086 and cnc 00070939 seems to be still low.

CNC still don’t understand importance of several instances of MC open or multiopen MCX files for work with different projects on different machines simultaneously. At SC you can for example copy and paste operations between to open instances.

At my years in SurfCam it seems that Surfware was full focused on their truemill and forget about the rest for example file conversion and handling with solids. MC is good at file conversion, Thank you Pite Rimkus!

That was the reason to my switch to MC. After a little longer learning curve you can do more with Mastercam.

So I say Go for Mastercam!

 

/Frostfritt

[Mick]

quote:

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^^Edit, of course you realize it, because you read right through this in the same press release and intentionally left it out of your quote:

 

 

quote:

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

The 2009 rankings on the basis of industrial seats shipped by brand were Siemens’ PLM Software NX, CNC Software’s Mastercam, Dassault Systèmes’ CATIA, PTC’s Pro/E, and Planit Holdings’ EDGECAM.

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

 

LOL!

---

Haha, nice spotting. Nothing worse than someone doctoring information before posting, intentionally leaving something out as key as that.

 

Good work finding that!

[John White WLM&T]

I am not happy with my dealer but in the interest of not wanting to hijack another post I will try and refrain from complaining in this forum.

 

I didn't intend for any of my posts to be a personel attack on any one person. Sorry if it seems that way to anyone.

 

John

[Jayson Kramer]

John, we are sorry to hear. this is between you and your dealer and CNC software.

As there is a rule about talking about issues with your dealers here.

 

But if you want to help or even have questions I know me and most others are always willing to help and learn,I know I like to learn more.

 

I would say welcome aboard but looks like you have been here almost as long I have. you must of been a reader for many years correct?

 

Welcome to the other side.

[jhjr]

quote:

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CNC still don’t understand importance of several instances of MC open or multiopen MCX files for work with different projects on different machines simultaneously. At SC you can for example copy and paste operations between to open instances.

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I hope CNC hears this. Hint hint. That'd be on my wish list.

 

Sorry for the hijack

[Guest]

quote:

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I didn't intend for any of my posts to be a personel attack on any one person. Sorry if it seems that way to anyone.

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John,

 

I'm not sure if that was addressed to me but I did not view anything you said as a personal attack, you are entitled to your opinion as I said.

 

I work for a reseller, I take the calls from people not happy with the software at times. Sometimes it's a user/usage issue but other time it is not, as a reseller it is OUR jobs to get between you and CNC Software to hopefully get them to understand what a user is seeing and/or trying to do and why it may be important to them.

 

I think many on the forum have lost sight that this is a place to come for help. The griping does no one any good. If you've an issue with your reseller, you can always go up the tree to CNC.

 

or,

 

You can come here to ask if there isn't a way to get something done that you're trying to do. Many users here are pretty freakin' good at finding out "how" to get the job done.

 

And when it comes to needing help, you'll always get more bees with honey than you will with vinegar.

 

JM2C

 

[Guest]

quote:

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CNC still don’t understand importance of several instances of MC open or multiopen MCX files for work with different projects on different machines simultaneously. At SC you can for example copy and paste operations between to open instances.

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and what would happen when one individual had 4 instances open each with a 400 meg file????

[jeff]

quote:

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and what would happen when one individual had 4 instances open each with a 400 meg file????

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That's the users' problem, if he doesn't have the rig to handle it, then he won't have 4 files open of that size.

[Thee Rickster ™]

quote:

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and what would happen when one individual had 4 instances open each with a 400 meg file????

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JP, a '400 meg' file will never exist in Surfcam.

I had a job that reach 500 meg in MC. I reduced

all the tolerances to .0008". It reduced the

file size to 460 meg

 

Any one can try this because there Demo software

allows you to use the entire software an make paths but you cant post. IT saves it with a demo

extension and you can't open that with the dongle.

 

I paralleled the same file by exporting igs from MC in SC and

completed the mold with the exact cutter

paths using .0003" total tolerance. the file size was only 35 meg. We have gone through this and it

was brought up back in X2 because of the severe

crashing and slowness. In X4 MU3 I 'DO NOT' have

issues with file size any more. Although they are

till very large in size I can attain 500 meg with

out a glich. (it has some thing to do with MC

still using an ancient dos kernal)

 

There are a few things that I still miss in

Surfcam, but good riddance to the rest of it.

I would always open a solid .stp or what ever in

Solid Works and save as an .SLDPRT or .igs and load it in SC.

'BUT' I still have to do that in MC, twice on 2 jobs

last week because the .step file would not read in

with all detail in tack.

 

I don't care either way, it only take a few minutes to translate in SW.

 

I like both softwares but MC is still superior

for mold work. I could never get SC pencil and leftover(or rest) to work

well at all.

[Guest]

quote:

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That's the users' problem, if he doesn't have the rig to handle it, then he won't have 4 files open of that size.

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I am not speaking for CNC but seeing how people complain about things that are, as you say "the users problem," all the time, I can see how many would quickly decide the "Mastercam sucks" becasue of something like this.

 

Right or wrong, that's the way it is.

[Thee Rickster ™]

quote:

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the "Mastercam sucks" becasue of something like this.

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Just because a software is a resource hog, doesn't

in any way mean the software sucks, IMO.

 

X4 MU3 is running solid for me and I only get a

few crashes a month. I hope X5 will have as many

'MU's' as it takes to be just as solid.