Boeing in talks to buy back Spirit

[mowens]

Not sure that would work with a lot of our defense work being for direct competitors of Boeing plus all the work we do for Airbus.

[CNCAppsJames]

Seems to work for CATIA and Siemens. They are direct competitors yet seem to co-exist.

[mowens]

Does Siemens make Cad/Cam software? I'm certainly no authority.

We have to segregate defense work even within Spirit, so, maybe it would work.

I was thinking more along the lines of splitting of the defense work at least into a separate company. We have a facility that they somewhat pompously named the National Defense Prototype Center or something similar.
In keeping with that theme I thought we could name it the Kansas Research And Prototype company. You know, the KRAP Company. Sort of like WKRP.

[gcode]

YES

NX Cad/Cam

[mowens]

Ah, I didn't realize NX was a Siemens company. We use it on our defense side.

[neurosis]

Ah, I didn't realize NX was a Siemens company. We use it on our defense side.

It wasn't always. NX is combo of Unigraphics and SDRC I-DEAS

[mowens]

When I first started using Catia I seem to remember it using some Unigraphics features for 2d cad. That was a long time ago though.

Back when a Catia workstation looked like this. Notice his left hand; the mouse and pad were also a digitizer.

https://images.app.goo.gl/bddjYCVdp21gdNsU6

[neurosis]

Back when a Catia workstation looked like this. Notice his left hand; the mouse and pad were also a digitizer.

Back in the 90's I remember getting in to an argument with one of the Boeing engineers about some data they sent us. I was in my 20's and no education. He obviously had the upper edge on the conversation.  I was sent down to figure out what they were  trying to get us to make.   After spending a few hours there, he admitted they tried to fuck with us by not sending us enough information and gave me what I needed.

They were all running Catia on Apollo workstations back in those days. We were running Cimatron on a Sparc station. 

[gcode]

Ah, I didn't realize NX was a Siemens company. We use it on our defense side.

Siemmens bought them 10 (??) years ago
I've always wanted to learn NX but never had the chance.

[CNCAppsJames]

... Cimatron on a Sparc station. 

That's a trip in the wayback machine.

[CNCAppsJames]

It wasn't always. NX is combo of Unigraphics and SDRC I-DEAS

BITD SDRC bought Point Control (Smart CAM) and CAMAX. EDS bought Unigraphics and SDRC, then Siemens bought EDS and I believe that's when NX was essentially born.

[CNCAppsJames]

Found this gem of history

History of SDRC. Pretty interesting. I had no idea abou thte 70's and 80's stuff. I did't get into the CAD/CAM game until 1991/1992 with Pathtrace, SmartCAM and Mastercam... pretty much in that order. 

https://www.shapr3d.com/history-of-cad/structural-dynamics-research-corporation

[neurosis]

That's a trip in the wayback machine

Back in those days I didn't have a lot of money and I was running slackware linux on my home pc. When I hired on, nobody in the shop knew how to use anything *nix so when their original programmer (who I wouldn't make a pimple on his taint) stopped showing up for work, it was easy to get in since Sun OS was so similar to Unix.

I kinda got lucky. I was 24 or 25 at the time.

I was able to learn one of the best programming systems around at the time (Cimatron).  Although I had to teach myself how to use it. Same with Mastercam. Well, not quite with MC. I had Colin come to my house for a few hours one weekend and at least aim me in the right direction.

I wont go in to how I know anything about SDRC.  Anyone remember CAMAX?

[CNCAppsJames]

Only from the magazines. Never saw it in the wild. Only ever saw Cimmatron a handful of times. Always in Mold shops. 

[mowens]

CAMAX

I worked at a CAMAX shop. Didn't have solids. There were 2 of us who built the models in Catia then brought them into CAMAX. I did not like it, for many reasons.