Need Help!- Cad cam software

[clayman]

Hi, I'm looking at purchacing some cadcam software to ease in the programing on my old Kingston lathe. I've looked into Bob-Cad but was not impressed with the pushy sales dept. Are there any other brands out there that some of you have had good luck with? I dont know alot about Cadcam programing however i'm into 2 and 3D drawing with the latest Inventor program. I'm told the two will go hand in hand.

thanks in advance, Clayman

[CNCRim]

What's your budget? one thing you have to keep in mind is "Get what you are pay for." so CAD/CAM I give you will not have a lot of option like big name as Mastercam, FeatureCAM, But they do powerful enough to take care 90% of all normal shop. Since Bobcad is not ....... your choice, here are few other.

Rhinocam
TurboCAD/CAM
MadCAM
EZ-CAM
Dolphin CADCAM

I like Ez-CAM, it's easy and quite powerful. At the end, don't take my words for it, set a demo and judge yourself.

[harley4ever]

Im a dolphin cad cam and surfcam user. If your looking to stay under a few grand, check dolphin out. It's what I use for my everday machining. If you have a load to spend, surfcam is sweet for 3d.

[chuck5121]

I use Powerstation. The Post Processor is easy to manipulate, It does everything I need, and its inexpensive. I use it everyday.

[awerby]

They also make RhinoCAM and VisualMill, but those are CAM software packages for milling, not lathe work. For the lathe, VisualTurn is what you want. It has a lot of advanced features you wouldn't expect to see in a mid-priced program like this. It has 2d CAD capabilities (all you need for lathe work) plus things like groove roughing and finishing, threading, curve following, tapping, boring, reverse boring, etc. Here's a link: http://www.mecsoft.com/visualturn.shtml

The program lists at $1250, but I can do a little better...

Andrew Werby
www.computersculpture.com