So it's official

[neurosis]

They do have a smaller shop product, that is actually pretty good. No PDM, and certainly capable.

I had no idea that you could get TS without the PDM? 

[TSmcam]

I had no idea that you could get TS without the PDM? 

It's a kind of TopSolid "Light". Well, it isn't that light. It is quite capable. I've not really had much to do with it, but I currently have a license of it, that I had been trialling.

[mega]

It's a kind of TopSolid "Light". Well, it isn't that light. It is quite capable. I've not really had much to do with it, but I currently have a license of it, that I had been trialling.

So, how much does a software like that cost?

[mega]

I have 69 posts.

[neurosis]

It's a kind of TopSolid "Light". Well, it isn't that light. It is quite capable. I've not really had much to do with it, but I currently have a license of it, that I had been trialling.

Does everything still tie together the same way or do you lose some/all of that integration?

I wasn't a huge fan of the PDM. I didn't necessarily hate it, but it could be a pain at times as you mentioned earlier.

I was never sure why a standalone seat of TS should require a PDM.

[YoDoug]

Does everything still tie together the same way or do you lose some/all of that integration?

I wasn't a huge fan of the PDM. I didn't necessarily hate it, but it could be a pain at times as you mentioned earlier.

I was never sure why a standalone seat of TS should require a PDM.

I don't know why you would want it without. The dynamic links between tooling and fixturing libraries, etc. are one of the things I really like about TS. If I fix or modify a fixture, vise, etc I can check references to see exactly what files will be effected. Can't do that without PDM.

[neurosis]

Can't do that without PDM.

That's what I was wondering. Sounds like without the PDM  you lose a significant amount of the benefit of the software.

[Brian]

They do have a smaller shop product, that is actually pretty good. No PDM, and certainly capable.

What is this product called-is this TopSolidCam'Operator? I can't find anything else that even hints at this on their WWW site.

[Brian]

I am definitely with YoDoug on this one-can't imagine why you'd want to ditch this capability, even using TS "standalone."

When I moved to V7 from V6 this was definitely a new thing for me, and a little foreign, but I don't remember it really getting in the way. I later found some training guides online on the Thai dealers web site, and one of them had an entire chapter devoted to the PDM, and what's going on under the hood. This helped me to get a better feel for what you can do with the PDM (even using TS standalone)-perhaps they should have a little more about this in the two basic PDF tutorials that install with TS.

This brings up a point that was touched on earlier: training and training materials! I really feel like these folks (TS-the company) are shooting themselves in the foot by being stingy with self-help training materials! Yes, by all means offer paid training to users, but be more generous with the other material...I really think they'd sell more software in the long run.

In my mind there's no way that anybody who has used TS for more than a few months should feel confused or in the dark about the PDM (and if they do, I'd point my finger squarely at the support they get-or not! from their dealer).

Perhaps a slight exaggeration, but not by much: does anybody here want to give up the capability they get from any of the HEM toolpath strategies we use today? Any takers? What-nobody...? It's a little like that with the PDM in my opinion.

Sorry for the rant....that second cup of coffee is kicking in!

[TSmcam]

The product isn't TopSolid CAM Operator. That is a shopfloor document for opening CAM documents, and making changes to a limited number of parameters/settings (what is able to be changed is set by the system administrator).

The product is TopSolid CAM Entry Milling. I should clarify, it does have a kind of "light" PDM. It utilises basic libraries, and runs on top of a TopSolid Design "Light". There is also an Entry Turning product as well.

[Brian]

Tsmcam: thanks for the word-I had no idea such a thing even existed. Do you think TS was getting feedback from users looking for a dumbed-down/simplified version of the existing product? Was it mostly folks put off by the PDM? Is there an upgrade path if users want to go further or is it kinda a dead end?

[TSmcam]

Tsmcam: thanks for the word-I had no idea such a thing even existed. Do you think TS was getting feedback from users looking for a dumbed-down version of the existing product? Was it mostly folks put off by the PDM? Is there an upgrade path if users want to go further or is it kinda a dead end?

The product has been around since I have been using TopSolid (I started with V7.08), and I am not sure of its origins. There is a full upgrade path to the full product. It is just a case of effectively paying the difference in cost.

[TSmcam]

And Brian mentions training. The official training tutorials are quite good, but I prefer to train customers using real world files. I tend to sit with the customer, and take their own part through the process. It is more involved that way, but gives them better insight and understanding of the process.

[Brian]

The official training tutorials are quite good, but I prefer to train customers using real world files.

I think I would have happily taken some dealer-led training when I first switched to V7, but was "orphaned" (w/o a dealer) at the time. In between the training guides and the Slack group I was able to accelerate the process somewhat. As you mention, the official tutorials are quite good....I will be curious to see what the online learning materials are like, and how much will be free vs. for a fee.

[Jim at Gentex]

When it first came out, one of our Managers was pushing us toward Mastercam for SolidWorks.

His reasoning was that since the majority of our design work here is done in SolidWorks, it just seemed the natural way to go.  As the one person who did the majority of the Mastercam programming, I honestly didn't want to go that route because I was quite comfortable opening a native SolidWorks file in Mastercam and going to town on it.  I was much more comfortable running Mastercam as a standalone program rather than as a module inside of SolidWorks.

As I said, this was back when MC4SW was new, so it obviously had some issues.
I think that was all that prevented the switch, so looking back on it now I'm glad it didn't work out.

We had an Application Engineer come in with a demo, and it looked pretty slick.
He threw some cool advanced toolpaths on a demo part, and posted code that looked great.

However, when we gave him a model for one of our most common production parts to program using MC4SW he had all kinds of issues.  His toolpaths were fine, but he couldn't get the post to generate usable code to make the part on the same machine we were already using to produce that part.

I believe  at that point management told him thanks but no thanks, and that was the last I ever heard about it.

Now that it is falling by the wayside, I'm glad we never made the switch.
Besides, I'm too dang old to learn new software at this point, so I plan on using regular Mastercam until I retire!!