Upgrade advice

[melliott6]

I have been using X6 MU2 for years. My company hasn't upgraded because they have switched to Catia and only use MasterCam to work on all of our legacy programs. We have ten years worth of parts that have been programmed in Master Cam. They haven't programmed any new parts in MasterCam but I spend 80% of my time going back and updating or fixing old stuff. I asked if we can upgrade because my version of MasterCam takes forever to regenerate some toolpaths and I get thrown out a lot. (IT blames MasterCam and MasterCam blames IT, and I am stuck in the middle) In my opinion a new version would pay for itself in time savings alone. I would like some input as to whether or not you all think it would be worth upgrading and if I do would I avoid some of the problems I am currently having? Or in other words, is the latest version stable?

Thanks,

Mike

[RaiderX]

are you on maintenance? if not I would not think it worth $ for legacy programs as long as your company stays course with catia.

if however you are on maintenance so upgrading mastercam would be of no cost, x9 brings much to the table. I have very little experience with 2017 but am suspicious it is not quite there yet.

[Reko]

If the question is... should you upgrade... the answer is, absolutely... yes. 

 

The dynamic toolpaths alone are worth it. Couple those with feed mills and variable flute end mills and you could cut some of your cycle times in half.

 

I wouldn't personally worry about buggy software... 2017 isn't too bad... there are work-arounds for most everything. Normally, within a week or two, I have a pretty good system down and am loving the new software... MC2017 is no different.

 

Edit: I don't know much about Catia tho... so keep that in mind.

[BenK]

I agree with RaiderX, if you are only worried about the legacy programs it's not worth spending money to upgrade. It would take a lot of processing time to equal the investment in maintenance. With that said, if you do any current programming in Mastercam keeping current will definitely benefit.

[Colin Gilchrist]

Keep in mind that as Mastercam gets more complex, the requirements for better hardware also increase. How many licenses of Mastercam does your company have? Are you running a regular USB Hasp, or a NetHasp? You mentioned getting "kicked out a lot". If you only have a single license, it might make better sense to get a USB Hasp, so that Network issues don't kick you out of Mastercam.

 

With processing time being what sounds like your chief complaint, I'd consider spending the money on a better computer. Of course, if you go that route, then upgrading to a version of Mastercam that supports Windows 7 or Windows 10 is a good idea as well. I think you could certainly gain some benefits from using a more modern version of Mastercam, but if you aren't programming new parts with it, then it would be hard for me to justify the expense of upgrading. Especially if you aren't going to be using the "new" HSM paths inside X9 or 2017.

[mikenaturalice]

Why not just do the fixes in Catia? Sounds like you guys are riding the fence between not spending some money and being inefficient. 

[Guest]

You are I believe at the point, it's a full buy back in cost.....don't know what level you run but I believe it would be a full cost purchase....not just "updating"  that's a detail for your reseller...

 

If the commitment to Catia has been made......I don't believe you will get the bean counters to approve a purchase of a software they no longer "use"

 

It'll be time to let those programs go and when and if changes are needed, bringing them up to date in the software of the day.....

[Matthew Hajicek - Singularity]

Yeah, you're better off putting the investment into an up-to-date computer.  See the benchmark thread for details.  If you are on maintenance I'll recommend using X9; 2017 is a bit raw yet.

[melliott6]

Thanks for all the input. Looks like I will be sticking it out with X6.