fpworks,
Thanks for your reply. It would be for our business, however CNC machining is only a small part of our business. I do not buy the line "with XYZ software, you will make more money!". We do not spent a ton of time using CAM software to generate G-Code, so for the price of Mastercam, it is simply not worth it to us. I do not believe there is anything Mastercam can do that OneCNC or others cannot do. The training side of things, well, me and my biz partner spent a long time writing software and we've been around the machines for years, so training is not a factor - we wouldn't go and get trained anyway
. For me, the software being logically laid out and following normal Windows standards is important. The version of MasterCAM 9.1 we use is not good in this regard. We constantly find ourselves fighting the software to get it to do what we want, and in many instances it is simply impossible to make Mastercam do what it should be doing - so you end up editing the g-code. I dont mean it can't produce g-code that runs, but rather you will watch the VMC running the code and see so many places where it could be much more efficient. Some of these things we can tweak in MCAM to make them right, but others are often just not able to be changed, and end up being done by hand in the g-code. Most of our parts are pretty complex - all require 3-d machining, no 2.5 axis stuff here! And the lathe work is similarly complex (4-axis with live tool). I know Mastercam is used by a lot of folks to do great things, but I simply do not believe its worth the money or that it is worth the premium over OneCNC.
I dont mean to flame you in any way, if you are happy with it, I am happy for you! I have not used X2 but when we did a demo of X, I told the guy it looked like they just slapped a windows GUI over 9.1 and he sort of agreed that in most respects it was the same. I have heard X is a world different, maybe it is but I just havent tried it.
I would be very curious to hear from you some things that cannot be done in OneCNC that can be done in Mastercam? And what did you do with that copy of OneCNC? Looking to unload it?