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oppster

Aluminum
Joined
Sep 12, 2016
Good evening,

In a bit of a dilemma, our company is looking at another seat for Cam.
We currently have Mastercam 2018, we was looking for another seat. So we had a quote and was quite expensive.

We have numerous lathes, mills (vertical and hori) and 2 Dorris Sharmans with full facing head and live tooling. We know the posts will cost a bit mainly on the sharmans but thats irrelevant.

So we have been looking at other options before we go ahead.
We have had Solidcam and a conference call from Fusion 360.

I have been using Mastercam for 7year's now and i'm quite comfortable using it. I have installed the 30 days demo for fusion 360 and seem to be really struggling with the software in basic stuff due to not knowing were everything is. (I did do Autocad 2d and 3d 9year's ago)

As for Solidcam it looks pretty similar to Mastercam.

So what i#m asking is:

1: What software would you recommend?
2. Is Fusion really that tricky to use?
3. Is Solidcam really as good as the reps made it to be.

Thanks Paul
 
You're in the UK. The Delcam capital of the world. You should look at Powermill and Powershape. They are up on the top with NX, Catia, Esprit, and wont charge you the ridiculous Mastercam price for a post. Not to mention you are in the support capital.
 
You're in the UK. The Delcam capital of the world. You should look at Powermill and Powershape. They are up on the top with NX, Catia, Esprit, and wont charge you the ridiculous Mastercam price for a post. Not to mention you are in the support capital.

Recommending powermill is a terrible thing to do. Are you not curious why they now include a subscription of Fusion360 with Powermill??? The writing is on the wall, only a matter of time now.
 
Recommending powermill is a terrible thing to do. Are you not curious why they now include a subscription of Fusion360 with Powermill??? The writing is on the wall, only a matter of time now.


You do have a point there. Its hard to see how autodesk could do that to their customers. We have 39 full blown seats of Powershape, Powermill,Mold, and Featurecam shelling out around 300k per year in maintenance. I'm hoping we get a few more years out of it.
 
You do have a point there. Its hard to see how autodesk could do that to their customers. We have 39 full blown seats of Powershape, Powermill,Mold, and Featurecam shelling out around 300k per year in maintenance. I'm hoping we get a few more years out of it.

holy fucking shit!
 
holy fucking shit!

Yeah, the owner is a Brit that is die hard Delcam. He used it in his factories in the UK now he's the largest licensed user in China. I guess it makes for some good PR. Delcam is super powerful but my trusty ole version of Featurecam 2016 cooks right along.
 
Good evening,

In a bit of a dilemma, our company is looking at another seat for Cam.
We currently have Mastercam 2018, we was looking for another seat. So we had a quote and was quite expensive.


My gut feeling would be to...

a) stick with MasterCAM

b) drive a hard bargain with them, and possibly "hint" that you're thinking of jumping ship because of the cost


:)
PM
 
SolidCAM does rule if you do any design work in Solidworks. If you're a SW user, it's a no brainer! Great support too!
 
Good evening,

<snip>

3. Is Solidcam really as good as the reps made it to be.

Thanks Paul

How good did the reps make SolidCam ?



Interested in what you found more appealing about SolidCam over MC ?


With SolidCam it is easier to connect to support in general and then there are the KevCam "Night classes" online where they are happy to field any questions or do a mini on-line workshop for you.

The 2 Dorris Sharmans… SolidCam is very pro-active about engaging with customers to add new features to their software. It's not a giant faceless entity that hands down it's offerings from on high; they build what ever seems like a good idea driven from their customer base. The customer has the "Ear" of their development teams.


Seems in the U.K. MAZAK and SolidCam have been partnering more on big and complicated machine type projects.


I don't disagree with what other's have said in this thread... Versions of MasterCam I used were really old back in the day when SolidCAm was way ahead of them for integrated no brainer easy solution to use.


________________________________________________________________________________________________________________


** I used to support Liverpool as a kid in the 70's everything Liverpool or Kevin Keegan themed (bags, badges, posters, books, socks ad infinitum) … Then they went through a pretty long and sad couple of decades I think ? Have no idea what they are doing now (I have to ask my Mexican friends what's going in "Footy" these days ). Did get to see Man-U play AS Roma (exhibition game) at the home stadium for the Denver Broncos... That was pretty wild/unusual and super interesting when Man-U could be bothered to do their "Thing"(very impressive) .
 
I'd say just stick to what you have/know. MasterCam is a powerful program with good support and community. Also, I don't know what you would consider an expensive quote, but just as a reference the company I work at uses NX and pays around $20k per seat plus maintenance.
 
but just as a reference the company I work at uses NX and pays around $20k per seat plus maintenance.

$20k per seat? What did you get, the DOS version?
NX charges what they think the customer can afford. pretty sure i have never seen a matching quote to two different companies for the same thing. 20K must be one very stripped down version.
 
$20k per seat? What did you get, the DOS version?
NX charges what they think the customer can afford. pretty sure i have never seen a matching quote to two different companies for the same thing. 20K must be one very stripped down version.

g-coder05, serious question for you, little off topic...but not much. If Autodesk rolled all the functionality of powermill/shape into Fusion360 and was still the cloud based fusion we know today, would you keep your 300k maintenance active. If not, where would you first look for a replacement.
 
20K must be one very stripped down version.

People think NX is priced way higher than it actually is. My seat was well under $20k for 5 axis CAM plus a pretty well featured CAD seat (only missing the crazy ID surfacing tools) and included a custom post for a 4 axis Speedio with nearly beta firmware on it (i.e. they quoted that knowing that there would be a bunch of bullshit back-n-forth to get the post up to snuff given the lack of documentation at the time).

In the OP's case, tell your MasterCAM reseller that you're looking hard at Fusion. They will never come down to Fusion pricing, but I can almost guarantee you they will cut a better offer. When I was trying to get my SolidWorks seat back on maintenance, saying that I was looking hard at Fusion lopped 25% right off of the top of their offer. When they wouldn't drop $1500 in back penalties and I told them to pound sand, I still get an email or two every month from Hawk Ridge asking me how it is going.
 
New CAM or Existing

My suspicion is that getting the posts from two different CAM systems to work exactly the same and spit out the same g-code structure for all the machines you need could be a challenge unless you use one of the companies providing a post plugin like Camplete for both CAM systems. If your OK with Mastercam, and the support you get from your reseller, the devil you know...
 
g-coder05, serious question for you, little off topic...but not much. If Autodesk rolled all the functionality of powermill/shape into Fusion360 and was still the cloud based fusion we know today, would you keep your 300k maintenance active. If not, where would you first look for a replacement.


Absolutely not.
NX is the universally cad/cam taught in Asia so that's the next place to go. after that is Creo.
 
People think NX is priced way higher than it actually is. My seat was well under $20k for 5 axis CAM plus a pretty well featured CAD seat (only missing the crazy ID surfacing tools) and included a custom post for a 4 axis Speedio with nearly beta firmware on it (i.e. they quoted that knowing that there would be a bunch of bullshit back-n-forth to get the post up to snuff given the lack of documentation at the time).

In the OP's case, tell your MasterCAM reseller that you're looking hard at Fusion. They will never come down to Fusion pricing, but I can almost guarantee you they will cut a better offer. When I was trying to get my SolidWorks seat back on maintenance, saying that I was looking hard at Fusion lopped 25% right off of the top of their offer. When they wouldn't drop $1500 in back penalties and I told them to pound sand, I still get an email or two every month from Hawk Ridge asking me how it is going.


That's the thing with NX, even when it was Unigraphics. They base the price of the size or your business, thus the reason I said I have never seen the same price twice for separate companies.
 
People think NX is priced way higher than it actually is. My seat was well under $20k for 5 axis CAM plus a pretty well featured CAD seat (only missing the crazy ID surfacing tools) and included a custom post for a 4 axis Speedio with nearly beta firmware on it (i.e. they quoted that knowing that there would be a bunch of bullshit back-n-forth to get the post up to snuff given the lack of documentation at the time).

In the OP's case, tell your MasterCAM reseller that you're looking hard at Fusion. They will never come down to Fusion pricing, but I can almost guarantee you they will cut a better offer. When I was trying to get my SolidWorks seat back on maintenance, saying that I was looking hard at Fusion lopped 25% right off of the top of their offer. When they wouldn't drop $1500 in back penalties and I told them to pound sand, I still get an email or two every month from Hawk Ridge asking me how it is going.

That's good to know... But those NX surfacing tools are super sexy ! :-(

BUT some of those have migrated into Solid Edge (Which is now on subscription) as you probably know.

Might give NX another look.

Ta.
 
Yeah, the owner is a Brit that is die hard Delcam. He used it in his factories in the UK now he's the largest licensed user in China. I guess it makes for some good PR. Delcam is super powerful but my trusty ole version of Featurecam 2016 cooks right along.

I practically spat my coffee out onto the screen at that one... LOL (funny but also sad.).

Is Software Piracy for these products still a major "Thing" / problem (in China) ?

Good that your firm is "Street legal" on the software front !
 








 
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