Catia translators

[gcode]

what's best..

 

we're letting out Catia maintenance go and we'll need a translator to replace it.

CNC SOftware has one

Moldplus has one

 

how about addon's for SolidWorks???

 

what's good what's bad..

I'll miss Catia, but need to make sure we get a good translator..

[MIL-TFP-41]

The mold plus one plays very nice with mastercam...it will bring in all the GD&T data with it. CNC Software's just brings in the solid. The one I saw for solidworks (can't remember the name) was a joke...it would sometimes bring in the GD&T stuff partly in metric & part in inch.

 

I have had some issues with the mold plus version....things like notes repeating themselves all over the graphics screen...tho all in all...it is the best solution I have seen for mastercam.

[SLJ]

We've had good luck with the mold plus version.

[Guest CNC Apps Guy 1]

My 2¢...

 

You will not get better support from any 3rd party developer than MoldPlus. A few are as good but NONE are better. So when/if an issue arises, they are right on top of it.

[kunfuzed]

quote:

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will bring in all the GD&T data with it.

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What does that mean?

[Mic]

Google is your friend:)

 

geometric dimensioning and tolerancing

[gcode]

We ended up buying the Mold Plus translator

GD&T is an add-on. I couldn't talk the boss

into it. I was shocked at how expensive it was.

[Ron Branch @ 5th Axis]

Well Mic is it s little more complicated than that. Anyone familiar with ASME 14.5 and ASME 14.41? Both of these deal nicely with what is in reality MBD related to 3D GD & T embedded in the model. So with the add-on of MBD you now can bring the Catia FTA/MBD directly into Mastercam. Now lets say your company had got Verisurf as well. You also now got a PAS for your inspection software and CAM software. What is a PAS well that is what is called Product Assurance Software. NIST developed what they call a digital artifact to check the algorithms of software to make sure they correctly interrupt what geometric shapes are in the software. The reason for this was a lot of software was corrupting models when they were translated from one to the other because of poor math. The NIST when run and checked back to the expected results should yield no more than .0001 deviation. The cool thing is with Verisurf you can certify your inspection and manufacturing software all with one test that takes anywhere from 30 second to 5 minutes depending on your computer.

 

Getting back to the MBD being brought into the CAM software you now know what was in Catia without having to have Catia. Another cool thing if you had Verisurf you could then use that MBD inside of Mastercam to check the part back to that MBD. The Verisurf would create an inspection report using that MBD for the reporting without you having to fill all of that out for an AS9102 inspection report. Hopefully more and more companies will get on board to taking dumb models and making them live models. Oh with the $100 year add on from Verisurf you can turn any Mastercam model in to a full blown MBD or 3DGD & T model. Cool thing about that add on is the ability to get dimension right off of solid and surfaces models without the need for any wireframe. Another cool feature is the 3D text for all dimensions. Check out the free Verisurf add-on at the top of the Mastercam forum for get a 30 day evaluation of it.

[kunfuzed]

quote:

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Google is your friend:)

 

geometric dimensioning and tolerancing

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Your kidding me, right.

 

Thanks for being more descriptive Ron! "Model Based Definiion" is what I'm unfamiliar with, and was curious as to "what" is brought into Mcam via the translator with the GD&T feature. Are these simply dimensions? Or is there more to it?

 

MBD is what I should probably be googling. Is that something associated with solidworks also? If so this sounds like something we could take advantage of since often times tooling models are provided without prints here.

[Zoober]

Google Boeing DPD. (Digital Product Definition)

That is mainly where MDB is used.

I am not sure about Solidworks, but have used it extensively in Catia for Boeing jobs. No prints at all. Everything is contained in the model. Solids, Notes, Dims, etc. Catia calls them annotations, or FTA (Functional Tolerancing and Annotations.)

Here is a link to a good explanation of FTA

FTA Linky

It has nice pictures of What they are talking about coming in to MC.

[Hardmill]

quote:

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but have used it extensively in Catia for Boeing jobs. No prints at all. Everything is contained in the model. Solids, Notes, Dims, etc. Catia calls them annotations,

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Ive gone through the same process with Catia also.

 

 

PEACE