Edgecam Bugs

Hello,

Just wanted to see if there were anymore Edgecam users on this forum and wanted to see what people's opinions are of the software?

I have a bit of a live hate relationship with it...

Although I think the software has great functionally and can produce some really good toolpaths, I find it frustrating that it seems to suffer from quite a few bugs (for me at least), random errors, crashing, graphical errors etc.its is also a little frustrating that although more functionallity is added and some bugs are fixed, in doing this many more bugs and errors occur. For example, after the latest release there was a bug were you couldn't input a speed or feed into the thread milling cycle and another where changing the depth of cut in one milling cycle changed the parameters in all cycles.

But then again, after looking at HSMWorks, CAMWorks, and OneCNC, Edgecam seems head and shoulders above the competition.

So my second question is, which other CAM software could compete with Edgecam?

Kind regards,

Kristian Thompson

I've not used it for 6 years, but that sounds about right. You are not obligated to run the latest version. You can run an older version until they work out the bugs.

EdgeCam has excellent support for turning, mill turning, and production milling. It's not the greatest for 3D milling or making fancy trocoidal tool paths.


When I bought it, we compared it to NX and Esprit. It's a bit cheaper than those two, but not quite as capable. However, I thought the learning curve was less steep.

ewlsey said:

I've not used it for 6 years, but that sounds about right. You are not obligated to run the latest version. You can run an older version until they work out the bugs.

EdgeCam has excellent support for turning, mill turning, and production milling. It's not the greatest for 3D milling or making fancy trocoidal tool paths.


When I bought it, we compared it to NX and Esprit. It's a bit cheaper than those two, but not quite as capable. However, I thought the learning curve was less steep.

Click to expand...

We usually stick with the same version for a little I've a year but after this period the problem we then have is that when we come across a bug or an issue the support recommend that we upgrade as the issues is fixed in the latest version. So then we upgrade and that issue is fixed but then there are a whole host of new issues...

Yes I agree the turning is great and I can't say enough good about the support they provide, they have a lot of good support staff who are very helpful and usually get back to you very quickly.

We deal with lots of weird shaped casting which usually give CAM packages a hard time, all the ones we have looked at haven't handled turning castings well at all. Although because we deal with castings we don't do heavy roughing, mainly just 3mm off all faces, drilling and tapping flanges and spouts etc

I'm interested to see if Esprit may be a better option that has had a little more development, but being in the UK I'm not sure if we can get support here. I'm also interested in seeing if featureCAM may be an option. I'm going to arrange demos next week

We have bug problems too. I wait for a few updates (or all of them) to be released before I install a new version. At least you are in the UK and can get support direct from the home office.

NX Espress or Mastercam might be comparable.

Are you using solids in turning? I understand the quality of the solid you use for stock has a big impact on your toolpath creation

I thought the home office was in Brazil?

My application was also for turning near net castings. We would load a .dxf of the casting and one of the part and the software did a good job with the lathe tool paths.

Maybe it is, it's been sold a couple times.

Mud said:

We have bug problems too. I wait for a few updates (or all of them) to be released before I install a new version. At least you are in the UK and can get support direct from the home office.

NX Espress or Mastercam might be comparable.

Are you using solids in turning? I understand the quality of the solid you use for stock has a big impact on your toolpath creation

Click to expand...

Yes I do like the turning tool paths that are available.

Yes, we use stock from solid models for tool paths, we do get the occasional.error with edgecam saying that the solid is open, but other CAM softwares we have had demonstrations of haven't had any luck loading casting models, even though in SOLIDWOrks they appear as a single solid body, so im.not even.sure how they would be "repaired" when no errors show in CAD, maybe that's a CAM issue.

Is mastercam supposed to have less bugs? Is the integration into SOLIDWOrks any good? We are big SOLIDWOrks users so that would be a huge bonus if the integration was seamless

You are not alone.
Every upgrade is riddled with bugs, I struggle to believe that they even test them before release. Some even the years to fix.


I find the support system poor, can't speak to anybody directly to start with and have to just wait until they contact you.

Anybody tried fusion 360?

ewlsey said:

I thought the home office was in Brazil?

Click to expand...

Looks like England - Vero Software - Wikipedia

All software packages have their share of bugs in them, It could be that the marked is trying to pump out new versions of their software to compete with other software packages. I have been using camworks for 12 years and I have dealt with my headaches over the years. I also used Edgecam and supported that software for 8 years. One thing I can say is that I do not upgrade my software packages to the lastest versions right away. I just updated to camworks 2018 service pack 3.1. When 2019 comes out I will wait until a few service packs are available before updating. We do the same with our cad package, I never rush into using the newest version.

Having used Edgecam for the last 20years I have only seen two real updates worth having.
Waveform milling, then waveform turning, the rest have basically been fairytail nonsense.

They have lost the lost the plot and don't understand that it's all about generating efficient and accurate machine code.
Instead of trying to look fancy with silly pointless graphics of machine guards and doors and other pointless blurb, concentrate on what matters, the ability to generate good quality accurate and efficient tool paths in a reasonable time!

Stew123 said:

They have lost the lost the plot and don't understand that it's all about generating efficient and accurate machine code.
Instead of trying to look fancy with silly pointless graphics of machine guards and doors and other pointless blurb, concentrate on what matters, the ability to generate good quality accurate and efficient tool paths in a reasonable time!

Click to expand...

Man, that could apply to a lot of the new Cam software that's coming out lately!! I just want the code, I can watch it run in real time on the machine when I post it!!

A former employee of mine is now plant manager at a high volume job shop, we are still in close contact. They also use Edgecam and I'd call them a power user. Vero has added features and made improvements just for them, there have been times where they were waiting on an update release in order to properly program the parts they were making. The updates get rushed out so that they can have them and debugging takes a back seat sometimes for the sake of availability.

I have simpler needs. The added power and features are often nice to have but not essential to us, where the above mentioned shop MUST have them. Because we don't push the CAM so hard we don't run into as many bugs either. Biggest PITA has been code generators being obsoleted by new features in new releases and needing rework. I don't think that's exclusive to Edgecam.