[jrmach]

On the sidelines here, I'd like to see someone take a part and do it in BC and in Mastercam on the same machine to see the differences. What specifically makes it so bad in your opinion I ask? Can I expect the head to come smashing into the part at 1100ipm when instead it was suppose to do a tool change? I can't speak for any 4th & 5th axis machining but I just don't buy that 15k software generates a completely different instructional set of code, .... up to 3 axis anyways. With every version, there are always improvements. The part in the video below was made using Bobcad v25. This is far more complicated than any part we will machine for a long time. Please tell me what MC, Gibbs or OneCNC would do different while machining the same part?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSQKimv9QH0

Nice part,,,I have made one kind of like that before.
You get that Haas and you want to see BoB make that part faster,just gives us a file and be glad to show you some shredding of metal.

[mtlhe]

On the sidelines here, I'd like to see someone take a part and do it in BC and in Mastercam on the same machine to see the differences. What specifically makes it so bad in your opinion I ask? Can I expect the head to come smashing into the part at 1100ipm when instead it was suppose to do a tool change? I can't speak for any 4th & 5th axis machining but I just don't buy that 15k software generates a completely different instructional set of code, .... up to 3 axis anyways. With every version, there are always improvements. The part in the video below was made using Bobcad v25. This is far more complicated than any part we will machine for a long time. Please tell me what MC, Gibbs or OneCNC would do different while machining the same part?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSQKimv9QH0

Hello Rotax,
You have asked a very fair and legit question. It would be interesting to see the exact code between these different companies. I think that it goes deeper than that though. How easy is it to start with a part drawing, cad it to scale, cam it,verify, then post. True I struggled with V22,23,and 24. I paid the $350.00 or $500.00 per year for the ability to call them. When I did, they would log my customer ID in the que and wait for a call back. Many times, it was the next day. Mind you, I'm paying people to stand around for an answer. Prior to BC, we had programmer/machinist who had his own Mastercam and solidworks. He moved from the area so we were on our own to speak.I tried to save money and didn't go with the others. BC sales people are extremely aggressive and sold me on the ease, and simplicity of the software.Everyone struggled as it just wasn't intuitive. They promised functioning post processors for our two mills(Acurite and Haas), and a plasma table. They never did get any of them right, which as you know causes problems.We finally bought sheetcam for the plasma table which is still in use today..
Quick example: Caming a part one day w/BC, used the chamfer function which populates simple dialogs like(angle of cutter,depth,step over,etc.) pretty straight forward. Verified it in there version of simulation. Seemed fine. Ran the part, which got destroyed on the mill. Couldn't figure it out, put in a call, return call the following day, emailed my file and code, no body had an answer, was told they would get back to us,no return call that day. Note- that machine was set up and waiting to run these parts. I let two guys go for the rest of the day. That night, I see a person on BC's forum who is also experiencing the exact problem. I read his question and it's identical to mine. Infact, I click the part file he's attaches, and guess what it's my part? The poster was a BC tech?? In the end, it was a glitch within the program and the work around was to fill in the opposite in the boxes. The reason the verify simulation didn't show it was because it verified the toolpath, NOT the actual code. In order to very the code, I would need to pay the $800.00 extra to unlock Prediter Editor, which is a separate program to learn and not integrated with BC. When I asked about fixing the chamfer function I was told it would be fixed in the next software release. Sorry but this was ridiculous. Things like this happened all the time. If we were just hobbist and enjoyed farting around it wouldn't have been to bad. But each time we were promised efficient powerful,easy to use software, and that all the problems were solved with this new version. Deeper and deeper in cost, we stuck with it and bought more training videos. Long story shorter, we dumped it all and bought OneCNC from recommendations while reading the BC forum. From the moment we installed the software, it's ease of use was stunning. But hey, it costs(at least initially more)money. We asked so many companies that we worked for/with if they had BC in hopes of finding someone we call call on to help. To this day, I haven't known any one who does. It shouldn't be that difficult to use. Trust me I'm not the only user that feels this way about BC. It has a reputation for a reason, and it's not my fault. But it's loyal users are without a doubt, fearlessly insulted if you don't agree. I hate to see someone gets duped by there salesman and than struggle, so I mention our/my experiences which by far was the worst business decision I have ever made in terms of loses of income and frustrations. Unless we had a few hours to hang out with fishin poles and a case of beer I couldn't possibly explain all the issues.I think there's other software out there that is better for a cheaper price than BC. Maybe there new stuff is better, but at the costs of people like me that fund there learning. I really don't like insulting people as the forum is a great place to share information. But some people get arrogant and rude in their replies so my personality is always to snap back(which isn't a great attribute of mine admittedly).
BTW- I like the part. Not a insult but it really isn't a difficult part to program. SImple 2D toolpaths and running pretty slow(which is the machine not the program). Not anything that would cause the OP problems with his machine as far as HSM and look ahead reading ability. But again, very cool part. Hope I didn't offend any more BC users, not my intent. I better get out of here before someone sends a virus to my computer.

[jrmach]

I would need to pay the $800.00 extra to unlock Prediter Editor


geez,your quite a character.I am glad you found peace with One CNC.
Sounds like BoBCAD wanted to run you off.

Wonder how you measure up to some of us BoB users that actually know how to use it ?

[mtlhe]

I would need to pay the $800.00 extra to unlock Prediter Editor


geez,your quite a character.I am glad you found peace with One CNC.
Sounds like BoBCAD wanted to run you off.

Wonder how you measure up to some of us BoB users that actually know how to use it ?

You must have small mans complex JR. And your a punk. I would love to meet you face to face to see if you would run your mouth. You must be getting paid for your loyalty.I've already lowered myself engaging you in this thread so I'm out.

[jrmach]

You must have small mans complex JR. And your a punk. I would love to meet you face to face to see if you would run your mouth. You must be getting paid for your loyalty.I've already lowered myself engaging you in this thread so I'm out.

Really,name calling and threats,,shocking!!!!!!!!

[BurrMan]

I'd like to see someone take a part and do it in BC and in Mastercam on the same machine to see the differences.

You would need to find someone that is fluent in both. That person would most likely modify their BobCad post processor to match the MasterCam output, because BobCad's post processor is a simple, very easy post processor to modify, and modifying your masterCam Post, is usually not something for the faint of heart....

Can I expect the head to come smashing into the part at 1100ipm when instead it was suppose to do a tool change?

You can expect that from any of the softwares listed in this thread, if you set them up to do that.....

I can't speak for any 4th & 5th axis machining but I just don't buy that 15k software generates a completely different instructional set of code, .... up to 3 axis anyways.

The code generated is done by the post processor and posting engine of the software... Look at the post processors for each software and see if you can modify it, read/understand it.. This will go a long way for your peace.

Someone told me once you couldn't output tools in a particular order in BobCad. I created a legend that assigned a tool number to the letter of the alphabet and wrote them a story with a bbcd file and post processor... It seemed funny at the time... They didn't respond.

Please tell me what MC, Gibbs or OneCNC would do different while machining the same part?

That is up to a few things. The particular machine setup (Your Haas VM3 may run a bit different than the guy's down the street. Controllers are different). The choices made in the CAM software. There are many choices that affect the outcome. The way the particular operator likes to do it his way, etc.....

Did you know that BobCad has some of the same toolpath as MasterCam, Gibb's and many other industry giants? There is absolutely NO DIFFERENCE in the toolpath calculated.....

Here is a partner list of Vendors that share these toolpaths:

Partners who work with ModuleWorks CAD/CAM components

One of the differences though, is BobCad can offer you a "package" that doesn't have all the bells and whistles if you just need something simple. But don't buy the basic version then compare it to MasterCam or Gibbs. Buy the Comparable Version then compare it....

I have V27.

[Machineit]

Hello Rotax,
You have asked a very fair and legit question. It would be interesting to see the exact code between these different companies. I think that it goes deeper than that though. How easy is it to start with a part drawing, cad it to scale, cam it,verify, then post. True I struggled with V22,23,and 24. I paid the $350.00 or $500.00 per year for the ability to call them. When I did, they would log my customer ID in the que and wait for a call back. Many times, it was the next day. Mind you, I'm paying people to stand around for an answer. Prior to BC, we had programmer/machinist who had his own Mastercam and solidworks. He moved from the area so we were on our own to speak.I tried to save money and didn't go with the others. BC sales people are extremely aggressive and sold me on the ease, and simplicity of the software.Everyone struggled as it just wasn't intuitive. They promised functioning post processors for our two mills(Acurite and Haas), and a plasma table. They never did get any of them right, which as you know causes problems.We finally bought sheetcam for the plasma table which is still in use today..
Quick example: Caming a part one day w/BC, used the chamfer function which populates simple dialogs like(angle of cutter,depth,step over,etc.) pretty straight forward. Verified it in there version of simulation. Seemed fine. Ran the part, which got destroyed on the mill. Couldn't figure it out, put in a call, return call the following day, emailed my file and code, no body had an answer, was told they would get back to us,no return call that day. Note- that machine was set up and waiting to run these parts. I let two guys go for the rest of the day. That night, I see a person on BC's forum who is also experiencing the exact problem. I read his question and it's identical to mine. Infact, I click the part file he's attaches, and guess what it's my part? The poster was a BC tech?? In the end, it was a glitch within the program and the work around was to fill in the opposite in the boxes. The reason the verify simulation didn't show it was because it verified the toolpath, NOT the actual code. In order to very the code, I would need to pay the $800.00 extra to unlock Prediter Editor, which is a separate program to learn and not integrated with BC. When I asked about fixing the chamfer function I was told it would be fixed in the next software release. Sorry but this was ridiculous. Things like this happened all the time. If we were just hobbist and enjoyed farting around it wouldn't have been to bad. But each time we were promised efficient powerful,easy to use software, and that all the problems were solved with this new version. Deeper and deeper in cost, we stuck with it and bought more training videos. Long story shorter, we dumped it all and bought OneCNC from recommendations while reading the BC forum. From the moment we installed the software, it's ease of use was stunning. But hey, it costs(at least initially more)money. We asked so many companies that we worked for/with if they had BC in hopes of finding someone we call call on to help. To this day, I haven't known any one who does. It shouldn't be that difficult to use. Trust me I'm not the only user that feels this way about BC. It has a reputation for a reason, and it's not my fault. But it's loyal users are without a doubt, fearlessly insulted if you don't agree. I hate to see someone gets duped by there salesman and than struggle, so I mention our/my experiences which by far was the worst business decision I have ever made in terms of loses of income and frustrations. Unless we had a few hours to hang out with fishin poles and a case of beer I couldn't possibly explain all the issues.I think there's other software out there that is better for a cheaper price than BC. Maybe there new stuff is better, but at the costs of people like me that fund there learning. I really don't like insulting people as the forum is a great place to share information. But some people get arrogant and rude in their replies so my personality is always to snap back(which isn't a great attribute of mine admittedly).
BTW- I like the part. Not a insult but it really isn't a difficult part to program. SImple 2D toolpaths and running pretty slow(which is the machine not the program). Not anything that would cause the OP problems with his machine as far as HSM and look ahead reading ability. But again, very cool part. Hope I didn't offend any more BC users, not my intent. I better get out of here before someone sends a virus to my computer.

Won't send you any virus' or anything-----if you will use a paragraph once in a while. Very difficult to read that way.

[victorofga]

it lead no where to trying to comparing..
in fashion sw companies trying to make more intuitive their program..
afterall theres no such easy program..

in my opinion after using autocad for a while, ALL camprogram very difficult for drawing or modeling..

in a production, where parts are simple, possible the operator will program from the blueprint directly on the machine panel.. like a simple facing..

and beyond this youll find good program, what you can afford, or got used..
a practiced machinist might handcoding more effective, than a beginner with full blown mastercam..
if, a beginner anyway can use mastercam...

but it doesn't mean mastercam would be useless :-)

================================================== ====================

on other side, if a chamfering stop the production in a shop, there might be another issues going on beyond programs..
and this can explain why so many times we can read """cam programs are difficult"""
ie chamfering means following a vector with a depth...

[SBC Cycle]

You must have small mans complex JR. And your a punk. I would love to meet you face to face to see if you would run your mouth. You must be getting paid for your loyalty.I've already lowered myself engaging you in this thread so I'm out.

Uh, oh. Here we go :violin:

"I would need to pay the $800.00 extra to unlock Prediter Editor"

That's interesting since that price is more than buying the latest version of Predator directly from the developer.

If it was $1000 and you're not verifying the ACTUAL G-Code coming from your CAM's post processor (doesn't matter which one you use) you made a poor decision not to have it, just my 0.02 But it's obvious you got everything going for you now and you don't need my advice. I do recall the problem you had with the chamfer feature. Funny that I never wrecked any parts with it. Can't imagine why

BTW, I'm not only a BobCAD user, I'm also one of it's harshest critics when things are not right. No need to toss around the "fanboi" argument - it don't apply. I'm still using it because it's still making me money.

Now, where's my loyalty check??

[GITRDUN]

I was playing around with my old V-23 just now to see whats changed on the .millpost script and i noticed the radius callout was set to R radius rather than IJK as it should be. Changed that and it runs through Predator perfectly fine. I tried a few different files with different tools , no problems.

Try changing item # 222. in the millpost i uploaded to option (b) and see if it still goes all whacky or not. If it does then i guess it must be something with having a little different version of Predator or Bobcad. The tool diameter offset in the header will not affect the program if youre not using cutter comp. I never messed with using G41 G42 with Predator as it never seemed to be able to simulate cutter comp accurately, (or at least i couldnt get it to) so if you are using that this isnt going to help any.