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Moving from Smartcam to Mastercam

camhead420

Cast Iron
Joined
Nov 22, 2019
Hi all,

I am curious if anyone has used both Smartcam and Mastercam and tell me how difficult it is to switch. I am thinking of moving and i see Mastercam and Camworks. Not to many people seem to use Smartcam i guess.
 
Never used SmartCam.
Being a long time user of Mastercam (since the mid-90's), the best advice I can give you is after you get acquainted with Mastercam and the navigation you will want to set all of your defaults. Meaning tool defaults, operation defaults even the Ribbon bar layout at the top.

Out of the box, Mastercam defaults aren't the best with the exception of some toolpath defaults and such.
It will take a lot of time for you do do this, but once it's done your user experience will go through the roof and you will be a lot more efficient with it.
 
Thanks, Smartcam is somewhat like that, you really have to customize it to make more efficient. Hopefully when the time comes it goes smooth.
 
I've been using Smartcam since the early 90's, and am disappointed it didn't catch on. I'll keep going with it as long as I can, and am glad the company is still around, but I don't know what the future holds.

I do love the complete control of toolpath generation, it would take me a while to get changed to anything with more constraints.
 
Hi all,

I am curious if anyone has used both Smartcam and Mastercam and tell me how difficult it is to switch. I am thinking of moving and i see Mastercam and Camworks. Not to many people seem to use Smartcam i guess.


so do you use SolidWorks, because you have to have that to run CamWorks.
 
No, I do not have Solid works. The only software we have here is SmartCAM.
thanks for letting me know that. Sorry for late reply, I was out of town.
 
Thanks, Smartcam is somewhat like that, you really have to customize it to make more efficient. Hopefully when the time comes it goes smooth.

Depending on how you use your software I think all have to be customized to be efficient to what you want the software to do.
 
Been using MC for 2 years, and I still haven't really set my defaults up. Haven't really been able to figure that out. I really need to though.
 
Been using MC for 2 years, and I still haven't really set my defaults up. Haven't really been able to figure that out. I really need to though.

What version? If one of the newer ones, click file>configuration.

You can also customize your ribbons and right mouse. For right mouse, click file>options.
 
What version? If one of the newer ones, click file>configuration.

You can also customize your ribbons and right mouse. For right mouse, click file>options.

2022, What I really need to set up are the operation s defaults in the toolpaths. Just something I need to take some time, and figure out how I want it all set I guess.
 
so do you use SolidWorks, because you have to have that to run CamWorks.

Actually, CamWorks has a lightweight version of SW that you can use standalone if you don't have it at all. It's called CamWorks solids.

That being said, I would just avoid CamWorks in favor of Mastercam. CamWorks, from my experience, spends too much time releasing new features and neglecting the old ones. Now, they have CamWorks Plus! Give me a break.
 
Actually, CamWorks has a lightweight version of SW that you can use standalone if you don't have it at all. It's called CamWorks solids.

That being said, I would just avoid CamWorks in favor of Mastercam. CamWorks, from my experience, spends too much time releasing new features and neglecting the old ones. Now, they have CamWorks Plus! Give me a break.

yes I know but it still has to run inside of SW.

this has been around for as long as i can remember, Worked for the SW VAR here in AZ from 2001-04 and we would loose a SolidWorks full version sale cause the CAMWorks reseller would sell the light version of SW to the customer and we were the ones that sent the perspective customer to them cause they also wanted CAM, so we stopped sending them and sent them to SolidCAM or one of the other standalone CAM systems of the day.

but now if you by a seat of SW CAM is included if you stay on subscription, though it is 2.5 axis only.
 








 
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