Looking for some suggestions for a new Cam program "using gpost and Solidworks"

Looking for some suggestions for a new Cam program "using gpost and Solidworks"

We have been using Pro engineer and Pro manufacturing from way back to version 17. We have been stuck on Wildfire 2.0 and are looking to update to Solidworks. All our machines are horizontal mills with an indexing pallets. I have gpost posts and they have a ton of work into them to output what I want to see. The company that we are working with was trying to sell me Camworks. The software is great for simple programming. Camworks does not do what I want to see. I am now looking at GibbsCam. The sticker shock will not go over well with the bean counters from the quote I received today. I noticed that that the Solidworks site lists some other programs as well as the two I have seen to date. I want a fully associated CAD/CAM setup. I also would like to continue to use gpost. Help

Mastercam has a version that runs inside of Solidworks
Works VERY well with Horiz machines

cncwhiz said:

We have been using Pro engineer and Pro manufacturing from way back to version 17. We have been stuck on Wildfire 2.0 and are looking to update to Solidworks. All our machines are horizontal mills with an indexing pallets. I have gpost posts and they have a ton of work into them to output what I want to see. The company that we are working with was trying to sell me Camworks. The software is great for simple programming. Camworks does not do what I want to see. I am now looking at GibbsCam. The sticker shock will not go over well with the bean counters from the quote I received today. I noticed that that the Solidworks site lists some other programs as well as the two I have seen to date. I want a fully associated CAD/CAM setup. I also would like to continue to use gpost. Help

Click to expand...

Austin NC lists Surfcam and Unigraphics NX as using GPost. Neither are fully integrated with Solidworks but NX is itself a fully integrated cad/cam suite I believe and very capable according to other reports on PM.

HTH

Austin Nc is at : Austin N.C. | GPost and CAM Products & Services

Von

cncwhiz said:

We have been using Pro engineer and Pro manufacturing from way back to version 17. We have been stuck on Wildfire 2.0 and are looking to update to Solidworks. All our machines are horizontal mills with an indexing pallets. I have gpost posts and they have a ton of work into them to output what I want to see. The company that we are working with was trying to sell me Camworks. The software is great for simple programming. Camworks does not do what I want to see. I am now looking at GibbsCam. The sticker shock will not go over well with the bean counters from the quote I received today. I noticed that that the Solidworks site lists some other programs as well as the two I have seen to date. I want a fully associated CAD/CAM setup. I also would like to continue to use gpost. Help

Click to expand...

Featurecam can output a cutter location file.

Delcam Demonstrates FeatureCAM at Planet PTC Live 2012 - YouTube

Since you'll have Solidworks, try out HSMXpress. It's free and has all the 2.5 axis capability of HSMworks.

Also the HSMxpress includes the Cimco G-code editor with backplotter

best free backplotter out there

Another recommendation for HSMWorks here. I tried every Solidworks integrated cam system and found it to be hands down the best. As stated, you can use the 2.5D version for free and the simulation and editor included in the free version are excellent. After using the 2.5D version for a few months looking at any other cam felt like some clunky piece of junk.

solidcam has to be the best hand down integration with solidworks that i've ever seen. I'm a mastercam instructor and can tell you there isn't anything out better than solidcam that is "REAL integration" not just something called integration and isn't. mastercam is definitely more powerful but solidcam is very nice and smooth. They have a 30 day demo i believe. check them out.

vtpros.net

jid2 said:

Another recommendation for HSMWorks here. I tried every Solidworks integrated cam system and found it to be hands down the best. As stated, you can use the 2.5D version for free and the simulation and editor included in the free version are excellent. After using the 2.5D version for a few months looking at any other cam felt like some clunky piece of junk.

Click to expand...

How has the support been since they got bought out by autodesk?


Also, have they edited a post for your new borther machine for the ridged tapping g77, and other drill cycles

Dan-

Support has been solid the whole time from my perspective. I was just a HSMXpress user for most of that time and still got taken care of with requests and mods to posts etc. They had a few months after the purchase where development got slow, but once they had their game plan they cranked out a bunch of updates etc. They said they were increasing the size of the development team, and I feel like they have made good on that.

They had a post for the Brother machines already (setup for someone else initially), and it had the G77 tap cycle, which is sweet. Haven't screwed with any of the other drilling cycles - which ones were you talking about?

But it also did some stuff we didn't like. They are tuning it up right now, I just got a new version this morning to try out tomorrow. Overall the post was really good, we are just tweaking the format of some of the code so we can search it the way we like and then creating some options in the posting menu to give options for retracts on tool changes, indexing moves etc.

Its good to know that they have been investing in the software.

Does your post include the T00 tool change feature, some of the highspeed boring cycles, and multiple workoffset for nesting?

If you have the time, could you post some sample code of what you are getting .

Thanks

Regarding HSMworks...I am a user in the Tool and Die world. I am very happy with it and while there was drama last year with the buyout things are very smooth and development has actually increased in the last 6-8 months. I just wanted to say that while I am still a little skeptical of AD's intentions with the future of HSM I saw something on the HSM forum last week that made me feel better. Carl Bass the CEO of autodesk was posting and interacting with long time HSM users (who still use SW). He was assuring SW users of continued support and discussing future development.

I just thought it was nice to see the CEO of a large corp. interacting with us customers directly. I don't think he would do that if the intention was to leave SW users hanging.