Hey, I'm looking for some feedback on the ZW3D Premium 2010,
What are the pro's and cons, and what should i pay for It. I've downloaded the 30 day trial and I like what I see but ??
Thanks
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Hey, I'm looking for some feedback on the ZW3D Premium 2010,
What are the pro's and cons, and what should i pay for It. I've downloaded the 30 day trial and I like what I see but ??
Thanks
Hi,
I have been using ZW3D (VX) for the past 18 months or so and really like it. I believe the version I have is called standard and has done everything that I have needed to do thus far. The support has been very good, nice people to deal with. A couple of my friends have also purchased the same package as we tend to share files alot. I tried many CAD programs before spending my $'s and VX just fit the way I think and work.
For a CAM program I am using SprutCam.
Not associated with the company just a happy customer.
Robert
Hi,
I've been using VX CAD and CAM for 15 years. On the CAD side it has always done everything I wanted with plenty to spare. The CAM side works fairly well and has the potential to be real good if there developers would implement
the changes that the users requests. The next thing they need to do on the CAM side is when they fix a bug make damn sure it's fixed and you didn't break 3 other things along the way. They also seem to forget that some user do not use the postprocessor they supply with the product and they need to keep the CL file output consistent from version to version.
Did you know that VX.... ZW3D is a Chinese owned company? Varimeteix was sold to ZW3D. That's when the name change to ZW3D came about. I'm told that all the development is still being done in Florida. What I found very .............for lack of a better word, suspicious, is they changed the licensing scheme and ALL the licenses come out of China and Florida has no way of generating a license for the ZW3D product. If you would like to discuss this more send me an message and we can talk.
HAD VX THEN ONTO ZWCAD WHEN IT LANDED AFTER THE VX BUY OUT,THE PACKAGE AND CUSTOMER SERVICE FROM CHINA IS EXCELLENT . I RUN THE PRO PACKAGE AND IT DOES A REALLY NEAT JOB ALL IN.
I have been a vx user since V9. They have made great improvements since then but still have long standing problems especially if you intend to do MCAD work. Sheet metal is a vestige of a real sheet metal program and basically useless. This is after years of complaints in this area so evidently they don't care. The whole program on the cad side is geared towards mold and die just as they used to label their product and it is the small niche they are most capable in. Once you step outside this area this area you can still do many things but it is harder than it should be or as in sheet metal just downright impossible.
Cam has big problems and you still have tool paths that will break endmills and scrap parts until you learn where the gotchas are. After 7 years VX still can't post code to your mill and you will have to buy a third party ap to do this. Ditto for editing code because the included post editor does not work again after all these years. They refuse to do anything for lathe so if you ever intend to have a cnc lathe be prepared to have to buy another program to do this.
VX now ZW is a cumbersome program to learn and you will have to be prepared to spend a lot of time to be proficient.
One of the touted big deals with ZW 2011 is direct editing. I have been a user of Solid Edge since the first version of direct editing came out. I have looked at the beta of ZW2011 and all I can say is after over TWO years between releases if this is their idea of robust direct editing they have a major problem as it is crude and pretty well useless in many cases. Of course it could be better than I think but they have no documentation or training for the beta so you are on your own to figure it out.
If they renew me for free I will give 2011 a serious look. I will not however spend one red cent again and if they insist I send them a check for 2011 I am gone. Just to many problems not fixed for to many years and to many serious shortfalls for me to recommend this program to anyone as there are better alternatives for the $7,000.00 you will spend to get cam and cad.
It is good for mold and die shapes as it is a great complex shape modeler, it's only really stong suit but the rest will leave you hanging.
I have been using VX for over 2 years and succeed. Mostly CAM side cause for CAD i have Solidworks.
I have small cnc milling company in Poland and VX package manage really well. I can do a lot in the same time as in other CAM programs but 3 times cheaper. At the beginning it was hard to became familiar with the interface but after 2 years it finally looks nice. The only think worries me is that no lathe module so for the future i need to buy one more program:(.
Company obróbka skrawaniem.
Best regards,
Maciej
I'd wait before I bought another program for lathe........I'm pretty sure we'll see that in the next major releaseQuote:
Originally Posted by MxM
CNCMM,
Do you have a solid reason to say the next version for lathe? I have heard junk promises for years on this so I am curious to know. The people I know with ZW don't even want to talk about it and they sure aren't indicating any possibilities here.
I would say that judging by the press releases from ZW that the majority of the attempts at development are now in China as according to them the big majority of the developers are now Chinese. Who knows as talking to tech support here in Florida gets you an answer of basically "I wish I could tell you but I am out of the loop and the guys in China tell us nothing". Go ahead and call them with a question like "when will they have lathe?" and amuse yourselves.
I saw the 2X turning in their booth of EuroMold in Franfurt last week, it could be interesting to see more as the beta of ZW3D 2012 is coming next month. There are also a lot of good stuff together, including Ribbon interface, multiple-thread computing, I hope the information is helpful for you guys. I'm pretty sure they have joined the force with the Chinese team, as there are so much new features introduced for the medias at EuroMoldQuote:
Originally Posted by lapuser
As of the end of December here in the USA ZW is busy distributing Christmas gifts.
Bad News for ZW3D Users | solidedging
If you still harbor any desire to buy this program you better plan on very little other than poor email support. I am going to tell you flat out that tutorials do not cover a ton of things and only get into the basics. Support in any meaningfull way is history for any buyer in the USA.
Go to the ZW3D forums and observe the quality of tech support there. The only real answers on software problems are answered by Mike Lynch who was fired this past week. The Chinese guys talk about screen captures of new features and ribbon bar junk and answer nothing much about technical issues users with problems need answers to.
Buyer beware!
As of the end of December here in the USA ZW is busy distributing Christmas gifts.
Bad News for ZW3D Users | solidedging
If you still harbor any desire to buy this program you better plan on very little other than poor email support. I am going to tell you flat out that tutorials do not cover a ton of things and only get into the basics. Support in any meaningfull way is history for any buyer in the USA.
Go to the ZW3D forums and observe the quality of tech support there. The only real answers on software problems are answered by Mike Lynch who was fired this past week. The Chinese guys talk about screen captures of new features and ribbon bar junk and answer nothing much about technical issues users with problems need answers to.
Buyer beware!
Sorry about the double post everyone. The first one took so long to show up I figured it had not gone through.
I have been corresponding with support in China RE the lathe part of the upcoming 2012 release. This is not looking good. I sent money in to renew as my only chance to do this cheaply would expire at the end of the month. This was based on the promise of lathe in cam and me looking for a cheaper way out than just biting the $$$ bullet and getting another program. At this time it appears that I will still have to get that other program anyway but have thrown $1,600.00 down the rat hole. Not at all happy here.
OUCH!, ZW3d Buyer Beware | solidedging
Well folks now we have 2012 beta out and there is no post for lathe. Lathe has icons and whatnot in the cam plan but without any posts to communicate with your lathe they are just pretty pictures. What the other poster saw in Europe was a sham and it could not have posted G-code to anything. Tech support in the US is no more and you have to send emails to China for support problems. They do say on the website though that they promise to get back to you within THREE DAYS. So you have that part on the mill and can't go further till you have an answer? My suggestion would be fishing or a short vacation while you wait cause you sure aren't going to be earning money.
Tech support when done in the US would provide answers with a truly qualified support staff. Today you have support staff that is poorly trained in China and instead of providing answers and workarounds to problems they just send you a number and shuffle it over to development where it is buried under an ever growing pile of incident reports and that never used to be the case with the US techs. Yeah don't take my word for it, go to the ZW3D forums and read from happy users. ZW3D has turned into a piece of garbage.
ZW has a post configuration editor, now I'm not sure how well it works because I don't use it. I would think if you play with it a bit you should be able to configure a Post for a lathe. The file name is vxpostm.exe and it's located in the ZW3D 201X directory. You may also have to create some custom .def files for the control you're trying to post to.
I know you may not think this POST configuration should be the end users responsibility, BUT IT IS. The sooner you learn how to create and manipulate
.def files and POST configuration files the better off you will be!
A little CAM 101. The responsibility of the CAM system is to output accurate CL tool path data. If it does that then the CAM system has done its job. Now you need a postprocessor to read the CL data and change that information to a G code file that is valid for the control on the machine. I use a third party post that cost as much as VX. That being said I've used this same post for 22 years. It will post to, mills 2,3,4,&5 axis, lathes with and without live tooling, sinker EDM's and wire EDM's.
You have to start thinking of the POST as a separate program, after all ZW only passes the CL data to the post when you click on "NC data".
Sorry for all of you with hopes for the new release. New GUI and that pretty well is it. Still stuck on 32 bit so even if you can use two cores it does not do much as you still have a 2.7g memory cap for use. One of my six cores in taskmanager shows 16 to 17% use and the memory is pegged out. WOW!! Still has the industries worst sheet metal and direct edit but yes at least it is prettier.
No live support no lathe. Buy this if you need a dongle to plug in a port to keep the dust out.
Yes Folks, ZW3D 2012 is HERE | solidedging
Well at least you stop complaining about your inability to put a post togetherQuote:
Originally Posted by lapuser
What have you gotten yourself into? permalink
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To answer your question: IMHO, the most powerful machining software, handsdown no question asked.
Is NCL the fastest software to create a tool path.....NO
Is NCL easy to learn.......HELL HELL HELL NO!!!!!!!
Is it for every shop ..........NO most shops don't have people smart enough to learn it or owners that can see the power that NCL has!
Can you generate 3,4,5 axis tool paths that start were you want, end were you want, do exactly what you want along the way, with no surprises, ABSOLUTLY.
PWORKS ............IMHO, the best post in the world. Our shop has written posts for 3, 4, 5 axis mills CNC sinker EDM's, laths and wire EDM's.
Your only real limitations with these products are your limitations as a programmer.
This is from another post from you. I thought to look and see what all you did and a discussion on posts came up. I presume this Postworks is what you bought to write your posts from. You also say it cost you more than VX did. So I should spend more money on this than ZW and then spend gobs of time to learn it? Really?
I suspect that very few cam users know how to do this or expect to have to do this and I for one will do as the vast majority do and expect it to be provided by the software author. In all honesty I have never run into anyone who does write their posts from scratch although many do tweak a provided post processor.
I bought ZW3D 2012. Really like it, very good for the complex surface design and tooling/molds that I do. The toolpath generation for my 3 axis mills has been very good. Took me a while to get used to, but once you get the hang of it, ZW works well. I'm not sure why other folks have had problems with the posts - I have configured two different posts for two different mills and it works perfectly. IMHO the postprocessor is pretty straight forward to tailor to your needs. The toolpath verification tools are good - shows if you've made any serious errors.
The CNC lathe part of the package in my opinion is still beta, even though it is included in the general release. I configured a post for my old CNC lathe and it cut without crashing. However, the lathe part is still pretty basic. It really needs to include some standard tools from Kennametal, etc. I don't like having to recreate tool geometry that is available for download from the tooling manufacturer.
The support has been good, but it will take a day for someone from China to email you back. I would prefer to have someone in North America to talk to.
Dan Micsa who was the creative genius behind Quickmill in VX/ZW left the company in the early part of April. Practically speaking this means that all development for quickmill has come to an end. Dan was the sole individual capable of working on it in their employ both before VX was bought out and after.
As of 5-17 support is still kicking things over the wall and calling questions they can't answer as product change requests. Mike Lynch and Earl Thornton and Thomas Minten used to be the go to guys for VX and they found solutions or workarounds. Case in point. ZW3d China support said recently that they had no post for a horizontal mill and could not figure one out. So the individual telling me this story was in a state of disbelief. He says that all you have to do is change one line of Gcode to reflect which axis you wish to work on. ZW did not know to do this at the vaunted email only support desk. ZW has however saved a lot of money by getting rid of all those expensive foreigners and great things are just around the corner.
Promotional costs for ZW right now are actually pretty good value for the program as they are getting very desperate for new customers. They have yet to fix the forum for ZW3D and seemingly are incapable of doing so. This does not directly affect the program of course but it is indicative of the struggle ZW China is having in every area to fix things and move the ball forward. All the posts referencing direct editing capabilities from Solid Edge that Bob Fischer asked for some time back have been removed from the forum. I suspect that since ZW claims to have direct editing but really does not they wanted the comparison gone from their site.
At current promotional pricing, if you do not need support or direct editing and can live with a program as it is and that probably will not improve much, I think they could be a good value. If you need more and expect more go somewhere else.
Quick Mill is great in ZW3D CAD/CAM, what I could expect more is the future enhancement after I'm using ZW3D 2012 for a few months, as what they promise, I did get the 2X turning with the Fanuc post processor, it works pretty good, their support guys are nice. I did use VX for a few years, it was not only the tool for me, it means more.
I don't think QM is slow in development, they are promising to have 64bit support, as well as faster, safer and easier machining. I love their new CAM folder in ZW3D 2012, even though it needs a little more improvement. It shows me more confidence that QM is going to be better.
Hey guys, I just purchased ZW3D 2012 after testing the beta version. So far I’m pretty happy with my purchase as it can deal with all of my needs. What I really like is the translator which imports my CATIA V5 files nicely and the healing on it is great. I’m not sure if anyone here has used hybrid kernel software before, but i’ve had a great experience so far. I don’t really need to have the perfect solid in order to machine my mold. Regarding Quick Mill, it has been a breeze to use and does all the calculations etc for me. However, I hope that the 5x machining will be enhanced soon so I can see the real life simulation and see the end result of my designs. Does anyone know if this will happen in the near future?
Yes 2013 Beta is out and it is pretty sad. 64 bit is not there like it was supposed to be and now they say September. I doubt they will make that. Direct editing is still rudimentary at best. Sheet metal see's nothing of significance which caps years of pitiful efforts or no efforts here. Go to the ZW3D forums and see for yourself how these poor guys who are trying to be In the ZW fan club have a lot of negative things to say. No High speed machining AGAIN.
Very few enhancements or product feature additions of worth. Now their big problem is that they are pretty well standing still but others are forging ahead with powerful tools that make you more money year in and year out. ZW I think has forever crossed into the realm of third or fourth rate software in all areas and their customers will soon be those who can't afford better or those who can't afford to leave. The beta stayed on my workstation for about one hour and that was it for me. Here from V9 to 2012 and I have pulled the plug on this junk. Buy this if you can't afford better as you can create parts and machine them but don't expect to set any productivity records and things are broken in some of the tool paths again so cut air the first time around.
Hi, lapuser
I have not returned to this forum for almost two years, and it seems that you are still complaining. What I would like to say to everybody here:
1) When you said "Transmagic R8 works in Windows 8, but R9 failed", please understand that both of them were released before Windows 8, and Transmagic R8 was even more than two years ago, Colin's post was just the walk-around. And now ZW3D already includes Transmaigc R10 to open Catia V6 file which is compatible to Windows 8. By the way, Transmagic is another company, and you are confusing the others, it was not ZWSOFT's fault if Transmaigc didn't release the Windows 8 compatible Transmagic package before Windows 8 was released.
2) When you talked about 64bit, I would like to say to you ZW3D do have the 64bit version, please get more information from ZWSOFT website
3) I'm sorry that I don't know how exactly CAMworks working with SolidEdge, but I would like to tell you, what 'All-in-one' CADCAM means.
a) They should use the same database, in another word, they can save to the same file format
b) They should be seamless integration
As I know, Catia is a real all-in-one, NX is a real all-in-one, So does ZW3D, I can use ZW3D to keep my CAD and CAM in the same file, and any changes I did in CAD can also change my tool path in CAM.
I'm not here to fight anybody, if I have time, I would spend more time on my project. My intention of my post is just tell everybody here the truth
Hi Everyone,
I just joined CNCZone, I am a new channel partner for ZW3D here in North America. I have been reading the comments, most by lapuser. He had some serious issues that I hope are resolved, regardless, I hope he is doing well with whatever software he is now using.
As a new channel partner I can tell everyone that we have a support team here in North America (Canada at the moment) with each person having been in the industry for over 15 years. Any support requirements are addressed in EST time frame, so no more waiting for that 12 hour difference, or 3 day wait (I think a little hyperbole in that remark, anytime I have needed questions answered it has been almost immediate (given time differences). Anyway, licenses will also be provided within a short time after purchase. No more 24 hour wait.
So if you have any questions you now know where to send them. Home -ZW3DNA-ZW3DNA
In regards to ZW3D. I have been using VX (renamed to ZW3D) since version 7. I am up to date on the latest version 2014sp.
I have not done much in the CAD side of the program. I have done LOTS of fixing imported files. It will handle any bad geometry I can throw at it. It is very good for a job shop that has a lot of mold or surfacing work to do.
The CNC side is very nice and the new Chinese owners have done great improvements.
The cons... It is not an intuitive program at all. There is a lack of training and tutorials available. There are few people using it and you will be using it alone. There is nothing intuitive about the CNC interface.
The pros... It is affordable. The modelling capabilities are very good, very solid, and very high end. The CNC side is very good.
If you are a one man shop you can't beat the price and it does everything I need it. That being said be prepared to spend a lot of time learning all the little ins and outs of the commands because the new owners are still learning. Their forums are getting better so there's help available easier now that when I started. If I had unlimited funds I would go with something else but the capabilities in another main stream CAD CAM package easily approaches the $20,000 range for what ZW is doing for $5000.
I will be keeping updated with the latest release. The past 2 years has seen more improvements than the previous 10 years.
Thanks Warren!
A well thought out and cogent review, I couldn't agree with you more.
In fact I am in discussions with my channel manager to address the interface. It does need a more intuitive workflow to make it more usable to anyone needing to get on top of the features of the program in a reasonable time frame. However, modifying the software takes time and so we are also focusing on providing more training modules in English.
If you have any suggestions in that regard, please feel free to PM me at any time.
By the way, the 2015 version is now available.
Hi,
I have been using ZW3d 2010 version and really like it. I have thought about updating several times but there has been such a mix of reviews that I have just held off as what I have works. Maybe I will reconsider if the latest versions really work and there is a return of support.
Robert