Other cam you used and why the upgrade to MC?

[Jimmy Wakeford from Barefoot CNC]

We haved rescued another company from the grasp of a competetive cam co this week and they gave me alot of good info on why they switched.

 

The salesguy part of me thought it would be great to hear more of this. So forum members I turn to you. Not just so that Barefoot can sell more MC, but so you can help your peers that are stuck in the non-toolpathing hell of using anything besides MC.

 

Thanks

Jimmy

[JohnA]

I switched because I had to. I am one of the dying breed of SmartCam users. Although when Smartcam was being supported, it was fierce competition for MC, that is no longer the case. MC is a MUCH more powerful CAM package now. Everything about MC is better except for one thing, and that's actually insignificant because I can do what I need to do anyway.

The company I workED for (My unit got activated and I will soon be playing in the big sandbox) had MC already so I was forced to adapt. It was MUCH easier than I ever thought and the features are so much better that I will have a hard time going back to Smartcam if I ever have to resort to that.

Anyway that's my 2 cents worth.

 

JohnA

[Jimmy Wakeford from Barefoot CNC]

JohnA

 

Keep your head down over there and be careful.

 

Jimmy

[Rekd™]

quote:

---

..and they gave me alot of good info on why they switched.

---

So... you're gonna share, right?

 

It's flexible, powerful and well supported. What else is there?

 

'Rekd

[gcode]

I was working in a shop that used TekSoft.

I've always watched the want adds for machinist and programmers. I never saw adds for TekSoft guys. The wants adds were 80% Mastercam and the other 20% was split between Smartcam, Surfcam and a Gibbs add once in a while.

 

In early 1999 TekSoft started buying their code fom India and they put out a release that really sucked. There was zero customer support and it took them 9 months to work up a patch. The patch was a 40 meg download on a 32K modem and they would not mail me a disk.

 

Then my TekSoft sales rep quit TekSoft and went to work for the local MC dealer. She invited me to a V7 users group meeting. I bought a copy of

V7 L1 Mill @ Lathe and started using it at my job.

My boss was too busy fishing to even notice what

I was using

Within 6 months I'd upgraded to V8L3 with solids. It took me 3 years to pay off the credit

card, but it was the smartest thing I ever did.

I left my old job two years ago and my income has doubled. My old boss is still fishing. He may not have even noticed that I'm gone.

 

Nowdays the only want adds you see are for Mastercam. Smartcam is dead, and Surfcam is dying.

TekSoft and Gibbs are still around, but you never see adds for them.

 

It doesn't make sense to buy a product that is steadily loosing marketshare. Training people to

run a dying product is a waste of their time and your money.

[Rekd™]

quote:

---

My old boss is still fishing. He may not have even noticed that I'm gone.

---

LoL!

 

'Rekd

[CAM-mando]

I started on SmartCam and left for a company that was using NothingCAM. One of my first tasks was to buy a CAM system. Although I had SmartCam experience, I was concerned with the acquisition that was taking place. I elected to go with Master (Cam 5.5 at the time) Mainly because I felt it would do what I needed, provided a fair upgrade and updatepolicy, as well as fair multi seat discount policy. At that time, It seemed to me that MasterCAM was overall a company with a clear vision for where they wanted the product to go. They were just showing signs of what was coming with the "Production Pro" associative operation c-hooks.

 

In retro-spect it was cleaqr I made the right choice because a few years later SmartCam was no more.

 

Interestingly I had the oppurtunity to go from V 7 Back to SmartCAM FFM V11 a few years back ... what an experience that was. I had a harder time relearning SmartCam than I did learning MasterCam.

 

-MasterCam usually gives me many ways to skin a cat... there is always a tool to do what needs to get done.

-The plethera (sp?) of options on the toolpath parameter pages allow for fairly detailed control of tool movement on the fly without the need to write workarounds into the post.

-Reliable toolpath associativity.

-Almost Limitless Post Processor capabilities.

-Built in facilities to add custom features easily (custom drill cycles, canned text).

-Nice selection of importers included in base package.

-Strong in both 2-1/2 axis as well as multi axis and surfacing.

-"Legitimate" products for wire and lathe.

From a business perspective...

-Existing large pool of programming talent.

-Vast support base (including this website).

-Fair update polocies (subject to change ????)

 

The thing that has always impressed me about CNC Software however is that since I have gotten involved with MasterCam, they seem to continue to improve the product in areas that are useful to me. Along with the features and products neccessary to keep the product marketable to new customers, there seems to be a genuine commitment to improving the product for the benefit of the existing customer base (IMHO of course).

[Fig sign]

Some facts about my CNC life story:

 

Cad -Cam packages I used before Mastercam :

 

Auracam- Auramill ,Cadtool -NCtool ,Cimatron IT,

Solidcam

 

Cad Packages I used before Mastercam or use now :

Autocad from ver9,Cadkey7 ,Intellicad 2000

Also played with many others Cad or Cad-Cam packages.

 

 

Auracad -Auramill 1993-1995

Was first cad-cam I really used in production .

Run under Macintosh (any ,even Mac Plus !).

Primitive ,fast ,good grafic interface ,only 2,5 axes .

We done with it very complex stuff for aviation mostly .

Was my real first love .

Dead ,was bought by Gibbs .

It can be run on any Macintosh emulator like Vmac ,Executor ,Basilisk or Fusion .

I played with it couple of monthes ago (sorta nostalgy )

Trust me ,guys,I can not understand ,how I loved

it before !

 

Cadtool - NCTOOL and Solidcam .

This 2 program are from Solidcam ,former Cadtech from Israel

Cadtool-NCTOOL learned in 1992 ,use from 1997 .

Use it regulary even now !

It simply RoCks for 2,5 axes and primitive 3d !

Dos interface ,Can be run even on AT ,

good 2d toolpath and simple ,limited,but rather stong 3d (like Mastercam swep2d ,even better )

Has some good features I lack even in mastercam ver9!

Abandonware from 1999 .

 

Solidcam V1 till 2000 !997 -2000

I was one of the first users in Israel to learn and use it ,they planned to take me to the support group .

It was a real pain in the A$$ at first ,then it became more stable .

Has all the features of Nctool ,3d stuff weaker then Mastercam ,no Multiaxes .

Everyone can play with a demo from their site to see what I mean .

I did my first 3d molds in it .And you must be really tricky man with perverted mind to do ,what I did with it .

Give me it free of charge will not use after Mastercam!

 

Cimatron IT from ver 9 till v11 1994-1995 ,2001-2002 .

This is very mighty cad-cam package from Israel

They have also new packages like Cimatron Elite or QuickNC that I also tried .

Our guys use it ,it was the really bloody war to stay with Mastercam , it never stopped and goes on even now !

very strong stuff ,especially cad ,very mighty cam .

Hard to learn ,lacks simplicity and logic of Mastercam ,no filtering and many other things but has it`s own strong points .

I dislike it all the way i work with it ,especially from operator-machinist point of view .

Dominant in Israel and you can do with it anything you need !

It is my only real option to work with if I loose this job or my boss wouldn`t agree to pay maintanance

 

Mastercam

Played from ver5.5

Use from ver7

Love of my life !

When we first started to do 4 axes simultaneous on my first work place amount of code was so huge !

I asked our programmer if some program can do what we call filtering now and he said :

Only Mastercam can!

This "Only Mastercam " I heard a lot from many ppl regarding many other things !

I was never curious about any package so much , as MC.

At first I was not willing to work with it .

I was not willing to change Solidcam for it .

I compared Solidcam to MC ver5.5 but my dealer (cheers ,Nahum !!!) showed me ver7 and here I am .

He showed me some basic things a couple of hours and from hereon I learned it mostly alone !

 

Never saw a program so easy to learn!

Never saw one so logic and simple ,but so strong and with so many features .

Things like filtering ,roll-unroll ,Map.dll c-hook, rotary for any toolpath and many more .

Never I had a program that was so nice to use ,so stable and bug-free .

And never I was so sure of myself .

I CAN DO ANITHING WITH IT .

And this forum RocKS !

 

pS .Funny thing ,when other dealers come to me to show their package ,even when they don`t know ,that I Use MC ,they use to say:

Mastercam can not do it !(NEVER they name other package ).

And they mostly wrong !

 

Iskander teh loyal Mastercam user and devoted addict !

 

[ 11-20-2003, 05:30 AM: Message edited by: Iskander teh Lazy ]

[MACHINEMASTERG]

late 1980's used smartcam ...aftercoming from a shop that had an anilam cam product (i forget the name) ...came to this place and they had no cam !!had seen mcam at a freinds shop and talked them into buying v5 and we never looked back .. at one time about a year ago the enginearing manager was talking crazy about buying camworks because we use solidworks and he said"it will programe itself"thank god that thought went away!!!ok so now we have 3 seats mcam 1 with level 3 and lathe 2 level 1 all with solids .......

[Brendan P]

I too used TekSoft.

My company had 3 seats of it,with only 2 being used.

My buddy who was doing the programming let me use the 3rd seat,and taught me how to use it.

I was running the night shift at the time,and it came in real handy when I needed to do tooling.

I could just write some toolpath,and then verify them by actually running it on the machine.

I was using the 98,99 version,and the program would like to crash a lot,and did not have an "auto save".

Then they finially decided to purchase 2 seats of mastercam,because of its capabilities.

 

By then I had came back aboard the day shift as our cnc programmer.(no more running machines for me baby!!!)

I had to learn mastercam,went to a bunch of the re-seller training,and now I do 95% of our lathe and mill programming.

 

That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

 

BTW...TekSoft S-cks!!

[McRae]

Great thread - I might add that I have some great SmartCAM experience and loved to work with the product, posts were much more intuitive and the ability to customize and use macros far outdid anything I was able to do in Mastercam. If it continued in development, I never would have transitioned away from it.

 

Now that bit of pineing is over, I must confess that my job is process/toolpath and post Gcode. To do this, I needed an offline program, so I made the move to Mastercam. I was then able to continue doing what I do. After using Mastercam for a few years, along came Pro/E and now Unigraphics. Much more power there and there is a hefty learning curve to get to into it. This was in part facilitated by knowing all the other levels of CAD/CAM so even if you try to sell users on the Benefits models and take your competitors seat count down, remember that the skills are transferable from one software to the next.

[robk]

Mastercam is the first real cam software I'm using. Prior to mastercam it was hand programming and using somebody's home made cam system that was good for drilling holes and thats about it. I have been using Mastercam since V5., and even back than we only used it for the Moldbase option that was available ( I think CNC Software sold only 12 seats total) Believe it or not for anyone not familiar with that option, it was great. Sure it had it's limitations but there were operation librarys and operation sorting that was better than in V9.1. I did not have the flexibility that I have now, but at the time it just kicked xxxx.

I think Mastercam came a long way in the CAD abilities also. I used to clean up the files in CadKey and/or AutoCad, but now it's Mastercam for just about everything.

 

Rob

[cadcam]

Gcode you and Arlen go way back I see.

[Jimmy Wakeford from Barefoot CNC]

My history with cam packages:

pencilcam(graph paper and calc)

teach in progs on 5ax zuma(zuckerman with IBH control)

Mastercam ver3.11(wahoo!)

Company switched to pro/e pro/man(now pro/nc)

went through all pro/e training icam's campost training and still could not get good code and MC ver4 was 10 times faster so company bought 3 more seats of MC (pro/e tried to get me fired!) and updated mine to v6.

 

Have checked out other softwares out of curiosity but have seen anything as simple with the power of MC.

Jimmy

[gcode]

quote:

---

Gcode you and Arlen go way back I see.

 

---

Yes,

Without Arlene and all her pesky sales calls, I'd probably be driving a Haas in some hole-in-the-wall sweatshop this morning.

 

Arlene, if you are following this thread,

Thank-you

 

[ 11-20-2003, 10:07 AM: Message edited by: gcode ]

[Scott Bond]

My reason's from the early 1980's realy don't apply to today's.

 

Scott teh' What!! There's other sofware's ??

[TheePres]

I have used Unigraphics and some NCL since around 1987.

Have been around MasterCam since V3.1, but rarely got to use it except for what we called "widgets".

In 1993 company i was at got rid of Unigraphics because of there "Maintainence Fees" getting to darn expensive. Version 8 of MasterCam finally convinced us that it was robust enough to handle majority of work we are doing so we decided to drop NCL also at this time..Now its all MC for me.

[pimij]

I started in '93 with Solution3000 - it was bought by autocad - they renamed it to ADX. ADX was bought by CAMAX - and killed. Was forced to upgrade to CAMAND. CAMAX was bought out by SDRC and painfully integrated into IDEAS - never tried it. SDRC killed CAMAND. Tried just about everything out there except UG / CATIA (don't have that kind of money )

 

Bought mastercam for its strong 5axis support and no maintenance fees.

[gcode]

In the long run, the money spent to buy CAM software is irrelevant. The real investment is the time you spend learning to run it. The more seat time you have with software, the greater your investment. If your software gets bought out,

or dies, your learning/seat-time investment is gone. If you've been using it for a while the

value of your learning/seat-time is WAY more

than what you spent to buy and maintain the software.

[Kenneth Potter]

Cimmatron was My first really good system.& i still use it....Maintenance fees are a Killer...But the Powers Still Kicks for molding JObs !

My Partner Uses it mostly now !..I went to Mastercam cause of the support & Multi machine tool post support....and you can get a Job

FAster if you got Mastercam under your belt . Oh yes Mastercam Kicks Butt too.,,,and its more fun to use.

[bhyde]

Interesting thread..Good to know what everyones background is in as far as cam packages.

Learned CAM on Gibbs, Virtual Gibbs...IMHO..Still isnt bad software. Impact CAM...for wire EDM(TOTAL CRAP)<----Not much better than BOBCAD, and only played with Bobcad a limited amount.

Cimitron V10...VERY POWERFULL..And then finally MasterCam since 2000. Had a few bumps and bruises, but overall been kinda nice..

[Rekd™]

I've used:

 

PencilCAM

GibbsNC (The original Mac version, seperate modules for CAD/CAM/NC, very powerful)

Virtual Gibbs

GibbsCAM

Surfcam

Cimitron, (Good stuff!)

Bobcad

EZMill

Geopath

Delcam

Mastercam

 

My choices in order?

 

Mastercam

GibbsNC

Cimitron

Sufrcam

PencilCAM

 

'Rekd

 

[ 11-20-2003, 02:49 PM: Message edited by: Rekd ]

[Polite Luther]

quote:

---

The thing that has always impressed me about CNC Software however is that since I have gotten involved with MasterCam, they seem to continue to improve the product in areas that are useful to me. Along with the features and products neccessary to keep the product marketable to new customers, there seems to be a genuine commitment to improving the product for the benefit of the existing customer base (IMHO of course).

---

One of the reasons is that they actually have people there working, writing & designing the software that (along with us) have hot chip scars.

[Marty A]

well when i came over to the mills we had one small cnc with a anilam control. i used ezmill to

program 2d. then they bought there first big cnc an okuma. they moved the programing upstairs and they used i think something called feature mill?

that stunk in my book. they then went to mastercam v7 i believe.now i am upstairs and started with v8.

 

marty

[jenks]

No one has mentioned ESPRIT for mill. I used it about 5 years. It had some nice drawing commands that I liked, especially in the trim menu. It was upgraded 8 times (ver 8 through 17) if I remember correctly, and they still couldn't get a post file that would work with a DYNAPATH 20 control.

 

We switched to Mastercam 5 after a demo of MC and Smartcam. It's been Mastercam since, and no regrets.