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CNC dropping partnership with Volumill?


neurosis
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"What makes Volumill so different from Cimco?"

While were a$uming, this may be flat out BS but I thought I've read that Cimco had either developed, or worked on, quite a few of the tool paths in MC. No doubt about it, the HSMPP makes very graceful tool paths, that are only redundant by nomenclature.

 

I also agree that HSMWorks is a serious competitor to MC, both in the SW realm, and directly with full blown MC. It will be interesting to see how long this partnership keeps going. One would think that parties on both sides have given this quite a bit of thought.

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I also agree that HSMWorks is a serious competitor to MC, both in the SW realm, and directly with full blown MC. It will be interesting to see how long this partnership keeps going. One would think that parties on both sides have given this quite a bit of thought.

 

Mastercam has no business relationship of any kind with HSMWorks

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I just get the feeling like you guys want CNC to be your mommys, manage third party developers etc.... Pretty ridiculous. Personally I would rather CNC worh on THEIR stuff, and get THEIR stuff right rather that spend time playing nanny to developers.

 

Volumill is offering something Mastercam doesn't, and won't be in the near future. That is the bottom line. Regardless of the pretty picture anybody wants to put on it, CNC Software is hurting the capability of THEIR OWN PRODUCT by dropping Volumill. Dropping Volumill is hurting Mastercam customers.

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I know G, I never said that, just pointing out that they are now competing directly with them, as is Volumill. IMO, take away the HSMPP and it would disrupt the business model (cash flow) of the parent company (Cimco). That certainly would put a damper on the competition and is not an unlikely scenario. It's only a matter of time before the growth of HSMWorks starts to naw at CNC. Once again, it's an opinion and I'm just thinking out loud.

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I just get the feeling like you guys want CNC to be your mommys, manage third party developers etc.... Pretty ridiculous. Personally I would rather CNC worh on THEIR stuff, and get THEIR stuff right rather that spend time playing nanny to developers.

 

I sometimes get the impression that you just like being contrary and stirring the pot, and I really don't see much merit in your post. I think CNC should have some consideration for their customers, not be my mommy. I pay maintenance every year to support further development and improvements and I am one of their customers. Most businesses are centered around customer satisfaction and genuinely wanting their customers to be happy. They usually try to avoid situations that will leave their loyal customers hanging out to dry. Of course there are always exceptions where companies take your approach where they are just concerned about themselves and the customers are a necessary evil.

 

Personally I would rather CNC worh on THEIR stuff

 

Did CNC ever work on Volumill's stuff?

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Guest CNC Apps Guy 1
I sometimes get the impression that you just like being contrary and stirring the pot...

Yeah, I confess... Guilty. You guys get yourselves so worked up, I just can't help myself.

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I just get the feeling like you guys want CNC to be your mommys, manage third party developers etc.... Pretty ridiculous. Personally I would rather CNC worh on THEIR stuff, and get THEIR stuff right rather that spend time playing nanny to developers.

 

 

Not mommy James, just a little consideration. Thats all.

 

Out of curiosity, how much involvement does CNC really have with Celeritive? Do they really focus that much time on this 3rd party development? How much time did they spend on yours?

 

I agree with you. I would rather see CNC focus their time on their product. From what I have seen they cant afford to have their attention focused anywhere else.

 

And for the record, most of my remarks on this subject are out of frustration. I know that they wont accomplish anything and I am just venting that frustration here.

 

And to James,

 

If I had a company that had 3rd party functionality and I were to make a business decision that I knew would affect my customers I would go out of my way to make sure that they were aware that a change was coming so that they could prepare for it. That is just the way that I think and would do business. It is also what I expect in return. How hard could it be to alert the resellers that this is coming? Are we to think that this decision was made over night? Or was it in the works for quite some time? A year maybe?

 

Volumill is not just your average C-Hook. If you have ever used it, which I seriously doubt that you have or you would already know what a valuable tool that it is, then you would realize what makes this situation so frustrating. This isnt arc-multi edit we are talking about here. This is three years worth of tool path that is integrated in to our files.

 

Volumill has always been two steps ahead of Mastercam in the High Speed Machining department. They released a similar path to 2d dynamic back in X2. They released full blown 3d in X3. In X4 they released full 3d with stl stock recognition. Mastercam has always been behind on these paths. You may not notice the lack of this functionality in stock Mastercam as much as the regular Joe because you are on the beta testing team and you get to play with Mastercams new functionality while we are still waiting for it. Are you using Optirough with stock recognition already? If so, do you see it as an advantage? Well Volumill already has it and has for quite some time. To find out that we are close to losing this functionality with nothing comparable in the near future makes this a hellish situation. Especially when we hear that in only 60 days our product becomes unusable with our next upgrade and we have been waiting for a MU to come out to fix bugs in our system. If the MU does not beat our dead line then we have to make a decision to suffer Mastercam X5.0 bugs or lose the benefits of Volumill with nothing comparable to replace it until X6 comes out. Then do we wait for X6 MU1 because common sense tells me that X6.0 is going to be plagued with bugs?

 

I realize that this mess is of no consequence to you so your motivation to be sensitive toward it is nil, but understanding your attitude I am glad that I dont have to do business with you.

 

To everyone else that has had to suffer through this thread. Sorry for the rants. In a few months all of this will be forgotten one way or the other.

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The bottom line is, no one other than Celeritive, and CNC Software, know the full circumstances behind the business relationship. Maybe those circumstances will be fully known. Maybe they wont. CNC Software could be the bad guys here, or maybe they aren't.

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The bottom line is, no one other than Celeritive, and CNC Software, know the full circumstances behind the business relationship. Maybe those circumstances will be fully known. Maybe they wont. CNC Software could be the bad guys here, or maybe they aren't.

 

 

I agree with you Mick. Nobody really knows the circumstances. We do know one thing. This was CNC's decision. That doesnt make anyone the bad guy. Business is business.

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To everyone else that has had to suffer through this thread. Sorry for the rants.

 

Your concerns are valid and I see no need for you to apologize. I am glad I am not in your shoes or I would be just as upset. In many ways, by design or not, software companies can hold their customers hostage and that sucks.

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You guys crack meh up. This statement says it all fellas....

 

 

 

 

 

Dynamic Technology

Dynamic technology is absolutely home grown in the U.S.A. at CNC Software Inc. in Tolland, Connecticut. It is our technology and ours alone. The technology is based on our own unique approach to this type of machining. Dynamic technology did not copy any other systems as speculated in this thread. Dynamic technology was being worked on way, way before X4 was even thought about or considered. Dynamic Technology will continue to evolve, mature, improve and spawn new toolpaths in releases to come…

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To everyone else that has had to suffer through this thread. Sorry for the rants. In a few months all of this will be forgotten one way or the other.

 

No need to apologize - as someone who makes well use of the forum, this event obviously means a lot to you and your company's business and its important you can talk to other people that may be in the same situation - As well, the rest of us want to know the feedback. It's not like you've been unreasonable in these posts, and I would think if anyone else was actually in your shoes, they would feel the same way (as Bob does).

Despite big business / uknown circumstances, etc. obviously Dave read these posts, and I'm sure people at Volumill have as well.

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I agree, I have a lot of ways of measuring a 1" cube, I have mics, calipers, height gage, Master3dgage, etc...

 

Volumill does give different results, and can supply you with another option.

 

To be fair, neurosis stated volumill has been two steps ahead of mastercam. So why did you purchase volumill when a more mature product existed, Cimco's adaptive clearing has been two or three steps ahead of volumill? Adaptive clearing (I believe in V9.1) started as 3d, 2d was added after 3d rest-machining. I'm really not trying to pick on you, just pointing it out.

 

My guess is if we were going to get any more info we would have already heard it, maybe due to lawyers, maybe due to respect, etc...

 

I guess the good thing to take away from this is that any money spent on volumill was not wasted. You probably broke even after the first week or two when accounting for tooling costs saved, shorter run times, etc...

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To be fair, neurosis stated volumill has been two steps ahead of mastercam. So why did you purchase volumill when a more mature product existed, Cimco's adaptive clearing has been two or three steps ahead of volumill? Adaptive clearing (I believe in V9.1) started as 3d, 2d was added after 3d rest-machining. I'm really not trying to pick on you, just pointing it out.

 

 

I can answer that for you.

 

When we made the decision to purchase Volumill we had the demo's of both products installed. We were running through several parts with each option using 2d only. At that time Volumill 3d was in beta. I tested Cimco's 3d adaptive clearing and we were sold on it instantly.

 

 

Toward the end of our demo period Volumill asked me if I was willing to test their 3d capability and compare it to Mastercams abilities and Cimco's. I jumped on the offer. I tested several parts using both plugins. Cimco's product had a bug at the time that was causing their plugin to fail about 50% of the time while Volumill, which was still in beta, was working flawlessly on everything that we threw at it.

 

That was what made our decision for us. I cant say that I wouldnt choose Cimco's adaptive clearing if we had to do it all over again but at the time it was not functioning properly and did not give us a warm and fuzzy feeling. Not only that, but having spent hours on the phone with each company, Celerative went above and beyond to help us where Cimco was very short with us. By short I mean did not take much time to answer our questions. Celerative, Glenn Coleman specifically, gave advise on strategies, tool selection, etc, to get the most benefit form their product. They also allowed us to purchase the 3d license before the 3d version was released to the public.

 

The short version, Cimco's demo was buggy and my experience with the two companies told me that Volumill was willing to go the extra mile to make sure that we were getting the most out of our investment.

 

 

I just noticed that in one week this thread has over 8000 views. That has to be some kind of record. Thats more views than the topics that have been pinned for months.

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After thinking about this for the last couple of days, We have more than made our investment back with volumill. It has been a great product that has went far beyond its expectations.

 

The people that I feel sorry for are the ones that have recently purchased volumill. They are the ones that really got the shaft.

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Yeah that's a wild amount of views - Unfortunately some of it has been due to people posting links to it on other forums, twitter, etc. A certain Ron Lanker from JB and Associates (cough, cough) was posting all over the place about how Mastercam might be breaking out the dynamic paths for charge in the future - nice!

 

 

That doesnt surprise me one bit. :rolleyes:

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neurosis, fair enough. 20/20 heinsight and all...

 

FYI, your experience with adaptive clearing is no the norm, I know many people who have used it for years with no issues. If you had a bug, or some type of pc issue doesn't really matter, customer service does matter.

 

I'm sure MU1 will be out and you will be able to run volumill with it. And you've seen what is coming down the pipeline with "OptiRest" so hopefully you won't miss a beat.

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Yeah that's a wild amount of views - Unfortunately some of it has been due to people posting links to it on other forums, twitter, etc. A certain Ron Lanker from JB and Associates (cough, cough) was posting all over the place about how Mastercam might be breaking out the dynamic paths for charge in the future - nice!

 

 

 

why would a pirate care about that?? :blink:

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neurosis, fair enough. 20/20 heinsight and all...

 

FYI, your experience with adaptive clearing is no the norm, I know many people who have used it for years with no issues. If you had a bug, or some type of pc issue doesn't really matter, customer service does matter.

 

I'm sure MU1 will be out and you will be able to run volumill with it. And you've seen what is coming down the pipeline with "OptiRest" so hopefully you won't miss a beat.

 

 

There was a definite bug in their software. They told me that they were aware of it and that they were working on a patch for it. At the time I knew very little about adaptive clearing so both companies were on a level playing field as far as we were concerned. We didnt really know at the time that the HSM performance pack had been around for a while. When you are demoing a companies product you would think that they would have took care to send us a version that was known to be working properly. Unfortunately for both of us they screwed up by sending us a version that they knew had a bug in it. Part of that decision may have been that we didnt express interest in the 3d strategy until a few weeks after. Originally we were only interested in 2d which wasnt affected by the bug.

 

 

I didnt get the feeling that Cimco's support would have been bad by any means.

 

I cant wait for the new paths to release! I love tinkering with new toys.

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From the standpoint of a shop owner who has had 3rd party software and used in nearly every program for 10 years, if that software was suddenly not supported, then it means every time we run a repeat part with a change in it, that 3rd party toolpath will not regen, and will have to be re-programmed with whatever is "supposed" to replace it....unless you maintain the last supported version of Mcam with the add-on in it. This equates to a lot of time and money wasted in the future. I don't think I would be happy, either, if this happens with Cimco next.

 

Just my point of view....

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