Qwan
Cast Iron
- Joined
- Sep 12, 2013
- Location
- Midwest U.S.A
The other day a former colleague was touting cam-tool's alleged superiority over all other cam systems which caused me to chuckle a bit. I want to post here because he reads this forum and I wanted to get a discussion out in the open to gather some industry input from those who use it or have knowledge on it.
Firstly, I don't use it but know a few businesses which do. A while ago a couple of those shops used it for hard finishing only but I don't know how far they've come. Looking at cam-tool's web site it appears they have not changed much over the years but web sites can be woefully inadequate for technical software. I know they used to push their ability to calculate CL points using offset surfs rather than meshing a model; saying that meshing was sooo inaccurate, lol. I always found that claim hilarious because even when mathing by offsetting surfs there will always be tolerances involved in some situations such as Z-level cutting a tilted cylinder. I know NX added exact offset calculation a while back but, again, there will always be some instances where math tolerancing will be involved. Is cam-tool cam only still? I thought they were cutting surfaces only but added STL cutting not too long ago; again, not sure. Do they have adaptive roughing? Solid modeling? Drafting? Assemblies? I have seen some of my friends high Rc parts and they are definitely beautiful pieces but I have seem equally nice parts from NX, Cimmatron, Mastercam, etc-.
Any opinions out there?
NX 11.0.2
NX 12.0.2
Firstly, I don't use it but know a few businesses which do. A while ago a couple of those shops used it for hard finishing only but I don't know how far they've come. Looking at cam-tool's web site it appears they have not changed much over the years but web sites can be woefully inadequate for technical software. I know they used to push their ability to calculate CL points using offset surfs rather than meshing a model; saying that meshing was sooo inaccurate, lol. I always found that claim hilarious because even when mathing by offsetting surfs there will always be tolerances involved in some situations such as Z-level cutting a tilted cylinder. I know NX added exact offset calculation a while back but, again, there will always be some instances where math tolerancing will be involved. Is cam-tool cam only still? I thought they were cutting surfaces only but added STL cutting not too long ago; again, not sure. Do they have adaptive roughing? Solid modeling? Drafting? Assemblies? I have seen some of my friends high Rc parts and they are definitely beautiful pieces but I have seem equally nice parts from NX, Cimmatron, Mastercam, etc-.
Any opinions out there?
NX 11.0.2
NX 12.0.2
