Is anyone else on SolidCAM maintenance? They put out several service packs each year, which is in part why I paid for their maintenance plan.

BUT, none of the service packs have any information about what has changed since the last update. There is no way to know what has been changed, what improvements there might be or anything else.

I'd really like to see a list of bugs that were fixed and improvements made. I've asked tech support for this information and they say that they don't get it either. How can they do their jobs if they don't know what changed?

Joe
Crime Scene Choppers

Yes, we are on SolidCAM maintenance and have been for nearly five years, mainly because this gives the upgrades to SolidCAM and SolidWorks releases (2007, 2008 etc.) I also download the service packs and share your frustration with the lack of documentation such as that SolidWorks provides with their SP's. But I also know that the bugs I have reported have mostly been fixed.

I really think SolidCAM could do more in the documentation area, for instance the GPP manual is three years old and there are a lot of varibles present in the CAM output which have been introduced in that time. They seem to be spending a lot of time on "SolidCAM Professor" which, yes, I have found useful. But in context help would be more useful to me in my daily work.

Saying that, I wonder how the other CAM companies compare on documenting their service packs and bug fixes? When we selected SolidCAM back in 2004, MasterCAM and Delcam were the others on the short list - does anyone in this forum know how they handle bug fixes?

Hello Joe

Even we were thinking of shifting to solid cam.can you please tell the shortfalls of it.again my other option is master cam which is perfect for 2D and basic 3D.I tried with a trial version and I could not test it fully with the applications since I dont have a GPP file for 5 axis.

Please let me know the draw backs of it before I finalize it.

Thanks

Saying that, I wonder how the other CAM companies compare on documenting their service packs and bug fixes? When we selected SolidCAM back in 2004, MasterCAM and Delcam were the others on the short list - does anyone in this forum know how they handle bug fixes?

We use Delcam's Powershape, (now incorporating Copycad) and Powermill.
Service packs come thru the year as improvements are done and bugs are fixed. There are always patch notes such as:

Service Pack 2 (SP2) CB1111121 (Built 18/12/08)

Point Distribution
Improved toolpath quality and robustness when using the Redistribute option

Projects
Improved program robustness when reading projects

Tools
Improved toolpath accuracy when using the Auto Load Depth of Cut Tool option in conjunction with batch processing

Tool Database
Support added for any tool database exported by FeatureCAM V15

2D Curve Machining
Improved program robustness when dynamically modifying the block when in Pattern Decoration mode

Improved program robustness when picking Z values

Improved robustness during toolpath calculation when using Depth First ordering

Improved toolpath quality when using Skim Links

Improved toolpath quality when the input geometry contains arcs


etc

I always read these to see what has been worked on.

Each major release has full documentation under "help" in the program along with video examples, here's links to samples.
http://releasecentre.powermill.com/
http://releasecentre.powershape.com/
John

Thank you for that John. SolidCAM, are you listening?