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The Best CAD/CAM software

Been done to death around here. I like HSMWorks a lot, use Fusion 360 at home, and miss some features of Gibbscam from time to time. Nothing's perfect.
 
cad cam

In your opinion, What is the best CAD/CAM software? I enjoy using mastercam myself.
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cad software is different than cam software.
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Solidworks is much better for assemblies of many parts, is easier to learn and has many books available on learning it. and there are more jobs that use it.
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Mastercam is ok for cam work and it too has many books available on learning it. and there are more jobs that use it
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i worked at places that use Unigraphics NX and others that use ProEngineer. both are good at large assemblies and can do cam work.
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both have a weakness in books are not as easily available on learning them though ProEngineer has more Cad books available than NX. when i looked for cam books on them they were much harder to find. and without books with tutorials they are much harder to learn. and there are much fewer jobs available that use them.
 
Whichever one I can get the boss to pony up for.......I use mostly Gibbs.....some Mazatrol / Mazacam. I imagine the type of equipment you have, the size of your shop, the depth of your pockets and the capacity of your brain are the most important factors. No correct answers......only pissing matches.
 
I imagine the type of equipment you have, the size of your shop, the depth of your pockets and the capacity of your brain are the most important factors. No correct answers......only pissing matches.

After I posted, this is pretty much what came to mind. This isn't a real question (and it's also a fairly vague thread title), it's an opinion. I wouldn't go back to Mastercam if I had a choice, but I'd take it over CamWorks any day.
 
FeatureCAM is damn good for milling. Although, I feel it is convoluted once you get past 3 axis, and complex 3-D can be as well.

I use it for turning also. But, miss MasterCAM. Turning in MasterCAM was so much nicer.
From what I remember, that is. I opened MasterCAM the other day after a few years of not touching it, and could not remember how to use it LOL.

For simple milling, FeatureCAM really is very good.
 
At our company which manufactures moulds I have only used NX but some of my coworkers use Mastercam. Other than that I only hear of other softwares from friends who I have no direct comparison with. So...currently I'm using NX10 and started a long time ago using UG9. It was UG until v19 which is when they switched to the NX name and puts NX10 at about v30. Anyways a while back I used to feel some coworkers, who were on MC, were able to handle steel programming a bit easier than I but our NX users were rocking the hell for everything else with solid modeling and trode programming as well as complete mold designs in solid. Siemens has done a lot of enhancing and refining lately and I feel that NX has eclipsed MC in programming and MC never had any sort of design/assemblies/drafting that is in the same galaxy as NX. I think MC still has some nice bells and whistles but overall from what I see NX is fundamentally better. Solids based is the only way to go if you have any sort of designing to do or even small tweaks; surface based is last century tech. I see our MC guys always building additional geometry to extend or isolate their operations which is foreign to me. They have been struggling with how MC is handling the in process model in MC8 and MC9 which has been second nature to NX for a long time. One of our MC programmers recently blew through 32GB of ram while programming a moderately sized STL model! *sigh* Probably the biggest single aspect I like about NX is it can use the entire model for part and then you can simply select faces you wish to machine and that goes for virtually all the various types of operations available. You can easily tell it to extend so you don't have to build all sorts of extra geometry to have the cutter start/stop of the cut faces. If you have the need for power and flexibility a cad/cam system should be able to easily handle solids, surfaces and STL without any hiccups. We have also looked at CamTool software which is nice for hard milling but it lacks for roughing, drilling, is only surfaced based without the ability to handle solids, cannot do STL bodies, has no assemblies, no modeling and to top it off I have heard they haven't really enhanced it much in recent years although that's second hand info.

Mastercam is quite decent but even while having the most installed seats IMO NX is a much better package not to mention MC needs an additional solid cad software to even be in the same ballpark.

All that being said...I recommend people use whatever is a good fit for them. If you use an underpowered software for your particular work then you're wasting time and money. If you buy overpowered software then you're not using its potential and wasting money as well.
 
This CAM for sure then.

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