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How much Cad/Cam do you need?

CarbideBob

Diamond
Joined
Jan 14, 2007
Location
Flushing/Flint, Michigan
So all this neat stuff now.
How much does one need or use?
Cad side I went to something called Cadkey a bit back as Autocad could not do 3-D at that time.
Bought the first versions of Teksoft and Mastercam.
I go to Cadkey in a virtual machine. I have Mcam 8 and quit any buying more later as it does all I need.
I do not make body dies or do surfacing. Just make those holders and milling cutters that you all use.
This is so ancient but we can make it sing and dance on on new computers and is lighting fast.
Friends buy newer stuff but I do not see a speed or performance gain.
What am I missing? Spent some time in Solidworks but did not like it so much.
How much gain have we made?.
 
It depends on what you're doing. If you design and make simple parts, you don't need anything new. If you design and make complex parts, there are new technologies that make modeling much easier. I design some complex parts with organic shapes and use a combination of Rhino3D with BobCAM and T-Flex. They do the job extremely well and don't cost a fortune. I also don't like Solidworks but can't afford NX.

Some suppliers might have to keep up to date on the latest CAD/CAM just for maximum compatibility when sending/receiving files. Some companies prefer to work in their native file formats and not risk conversions to generic formats.
 
Biggest recent gain I know of is when cad started going to true 64 bit and multi core usage, now backups happen without slowing your drawing. I use a relative cheap cad that I like better and can do more than most.
Fusion for cam, I am new to cam so not much to go on there.
 
So all this neat stuff now.
How much does one need or use?
Cad side I went to something called Cadkey a bit back as Autocad could not do 3-D at that time.
Bought the first versions of Teksoft and Mastercam.
I go to Cadkey in a virtual machine. I have Mcam 8 and quit any buying more later as it does all I need.
I do not make body dies or do surfacing. Just make those holders and milling cutters that you all use.
This is so ancient but we can make it sing and dance on on new computers and is lighting fast.
Friends buy newer stuff but I do not see a speed or performance gain.
What am I missing? Spent some time in Solidworks but did not like it so much.
How much gain have we made?.
like Jhov said - depends on what you do.
i personally dont use all the features NX has, but we as a company do, so it makes sense.
 
There is a big advantage to using trichodral milling with the newer systems. Even with simple parts. Not sure if MasterCam 8 has that option. We use it when it makes sense, and it reduces cycle time and keeps your cutters sharp longer and reduces stress in your workpiece.
 
Biggest recent gain I know of is when cad started going to true 64 bit and multi core usage, now backups happen without slowing your drawing. I use a relative cheap cad that I like better and can do more than most.
Fusion for cam, I am new to cam so not much to go on there.
This is a good point. Some of the biggest improvements to CAD/CAM have been in performance. This is most noticeable when dealing with large assemblies or calculating and displaying very many complex tool paths, but you can notice the improvement with even mid-complexity assemblies. This isn't just a function of using better hardware either; some of the coded performance improvements are fairly astounding.

An example from T-Flex, because it's what I know, but it's applicable to any big name CAD/CAM package.
 
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How much gain have we made?.
-Quite a bit really. If Cadkey is the tool that works for you that's great, I've heard several other people that still think it's all they needed for what they did. A more capable tool for the job doesn't help if the extra potential isn't useful, not to mention the extra expense and a new learning curve.

I started with Pro-e (v.2000) with all the drop down menus. The change to icons was a shake-up but I believe it was an improvement. Most of the ensuing iterations from PTC (Wildfire, Creo, etc.) were only small differences from a design standpoint. There were some modules that interacted with the business departments but the only real improvement, for me, was opening non-standard files and having a useful feature tree. That still doesn't work for some files.

As a contractor I flop back-n-forth between several different CAD programs hoping the latest program will be suited to the task I'm hired for. At home I still have SWX (v.14) because I don't see much in the way of improvements being worth the yearly cost. I'm not in favor of the "cloud" versions either.

I don't have a qualified opinion of the CAM end as I'm not in the shop for that anymore. A few weeks of learning MasterCam (X9) impressed me that things have improved since the early 90's and MDI at the machine.
 
Another big plus for newer stuff (at least in what I've run to) is not having to have an old-ass PC running Windows XP or 98 to run old software, or having to mess around with VMs or other workarounds.
 
yeah... fusion CAD is not great, lol. its ok at best.
Umm, no or hell no. I have enough pain in my life. I spend a lot of time in cad and designing, I earned the good stuff.
well you guys surely know better I just graduated as an aerospace engineer but still have no real life experience in cad and machining so I'll take your word for it, but I did work with solidworks and spaceclaim and siemens nx and fusion 360, in cad I'm best with solidworks than fusion than siemens nx than spaceclaim and through my very limited experience modelling not so complex cad parts and assemblies I se that fusion 360 and solidworks doesn't have much differences now spaceclaim has a different philosiphy with the direct modelling concept and the no feature tree thing going for them and siemens nx, hh well it is siemens nx of course it is so powerful specially wit the latest versions where things are much less ambiguous.
I played a little with DesignModeler for modelling geometry mainly to do mechanical and cfd simulations in ansys cfx or fluent, the software is extremely powerful for the creation and editing of centrifugal compressor or any rotative turbo-machinery like fans turbines axial compressors and all but using as cad for design or for prepping the model for mchining application is a nightmare but you didn't tell us what cam package u use that is relatively cheaper and really good compared to others.
and thank u guys for all the knowledge you are sharing
 
I am using Fusion for cad/cam, but it lacks one cruical feature for me - weldments. And being not in the prime country, getting SW or NX for that, with them switching to subscription type models, that force you maintainance and stuff, I'm stuck with fusion.
Can anyone advise on integrated cad/cam that has weldments with plain perpetual license?
 
I am using Fusion for cad/cam, but it lacks one cruical feature for me - weldments. And being not in the prime country, getting SW or NX for that, with them switching to subscription type models, that force you maintainance and stuff, I'm stuck with fusion.
Can anyone advise on integrated cad/cam that has weldments with plain perpetual license?
Look into T-Flex and ZW3D. Both will do weldments and have perpetual licenses and are a fraction of the cost of SW or NX. I have a seat of T-Flex for CAD, but their CAM is lacking. I trialed ZW3D and it's CAM is better but I liked the T-Flex CAD workflow more.
 
ZW3D is on my radar, wish i could bundle only parts I need tho.
Yeah, they have some strange bundles and price tiers. I don't know if they do it any more but when I was looking they seemed to have regular 20-30% off sales from time to time so keep an eye out for those. T-Flex wasn't flexible on their pricing, but they were still competitive with ZW3D even with their sales.
 
Since the CadKey days of the 80's? A fuck ton.

I'd have to refute this statement. It depends on what you are doing. Cadkey doesn't do cam, so we're only talking cad here but if all you need is a drawing of a reasonably straightforward part, wireframe is faster and easier. In fact the cadkey transition from model to drawing is cleaner and more sensible than any of the "fuckton better" newer cad programs I've messed with. At $1.50 a seat, you get to play with several so it's not like I've only seen one or two. :)

Horses for courses.
 
Glad this popped back up, meant to ask you : which one ? I had it running happily in OS/2 but that was a better dos than dos :) Most of the others can't deal with the pharlap memory extender that cadkey used. Whatcha got for a vm, lizardlips ?
Oracle Virtualbox running Cadkey 99.
Back in it's day it would get slow with a bunch of solids.
On todays computers if flies.
 








 
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