[DontBeLate]

I'm fairly new to CAD/CAM/Machining
I only plan on doing prototype and limited production work. Most of what I'm doing is basic 3 Axis parts.

I'm looking for the right balance of CAM software cost and automatic feature recognition.

I've already taken the plunge with one CAM vendor and I can say I'm less than impressed so I'm looking for the next rock to jump to.

What I'm finding is
[LIST][*]A huge amount of time is spent putting crutch sketches that ditry up my solidparts to support toolpaths.[*]There is a lot of manual definition of offsets
Basically, all this manual entry introduces human error risk, wasted stock, and broken bits.

[awerby]

Have you taken a look at VisualMill for Solidworks? It plugs into the Solidworks workspace and allows you to make changes on the fly, without having to switch back and forth between different programs. You don't have to define offsets more than once for each tool; once you call that tool you shouldn't have to make any manual changes. But I'm not sure that it recognizes features "automatically" - usually a hole, for instance, will be defined by a circle at the edge, which you'd pick as a machining region when writing the hole-machining operation. It's not a cheap program, but the base configuration (which seems like all you'd need, at least initially) costs less than anything else with a comparable feature-set. Here's a link:

www.visualmillforsolidworks.com/

Andrew Werby
www.computersculpture.com

[AiR_GuNNeR]

Have you taken a look at VisualMill for Solidworks? It plugs into the Solidworks workspace and allows you to make changes on the fly, without having to switch back and forth between different programs. You don't have to define offsets more than once for each tool; once you call that tool you shouldn't have to make any manual changes. But I'm not sure that it recognizes features "automatically" - usually a hole, for instance, will be defined by a circle at the edge, which you'd pick as a machining region when writing the hole-machining operation. It's not a cheap program, but the base configuration (which seems like all you'd need, at least initially) costs less than anything else with a comparable feature-set. Here's a link:

VisualMill for SolidWorks - Affordable Integrated CAM Software for CNC machining of SolidWorks models

Andrew Werby
ComputerSculpture.com — Home Page for Discount Hardware & Software

+1 for VM for Solidworks. I've only used the standalone version but the interface and methodology are the same. VM is very easy to use. Integrated into Solidworks, it must really shine. Their customer support is very good as well. I've always gotten return email's from them.

[MichaelHenry]

SprutCAM also has an add-in for SolidWorks:

SprutCAM America - Home

Quite a bit of power for the money.

Mike

[TheCamMan]

I would recommend taking a look at HSMWorks and if your doing 2.5 axis work looking at HSMXpress is a must (its free).

[uchconveyor]

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