I'm looking at getting CADCAM but am unsure if its possible to make grooves like.....

[Darc]

the flutes in a drill, anyone had any experience using cad cam like this?
I forgot to mention we are looking at unigraphics at the moment, but not sure what is involved to draw a drill type flute.

[HuFlungDung]

Darc,
This type of profile could be done in OneCNC. At present, this can be done using the 4th axis wrap module from the older 2003 series of OneCNC.

The general gist of the procedure is this: make a "flattened" surface model of the flute. That means, instead of trying to draw a helical surface, you simply draw the flute cross section like a long straight trough. Then, position the trough axis on the cad screen at an angle to the X axis that will equal the helix angle of the real flute. One complete revolution of the indexer is simulated on screen by the interval between the X axis, and another parallel line Pi*D away, where D= the surface diameter of the cylinder representing your stock.

Then, instead of getting Y values from the cam, the 4th axis wrapper converts them to A or B (or whatever) values that your indexer needs. X, Z and A is all you need.