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Subscription CAM software question

Dan B

Hot Rolled
Joined
Feb 18, 2006
Location
Ontario, Canada
When you have a subscription for something like PowerMill, are the posts included in the subscription price? Or are there extra charges to provide posts?

Just curious, because I know that some CAM vendors charge around $1K per axis for a post.

Thanks,

Dan
 
When you have a subscription for something like PowerMill, are the posts included in the subscription price? Or are there extra charges to provide posts?

Just curious, because I know that some CAM vendors charge around $1K per axis for a post.


Dan,

In my experience, it depends entirely on the software vendor. Sometimes one or more posts can be "negotiated" into the price of the software, and other vendors might not budge at all, and make the buyer purchase each one separately/additionally.

If a shop has a wide variety of machines, it can obviously get very expensive.

PM
 
Thanks for the responses. I'm speaking strictly about subscription products, so I guess I'm really asking specifically about Autodesk. Maybe the default posts can be altered by the user? That's what I'm used to after almost 25 years with WorkNC. Take care of it yourself. Is that what Fusion, PowerMill, FeatureCAM, etc. users do?

Thanks,

Dan
 
We've had great luck working with folks at Autodesk and through our local reseller. Generally, if you know what it is doing, and know what it needs to do instead, you can get changes made without cost very quickly by Autodesk support folks on the forums or through email.

For instance, for our Tsugami turning center we started with an existing Doosan post and we are changing M codes as they come up in posted code; I tell the Autodesk guys "it is posting an M147 for coolant through turret and I need that to be an M54, and I need bar feed torque on (M60) and off (M61) as part of the safety code in this format XXXXXXXX, and I want safe zero returns on every tool change, and it should read like this XXXXX." When spelled out like that it had been very quick for us to get the changes made. We've gone through our local reseller but honestly they just have someone from Autodesk following up it seems. For bigger changes they have folks locally here that do them.

For the Brothers, we got things changed over and now the Autodesk base post is better than what we developed. LOL

The trouble is when you've got something that is so different from any of the base posts that you might not know where to start. Since we didn't know what we'd have going in, we paid for post development that honestly we haven't used a lot of. Oh, well. Next time we'll know how to check the post library and make some test code before we buy.

You can also modify the posts yourself if you know how. Basically Java script, from the looks of it, but no one here codes. I've done simple things this way like changing the file extension name but not much else.
 
When you have a subscription for something like PowerMill, are the posts included in the subscription price? Or are there extra charges to provide posts?

Just curious, because I know that some CAM vendors charge around $1K per axis for a post.

Thanks,

Dan

If someone is wanting to charge you $1k per axis, they are ripping you a new one! I've been quoted posts before, and nowhere near that price really. This was for Mastercam tho
 
That was the going rate back a few years ago. The only software we had to pay for a post was for our mill/turn. I'd mention the software, but then I'd get another e-mail asking me to stop ripping on them, so I'll just say that, yeah, we had one company rip us a new one. After a couple dozen kicks-at-the-can they finally got it right.
 
I have had dismal experiences with "professional" post developers. Despite extremely detailed descriptions that are only modest changes from existing posts. I am fortunate enough to have a software development/coding background so I ended making my own. After spending copious amounts of money..... I only got what I wanted after doing it myself.

Sad. I really don't like doing it, but a bad post wastes massive amounts of time every time you use it. Modern CAM systems should output 'cycle-start-ready' code with zero editing in my opinion.

Sent from my SM-G892A using Tapatalk
 








 
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