Delcam for SolidWorks End-of-life announcement

just got an email today from Delcam

running an eval copy of this.... that explains why the phone stopped ringing! I was spooked by the Autodesk ownership, then by the subscription-based service model soon coming, and now this. Phew, best mistake I didn't make!

http://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/cad-cam/changes-coming-autodesk-318369/ Whats next?

Iflyforfood said:

running an eval copy of this.... that explains why the phone stopped ringing! I was spooked by the Autodesk ownership, then by the subscription-based service model soon coming, and now this. Phew, best mistake I didn't make!

Click to expand...

EXACTLY what I was thinking as I read that. The Autodesk buyout gave me pause, the subscription thing took them completely off the table. It's rare for me to despise a corporation but Autodesk is doing a good job of it.

Guys, just a question

I am a mostly happy FeatureCAM user, but did not look at any of the other Delcam softwares to know.
Is Delcam for SW a completely different software than FC or Powermill is, or is it just the version of FC that runs inside SW?

Seymour,

Delcam for Solidworks (DFS) started life as Featurecam for Solidworks. When Delcam bought Featurecam the project morphed a bit becoming Featurecam + some technology from Powermill (tool path algorithms I believe). We beta'ed DFS and made the transition to it from Featurecam, using it for a number of years. However, we we're less than pleased with Solidworks and its high maintenance cost. Once we dropped Solidworks, DFS was soon to follow in that we could no longer do updates and have it work with our last version of SW (2012)

Personally, we (the two users with seats here) thought it was an excellent program, but there were a lot of indications that it did not have much market penetration. Len's associate is the only other person we've seen mentioned in forums. And the official Delcam forum for DFS had very rare postings.

Fred

SeymourDumore said:

Guys, just a question

I am a mostly happy FeatureCAM user, but did not look at any of the other Delcam softwares to know.
Is Delcam for SW a completely different software than FC or Powermill is, or is it just the version of FC that runs inside SW?

Click to expand...

DFS is based on FeatureCam, Powermill is it's own bird.

SeymourDumore said:

Is Delcam for SW a completely different software than FC or Powermill is, or is it just the version of FC that runs inside SW?

Click to expand...

AFAIK DFS and FC are different branches of the same codebase, essentially the same product with a different interface. Milling toolpaths use the PowerMill kernel.

There is a fair bit of overlap between delcam products - Powermill, featurecam, partmaker - wouldn't be surprised if autodesk intend to "streamline" the products a bit...

Guys, thanks.

That explains why the release notes for the individual FC updates include both, FC and DFS improvements/bug fixes.