I have Hear that Cadkey was bought by another company this last year.
Is this a true statment?

thanks Jay

Well after going to there site it is looking as the answer is yes.
How do you feel about this?

We have 50 seats of Cadkey where I work. I stopped the maintenance contract when they changed the part file format from .PRT to the .CKD format. It is not compatable with the hundreds of Cadkey users in Asia that we need to stay compatable with.

It did not bother me about the sale. I think we are going to not be using Cadkey in a few months. I have not delt with Cubotech (spelling??) before.

From what I have read:

Cadkey filed for bankrupcy (possible to escape a lawsuit for backward engineering somebody else's program and/or to escape longstanding debt for FastSurf/FastSolids which they acquired but never paid for)

Then Kubotek bought the company, changed the name, and kept all the same (mis)managers on board. From what I hear, nothing much has changed.

I must reiterate, this is what I heard, I cannot back it with any facts.

We used to be Cadkey customers too, but finally had enough of paying AUC's but getting nothing for it.

Dan

It's a shame, back in it's day Cadkey was a very nice program.

I really love the cadkey... It was all about the classic interface. Does anybody know of a CAD program that has a similar interface that is up to date?

MasterCam had an almost identical UI up until the latest release. I think Weber's Synergy (if my memory serves me correctly) still uses this type of UI.

Dan

We have been using Cadkey forever also but did not make the jump to Kubotek/Key Creator. We are trying to decide where to go from here doing mold design. I would be interesting to hear which software people are switching to.

I actually switched companies, thats why I don't use Cadkey no more. The company I am with now uses Solidworks, and we do mold design and molded plastic part design. Solids is the way to go. I like solidworks, it's pretty easy to learn if you know the basics of solid modelinig.

I was going to say I would tak a good look at SolidWorks.

We also have SolidWorks and think it is great. However, we are a sub-contract design service and most of the part data we receive comes from other sources. Many times the data will NOT knit into a solid. Do you find that to be a problem with the mold design software within SolidWorks?

Most of the time we devlop our own products and our suppliers/customers mostly use solidworks as well, so we don't have an issue very often. If I am dealing with someone sending me pro-e or catia file I usally request to get them in the STEP format. Most of the CAD packages can import/export STEP files and it's supposed to be a universal format. It seems better that way then having to convert them when I go to open native files.

I think solidworks is one of the better packages for import/export options that I have dealt with, but as the saying goes...."Garbage in, garbage out!"

I have taught cadkey/keycreator since 1994 and when they were bought out I thought about switching to another software but gave them a chance and It is so much better than cadkey ever was. The new software is great.

Scott

I still wouldn't mind having a more "robust" layout.

So far, it's been a dog.

Cadkey is a moneymaker for me,
I do cad by the hour/job speed and accuracy is there.
(been in the biz since '68)
I pound out tool designs, steel detailing, machined parts..... for years now.
no problems on upwardly sending models into those CADs burdened by the glitzty "eye-candy" Solidworks is slow, catia is huge, got em don't use em.
Euclidian geometry has not changed in 500 years.
Most of the work is lines and circles.
Cadkey does that very well and fast.
keyboard macros are the answer.
Most of the cool features are rarely used in the "other systems".

Basicly.... it works, I work, money rolls in.
customers pay for results
not how or what I do to get it done.

Don't any of you guys use Rhino!!! Always been happy with it, and at a great price with good support.

Joules

We used Cadkey up until early 2001. Then we switched to Rhino and have never looked back.

Dan

Dan,
2001 is light years ago in the world of CAD software development. KeyCreator is far better than Cadkey ever was and is a joy to use. I know little about Rhino, but why do I need it when KeyCreator does everything I need to get the job done. I also use Solid Edge but their maintenance is 3 times the price of KeyCreator's and decided its high maintenance costs weren't justified. Building molds and tooling around customer supplied electronic data is a snap in KeyCreator, the translators are excellent, along with great surfacing and editing tools make any job a pleasure. The prior management at Cadkey drove a lot of users away including myself for awhile but time has been a good friend to Cadkey/KeyCreator, you owe it to yourself to check it out.

Yes, I've seen KeyCreator lately (looked at a demo). It is light years ahead of Cadkey. But Rhino has been light years ahead of Cadkey for a long time now. Had there been a KeyCreator back in 2000/2001 we would probably be using it now, due to our Cadkey heritage. But, at this point we have 21 seats of Rhino, and it is working well for us. With V4 just about ready for release, and all the excellent new enhancements coming with it, we are not looking to replace it.

Dan

Dan,

You forgot to mention that Rhino has no maintainence fees. It also has free support, a low initial cost and inexpensive upgrades! What's not to love about that?

Mike

Is this the Rhino Forum? (wrong)

I don't get this "no maintenance fees" when upgrades are not free. They shouldn't call them maintenance fees; they should call them upgrade fees. KeyCreator support is free through the forum even if you don't pay the maintenance but who needs support for outdated software anyway. Does Rhino do fully associated layouts now?

moldcore you are completely correct of course, but....this is also not a Solidworks, Pro-E, Catia, Mastercam or SolidEdge forum either is it?

Mike

There are no maintenance fees, but major upgrades (like version 3 to 4) will cost you at upgrade time. However, you can work with the new version to decide if you really need it. So you are not paying ahead of time for something you may not need. Also worth noting, upgrades that require payment are few and far between. It's been 3 1/2 years since we payed for an upgrade. The half dozen or so service releases in that time were free.

To bring this back on topic, I recall one of the last AUC's we paid for Cadkey was around the time of Cadkey99. Does anyone remember what you got for your money back then? I recall Cadkey99R2 being a "major" upgrade, but the only difference was that you now needed a dongle.

I have no doubt that it's not like that anymore. I'm sure KeyCreator is a much better product with actual upgrades for the money.

As for a layout mode, yes Rhino V4 has one, and changes to your model are automatically updated there. It's probably not as associative as others, but it does work pretty well.

Dan

Wow, this post is three years old. Well, I have used Cadkey since 1993. I think it was release 4 or 5 then. I hated release 7. I use the 98 version for all 2d stuff to this date in 2007. It's a great software. It does anything I need to do. I have over ten years of patterns created and stored. All of my macros makes the simple 2d tasks much easier. I am still impressed with the Draftpak features it has. When I was designing die-cast dies full-time, I used the hole-chart feature for all die components and had patterns of the text for the repetitious machining operations. Purdy darn handy.

I have no need of upgrading. My only gripe now is from time to time, I have translation problems with the newer DXF and DWG. I will use DWG Editor or SolidWorks to translate and bring in what I need in CadKey 98 to do what's needed in 2D.

Just used it this week to do a steel/concrete stair design.
It still performs well, Draft-pak steel shapes / solids hidden lines all that stuff right out to the .PDF format to print, easy.
I am starting an aircraft job doing old prints into cad models for waterjet..
Full 3-d model and lofting on a P-35
Why would I switch to any other cad?