Switching to CamWorks?

[Brian]

Oddly enough, "cost" of the actual software wasn't in his calculus. Posts, training, availability of software jocks, CAD integration, CAD interoperability, additional machine configuration availability, along with a whole bunch of other things specific to his work and work flow.

So great to see somebody actually acknowledge this! I bet most of us can probably (certainly if you wrote the check-LOL) tell you about what you *paid* for whatever-it-is you use for CAM, but not many can probably give you what it actually costs to switch and fully implement the new stuff....purchase price is probably just the tip of the iceberg in most cases.

I've come to the conclusion that there are many *non-technical* reasons why a particular program is a better choice than another. The feature set of any program is just one of many parameters that needs to be optimized.

Your comment about the importance of support has got to be one of the biggest considerations!

[CNCAppsJames]

...
Tell them they should switch to Inventor :snerk:
...

Hey now... I use Inventor.

AD actually gave us a reasonable price break on licenses whereas SW gave us the .
 

[CADCAM396]

yup bought an paid for many years ago by dasault group. why? ha ha they were kickin there arse. now that they own it has gone to chit. solid works is powerfull stuff but in last few years have noticed solids blow up for unknown reasons and if ya got a part programmed to dat der model guess what? you are in deep.

[Jim at Gentex]

NEW parts are few and far between.

When I first started here it was mostly R&D, one-offs or small batches.
But now I probably do 80% production work.
So yeah, productivity in programming new jobs is not an issue, and legacy parts definitely are.

I think our current system is fine, and quite honestly, at my age, I'm not eager to learn a whole new CAM system just in time for me to retire.     

[JParis]

Don't be scared to be realistic about the cost, because it wouldn't be cheap. Higher level managers, when they see plenty of zeros, often run a mile in the opposite direction .

I will say "usually"

We had one Company President who was adamant about switching over the NX back in the mid-2000's...I quite literally was yelled at by him for bringing up the exact things mentioned and the associated costs....nevermind the costs of the Engineering Department switchover....literally, walked into my office, shut the door and went on about how we were getting "the cadillac of software and we were most certainly NOT sticking with Mastercam or their current engineering software"

So I became "UGNX     "

After nearly a million dollars in software, training, downtime and months of backlog.....they decided to scrap the "cadillac of software" we upgrade and bought another seat of Mastercam and Solidworks was launched in Engineering...

[gcode]

Years ago I worked for a local company who specialized in landing gears.
It had be a successful company founded in the early 1950's
When I went to work there the owner had retired and it had been through 2 sets of investors and was now owned
by a Fortune 500 conglomerate.
They decided to switch to NX about the time I started there.
This was a corporation wide effort involving a half dozen companies and hundreds of seats.
They deployed it company wide, but we never got any training.
I didn't stay there long but the deployment was not successful
I ran into an engineer from there at jury duty a  couple of years later
He told me the effort had failed and the people who advocated for the switchover were fired
 

[gcode]

While I was there, I somehow got in an email chain between NX, some managers and accounts payable
They were squabbling over a $180K overdue invoice.
The conversation went something like this
Ignore that, it's been paid
They insist it hasn't
I paid it
It's a new one
What's if for
Annual Maintenance ??
What's that??

 

[Jim at Gentex]

OK I just received confirmation from that middle manager who was asking me questions yesterday.
They are NOT planning to switch CAD/CAM systems in this facility.

They were looking at CamWorks for a new machine installation in one of our other facilities.
It doesn't make sense to me why they wouldn't just purchase another seat of Mastercam, but it's their dime. 

As long as my world won't be turned upside down it's all good. 

[gcode]

About 5 yeas ago we got a new manager who decided to move us to Catia
He bought about $200K worth of Catia, and threw away 4 seats of Mastercam.
Almost immediately, he had to claw 2 seats back.
We were signed up for an 80 hour class for the CAM side. but it was condensed to 40 hours
and we were thrown into the lions den.
Posts were a huge issue that was never fully resolved.
He's gone now and I'm still here, but it was touch and go for a while.
We're a Mastercam shop again, but we have a bunch of legacy Catia programs we have to maintain
All new work is done in Mastercam .
I'm not sure what I think about Catia
Sometimes it looked amazingly powerful, other times I felt like I was rowing a boat with a teaspoon.
I sure as hell don't miss it.
If I had to learn a new CAD/CAM package I think I'd want to learn NX.

[CNCAppsJames]

CATIA... oooof. That learning curve is steep no question. Prior to working at my current employer I worked in a CATIA house. I was promised all the training I needed to make the transition (they knew I was a Mastercam guy and I was 100% up front about ZERO experience with CATIA).

All told I want to say over the span of my 3 months (didn't make probation and was subsequently ummmm released   ) where I received maybe 10 hours total of training... not much more. About an hour of assembly, 3-4 hours of CAD, and the rest CAM training. Being released was close to the best thing to ever happen to me in my career.

After I got "released"   I started at my current company and proceeded to spend the next 8 years mastering CATIA (piggybacking on a friend's unused - source inspector's license through VPN) ... or attempting to anyway. I would say after those 8 years (with no formal training, just YouTube and figuring it out) I was able to pretty much program anything I needed to. Posts were not an issue as I was using CAMplete for that. My company then began it's partnership with Autodesk so I elected to switch over to Inventor after SW gave us the .

I'll say that Inventor was easier to learn than SolidWorks has been IMHO. So career-wise I went from AutoCAD to PathTrace to SmartCAM to Mastercam to Surfcam to Mastercam to CATIA to Inventor to learning SolidWorks. What I learned modeling in Mastercam translated well enough into CATIA that I felt comfortable modeling in it fairly quickly. Then with about 8 - 10 hours of online training I felt more comfortable in Inventor than I did with years of CATIA use and I felt really comfortable in CATIA. I've got about 20 hours of online SolidWorks training and a few hundred hours of driving it and I still don't really feel comfortable or productive with it. I mean I can create assemblies, create parts from scratch, etc... It just doesn't feel logical to me. Mastercam to CATIA to Inventor logical progressions/workflows. Maybe had I went from CATIA to SolidWorks I might feel differently but I don't think so, and the AutoCAD experience was so long ago it's irrelevent.

JM2CFWIW

[Here's Johnny!]

Not totally related but a lot of fund managers are buying up smaller service companies like HVAC etc. Then they can control the supply and create shortages causing prices and profits to soar.

Just wondering if this is happening in Manufacturing?

[JParis]

Just wondering if this is happening in Manufacturing?

The past dozen or so years there has been a TON of consolidation and large investments firms buying up shops...

[gcode]

large investments firms buying up shops...

and flying many of them straight into the ground

[mkd]

Adobe just paid 20 billion for a startup software company. Couldn't beat them, had to eat them.

[gcode]

Adobe just paid 20 billion for a startup software company. Couldn't beat them, had to eat them.

what was the name of the company they bought out?
They probably did it to eliminate a competitor that does not use a subscription licensing scheme.
Adobe's new subscription rates would make a loan shark blush.

I bought a seat of Nitro Pro just to not have to do business with Adobe.
My employer also dumped Adobe and switched to PDF Architect.