I guess they feel that buying software (Swiss Expert) from another company that already went bankrupt trying to sell it and pushing customers that way is a step forward?

Useful app, thanks for sharing. Going to try it on my tablet and see how it works. To be honest though, on my PC it's going to be hard to displace the free PowerSHAPE and Exchange downloads from Delcam, way more file types supported with measurement capabilities too. http://www.delcam.com/general/software/exchange.asp

I'm also interested in knowing this? How will this stock model work for 3+2 rest machining? Thanks.

LOL, sorry for not mentioning [iNSERT MACHINE MANUFACTURER HERE] and their range of [iNSERT MACHINE MODEL HERE]. I (mistakenly I guess) thought by saying "other machines" that I'd save having to list them out. Adding in machines from Bumotec, Willemin, Integrex i and j series machines which are slight variations on the turn-mill theme with a vice or clamping system instead of a traditional sub spindle and the ranges of offer for these machines is quite considerable. @CNC Apps Guy, no mention of the MX-5 then? PS. I apologize in advance to any other machine tool applications engineer if I left out their machines, feel free to join in the party and add to the list.

Just my opinion here... Turn-Mill machines are those like the Mazak Integrex, Mori NT, Okuma MacTurn or Multus (and many, many others) that are essentially lathes with milling capability. Some have B-axis milling but that doesn't detract from the fact that they are fundamentally a lathe in their design. Other machines such as the DMG FD series of machines are what I call Mill-Turn machines as they are milling machines that can do turning. To me there's a clear difference in design characteristics between the 2 types of machines. A multi-tasking machine is one that can perform more than machining process simultaneously. EG. More than one turret. Again, just my opinion and how I see (and classify) these machines to myself.

From what I'm hearing from some friends in Europe, Missler seem to be making the same kind of claims that they brought Sylvie Expert? So did CNC just buy a copy of the code and hire a couple of the developers after they got laid off? And Missler got everything else? If they only sold a 100 seats across Europe then competing with the likes of Delcam Partmaker is going to be a real tough game. I've done a fair amount of Swiss programming from time to time and it can be a very picky industry, IMHO.

+1 HON and HOF if I recall correctly.

Isn't this just a rebranded Sylvie Expert product? So CNC have brought a product that the original developers couldn't sell and went bankrupt? Sounds like a plan to me Sorry to be pessimistic but as this isn't part of the main MasterCAM product then I fail to see the point?

http://www.copycad.com/ from Delcam is also worth a look IMO. Works with triangles, surfaces and solids all in one and has some very cool features if I recall from a demo I once saw. Definitely worth a look as it sounds like it could be exactly what you're looking for?

I've heard the "keep the spindle running and making parts" line before and my answer is that it's not just about making parts, it's about making good parts. So while we're checking with the external gage arm the CNC is potentially carrying on producing bad parts? I know which option I prefer and have implemented many times (while still making a profit strangely enough).

If you're using Renishaw probes then look at Renishaw OMV http://www.renishaw.com/en/renishaw-omv--6253 AFAIK though its a rebadged version of Delcam's PowerINSPECT OMV product. http://www.powerinspect.com/general/omv.asp So if you're using other probes apart from Renishaw you might be better off going direct to Delcam.

quote: Powermill only checks the linking inside the single toolpaths and not the moves connecting one toolpath to the next. When you post a multiaxis program in Powermill you get this warning: This program is multiaxis, please check carefully the moves which join the toolpaths, they are not gouge checked IIRC powermill sees gouges and collisions as 2 different things right? And NX and Catia don't even check the moves within an individual toolpath so you're even worse off.

I agree with the invest the time to learn it but not the need to purchase it. I've been involved with software evaluations in the past where we've had people trained and using the software as part of the evaluation process. Any potential supplier should be prepared to pony up and invest some of their time in a company who's looking at making an investment in their software by making sure they can make an educated decision about what's the best way forward for them. I know nothing about a lot of things but I wouldn't be so bold as to brag that I know nothing about everything.

quote: NX CAM is simply light years ahead of Mastercam Won't disagree with you there in most cases (especially mill-turn), but I wasn't comparing them to MC in this instance. The OP was talking about complex 3-axis and 5-axis work and neither Catia nor UG is a good solution in that area IMO. But just to clarify. Both have poor verification capabilities for collisions in 5-axis work with only the toolpaths being verified for collisions and not the linking moves (which Powermill does). Also, IIRC even if you see a collision (they're only highlighted on the screen, you're not given any other information) then it's up to you to do something whereas powermill will either change the tool overhang, split the toolpath into separate safe and unsafe toolpaths and/or change retract heights, up to you what you want it to do automatically when it finds a problem. Neither one has the tool-axis smoothing capabilities of powermill either which looks ahead during toolpath calculation to minimize excessive rotary axis movements. Of course, everybody will have their favorite systems for various reasons the best way is to consider everything carefully and make sure that whatever way you go is the right way for your business.

Powermill gets my vote too. The CAM side of Catia and UG is simply an add-in to their main CAD business to lock people in. Powermill is a dedicated CAM product with some unbelievably powerful 5-axis functionality (as well as being extremely fast for complex 3-axis work). Plus Delcam have seriously got their act in order with how much development resource they put into it. This was discussed recently in another thread too IIRC.

As I said earlier a single quad core CPU will be faster than twin quad core CPUs. The clock speed of modern processors is so high that a major limit on their performance is the time it takes to access main memory. Processor manufacturers reduce this bottleneck by including fast ‘cache’ memory on the processor chip. Frequently used data is kept in the cache where it can be accessed quickly. When a processor has multiple cores they share the same on-chip cache. When processor cores are working in parallel, the communication between cores to coordinate their tasks can take advantage of the shared cache provided they are all on the same chip. However, the benefit of the shared cache is lost if some of the cores are on a separate chip and communication has to use an external bus or main memory. A further overhead arises because cache coherency must be maintained - the contents of the caches must be kept in step with the contents of main memory, and vice-versa. It is quite complex to keep a single cache up to date, but the problem becomes much more complex and time consuming when coherency has to be maintained between two or more caches and main memory. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cache_coherency]. So to agree with JParis you're pretty much at the end of the road regarding any significant gains in performance even by adding another dual quad core (you'll probably seen a slow down tbh) only overclocking will make any difference and that will be minimal IMHO. Until MC becomes 64-bit, which I'm not convinced will happen for some time if at all, then I think you're as far as you're going to go.

1 - No 2 - On your system 2GB, as it is a 32-bit process running on a 64-bit OS. On a 32-bit OS you can flick the /3GB switch in the boot.ini to get 3GB but that doesn't work on 64-bit OS (I think this was discussed recently in another thread). 3 - Multi-threading in MC is fairly simplistic in that rather than a single toolpath being spread across multiple cores, a single toolpath is calculated on a single core with additional toolpaths being calculated on another core. Basically 1 toolpath per core, 4 cores then 4 toolpaths can be crunched simultaneously. Unless I misunderstood your question? I would say that MC would calculate faster on a single CPU with multiple cores rather than multiple CPUs.

Can you put the IGS file you're trying to import into Rhino on the FTP?

To answer the question (sorry I missed it), I was told by a business contact of mine in France who was told by a WorkNC employee. Cimatron paid $10m for GibbsCAM, $5m cash and $5m shares in Cimatron to Bill Gibbs. Which seeing as Cimatron was de-listed from the stock exchange for some of last year as their share price consistently traded under $1 must make Bill pretty pissed. Their latest results show that the combined revenue from both companies is now less than what it was for Cimatron alone before the purchase. So one of them (or both) is in freefall and the only winner is likely to be Bill Gibbs as he has $5m sitting in the bank. Also, I didn't mean "fastest growing market share" or some other BS chart but pure revenue based on sales, as that is what enables companies to invest in developing their product. Top 3 - revenue 1. Dassault 2. Siemens 3. Delcam Top 3 - number of CAM developers 1. Delcam 2. Dassault 3. Siemens Catia, UG and Pro/E are expensive both in initial purchase and maintenance (Tebis and OpenMind too) but I've found Delcam and others to be on a par with MC when it comes to pricing on purchase and maintenance. I'm worried I'm treading on thin ice discussing pricing as I know it's frowned upon so I'd rather say no more on the subject. But I agree, the data needs looking at carefully. Or is that what they call marketing? LOL.

No, certainly not Delcam. Have you seen their financials? They're in better condition than anyone in the CAM market right now having overtaken PTC to be ranked the 3rd largest CAM vendor behind Dassault and Siemens. Interestingly enough, some of the data I've seen puts CNC outside of the top 10 based on revenue and smaller in revenue than a lot of their competition. My personal opinion on some of the companies that will be struggling going forward. 1. OpenMind (drop in sales of 27% in 2009) 2. Cimatron and Gibbs (always struggling, Cimatron can't seem to stay solvent). 3. WorkNC (not enough development and investment to keep their user base happy). Add to that SurfCAM, SmartCAM and all the other minor CAM guys who just don't have enough going for them to make a bigger fish want to buy them or enough development going in to the product to keep it competitive. I take a close interest in the CADCAM market and subscribe to a number of industry newsletters/reports as I want to make sure that any investment is made into the right type of organization.

+1 gazillion.

Another point to remember when doing micro-machining is that your tolerance/point separation needs to be very, very small too. The irony of programming for micro-machining is that the NC code is many, many times longer than a conventionally sized part.

For straight 3-axis toolpaths I never found the need to do much editing with PowerMILL either but in 5-axis you can select parts of a toolpath, edit the tool-axis for that particular region and apply a blend to smooth out the different axis configurations. It gives you a lot of control on exactly what a 5-axis toolpath is going to do. And I've never seen anything else able to do that. Anyway, apologies to the OP for the hijack.

@Joe788, I get what you mean but I still think it's unnecessary. When I used PowerMILL I had the choice of outputting NC code relative to either the WCS I used to create the toolpath (I'm moving the part) or to a different WCS of my choosing (PowerMILL outputs the angular rotation and the machine moves the part). Lots simpler IMO and Views/Planes don't come into it.

IMHO, the way MC deals with WCS/Views/Planes is a throw-back to it's days as a purely 2D software. And makes me believe that that's what it still is at its core. If you're working in a true 3D environment and have a WCS determining the orientation of your workpiece why do you need a View or a Plane too?