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Luz Tonks

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Aug 3, 2024, 11:35:13 AM8/3/24

to kjeevabagclean

I just demo'd it. I thought it was gonna be the xxxx, but after a week or so said naw I will stick with importing from solidworks. The chaining is a pain for me, and stuff like making silloette boundries and bounding boxes ect. in a few clicks is to hard to give up. I think it has its place esp. on simple one off parts that change slightly from one to another. I know I only gave it a week but after using mastercam for 15yrs. I am biased I guess. With wcs and levels I can merge a changed model pretty quick anyways.

I also just finished a demo of X7 for SW. I have the same opinion as above. If you were a SolidWorks guru with little mastercam experience the tool paths works well. I would rather do my 2d work in mastercam and import the model for only the 3D work. I stink at sketching in SW.

I haven't looked into HSMworks for a few years, is that software still being developed for Solidworks? I'd be weary of getting to heavily invested in it for fear of getting dumped to just be an autodesk only product.

It certainly sounds like it is up my alley, I am just concerned about bugs, I already find so many in standalone mc, I'm worried that mcfsw being seemingly less popular it could be even more troublesome. I would like to try it though as all the parts I work on are designed in Solidworks, and a good portion of them I design myself. Personally I would be happy to never create curves to create a tool path ever again. I prefer to work off solids only, and the associativity would be a major bonus.

4. The only way I know that you can associate a wcs to part in regular MC is by using "wcs by geometry", picking or drawing two 2D sketches, and then creating a point at the intersection. WCS will NOT stay associative by picking a face or model geometry. Major dislike of mine when I need to create 10's to 100's of wcs', you can waste many hours with this, and its a major MC dislike of mine.

8. I use View sheets for managing all my custom wcs'. Very handy for when I am on 12+ sides of a part or tombstone, selecting everything from the view manager sucks because its not dockable, and its a waste of time when you have multiple tools on multiple sides of a part. By spending the time to make view sheets initially it cuts down on mistakes being made by accidentally having a wrong wcs associated to the wrong tool path.

I currently use Mastercam and ProE and I have been contemplating a switch to Solidworks. I have two licenses of Mastercam. What would be involvoed it switching to Mastercam for Solidworks? A new license? Can it be bought as an additional module for standard Mastercam?

"As for the rest it sounds kind of like using saved operation templates" Actualy it's quite a bit more. With spawned configurations you are not just importing operations. You are importing / re-applying "all" settings from the parent, toolpaths, tools, machine/control/post, stock setup ect. And most importantly you are not re-selecting geometry, those association are all maintained.

So an existing Solidworks user can add Mastercam functionality to Solidworks by simply buying Mastercam for Solidworks but an existing Mastercam user has to buy a new seat of Mastercam AND Solidworks to add the Solidworks functionality?

The lack of probing really burns though. But its not like it works in regular MC worth a crap yet anyways. It was supposed to be seamless 3 years ago when i bought the software, that along with machine sim were the major drivers in our purchasing MC. And they still don't work. It would be fair to say that I wouldn't be "enthusiastic" about having to purchase a replacement seat, that still doesn't fix a couple large issues for me, when the original never worked as advertised.

I'm still curious to know how associative custom wcs's actually are in mcfsw though. I realize Ryan said it works like regular MC, and in regular MC custom WCS's are supposed to be associative to the face/model/lines etc. But there is only one way to make a truly associative wcs in regular mc and you have to create 2 lines and a point to do it, and that new wcs will stay associative to those lines, which while it works, is slow, and prone to errors. Sure would be cool if the other custom wcs options in mcfsw actually maintained associativity

What if you could make one but now by going into the Plane Manager you could change them using the Dynamic WCS or say incremental then you would not need to make geo.
Like having options like the picture.

Are those options available in X8? I often to families of molds (orthopedic) so I will bring in new geometry and reassign toolpaths. The plane angles will change and there are several toolpaths tied to these planes. It would be great to have the ability to rotate the tool planes accordingly. Currently I rotate the curves they are tied to and it seems to work well.

I have been programming in mastercam for years now and my question is. I always draw my parts in autocad and then import them into mastercam, as I am much faster this way. I have had this debate with people that draw all there stuff in mastercam. And I yet to come across a person who can draw faster in mastercam then I can in autocad and bring it in. Now I am not saying there aint people than cant. What I am trying to figure out is there a benifiet from drawining in mastercam than autocad? I am in no way saying my method is better just havent heard any good reason why. The reason I bring this up is I am finding programmers are spending so much time drawing more complex parts im mastercam. Just looking for some advice, by no means bashing people for drawing in mastercam. Just trying to figure out if maybe there is a better way of doing my job. I am an certified in autocad so I can draw really fast im autocad. But I am wondering if I am limiting what mastercam can do but my methods. Thank in advance for advice.

I have never used anything but Mastercam to draw so I really can't compare it to autocad. However I think drawing in mastercam has made me better at Mastercam in general. If import a file and need to create any extra geometry to program it for toolpaths etc. I can do it rather quickly no matter how complex it may be because I am very used to creating geometry in mastercam. That being said if I create a solid in Mastercam I always do it in design, save the part with history in case I need to make a change, then resave it as a parasolid or run the nohist.c-hook before I bring it into mill to program it. I think that all the solid history geometry just makes things confusing when I go to program a part. I not saying my way is best but It works for me. I am interested in learning a cad system so I can compare.

I was doing it that way for a while but I rarely have to make changes. Saving the solid in design with all the history at least gives me somethng to revert back to if I need to make a minor change. Sometimes I end up with a lot of 2d geometry when creating a solid depending on how complex it is. I don't know if this is normal because I kinda learned solids on my own and I don't know if I do things in the most efficient manner when it comes to creating solids. I may already have 2d geometry on twenty or thirty levels by the time I get done making the solid. Like I said I have no other cad system to compare it to. I will keep what you said in mind, I always appreciate what you have to say in this forum.

I do just about all of my geometry creation in ProE. All of our design engineers use ProE, so that's what all of the models I get are. It's just easier to create fixtures and machining models from the original solids, plus then my tool/fixture design remain associative to the original design model. I just wish ProE-Mastercam had a plugin like SolidWorks.

When companies go shopping for that ultimate package they get the offer of a cam package with the cad at a bargain price and think ...All cam packages are the same ...Why go out and get another software when we can have it all in one?

Now I have been modelling with Mastercam for years as most employers dont buy the 2 and have become quite versatile with it. My tendencies are to create the 3D model first, program it and go back to do the Drawings...where as most Modellers will Draw it .....make the 3D model ...then program it.

My reasoning for my dyslexic ways...is I always find something wrong or missing info when it comes to programming it ...ie stock size....wrong angles ...surfaces missing/holes etc, but once its programmed I can see what is coming up and how to deal with it so that when drawings are released on the floor they are correct and there are no descrepencies

I too am Autocad certified and can draw just as fast in Mastercam as I do in Autocad. There are things I still use autocad for like exploding splines into lines that I can't simplify in Mcam. They took my license away from me for someone else to use Autocad once I got just as proficient in Mastercam. Practice makes perfect in anything.

Personally, if I had my own seat of CATIA I would seriously consider going that route but since MC is all I have, it works quite nicely for me and in all honesty does EVERYTHING I've ever asked of it. The only reason I would lean towards something like CATIA is because I really like the Parametric aspects of the CAD Software. I'm only about 25% slower in CATIA CAD than I am in Mastercam and I'm fairly confident that would greatly improve with time.

Thank you all for your replys. As also this site is very helpful. I see I should give mastercam a honest shot in the drawing aspect more than I have. And let me correct my self by saying I use autodesk Inventor for my modeling. As I like the parametric portion of 3d modeling. Again thank you all for you replys. I think some of the Issues I have seen is when I watch another mastercam user draw it just seem like it takes them forever. But I must remember not every one that uses mastercam is truely trained properly. As I myself am self taught, which is my opinion not a good thing for me. Because I know there are better ways to do things than I am doing. Again thank you all for your help.