I have noticed that as machining software matures that it is getting more and more difficult for 'average' engineering staff to perform at a level that works well. I believe that it is to that point with Catia where a person can try hard, put years of effort in, and still not do that well. This was less true in the past. The solids approach to design is concentrating skills that used to be spread across a number of people into one person. If the person has all the skills it can work better. If they don't I believe productivity actually declines. Some of the posts on this topic refer to this problem. There isn't a good answer for it. We are not all unusually gifted people.

We are in the process of developing a custom Catia script that will produce one output file that has everything we need. If anyone is interested in this send me an email and I will keep you updated on how it is going. Again, thank you for all of the suggestions and ideas - this has been very helpful for us. Brian Cooper

We tried one of the Mastercam translators a year ago but it did not work well at all. We just tried another one (Am I allowed to say what we experienced with different products?) and it did not bring the colors through. The MoldPlus product is being tried now. It looks promising but apparently the wireframe does not come through. They tell me that they could make this happen. They said no one ever asked before. This made me wonder if we are missing something. I need to look into the thoughts of Pete who just responded here. We cut 4000 blocks a year so this is important to us. I appreciate the input.

We use the following process for converting files. It is cumbersome and incomplete. I would be interested in how others do this better? 1. We uses Catia version 5 to create solids files (CatPart files) that contain dimensional and surfacing data for every block that we cut. The surfaces in the Catia file will have different colors that designate the surface conditions on the blocks. The colors need to be available in MastercamX because they provide information to the machinist. 2. We uses Mastercam version 10 (X) to generate 2D toolpath only for the CNC machines that actually cut the steel. 3. MastercamX cannot read the Catia files directly - they need to be translated first. After translation we need the colors and the wireframe available in MastercamX that originated in Catia 5. 4. We currently output the Catia file in iges format. With the iges format color and surface information are present, no wire frame. Round items have to have point put on the circle center for the machine to pick up the correct center. When putting out a step file colors are not present, but the circle are true circles. 5. Would like to have a file that contains both surface information, wire frame and colors. 6. We are trying to convert the Catia files in a way that MastercamX can read them without having to manually clean them up.