Reply with QuoteWhat may help is to get a quote from your area's Gibbs dealer. MasterCam has in the past offered a discount on seats that replace those of the competition.
I don't envy your situation. It's a big can of worms. Good luck.
Manager
Good Morning,
I'm in need of some maintenance pricing comparisons and I'm hoping someone can help me with this within GibbsCam. My shop is currently using FeatureCam, which we like. Our sister company is using MasterCam and the owner of our company wants us to go to one software. We have been working on this for over 2 years with no success because of course each shop doesn't want to change softwares. We've done all sorts of exercises, comparisons, trails ect with no resolution. The pricing for the softwares are fairly comparable but when it comes to the yearly maintenance cost that's where the issue comes from at this point. Seems as though the FeatureCam maintenance prices have increased considerably this past year causing them to be around 33% higher with the same amount of seats. In previous years both have been within a couple of hundred dollars of each other so this is where our issue comes in. What I'm looking for is a comparison from a GibbsCam user on yearly maintenance prices. I'm not sure if the terminology will be exactly the same but my maintenance comparisons are currently on the following. Any help with me being able to compare GibbsCam pricing to equivalent below would be much appreciated. Look forward to hearing from someone.
MasterCam:
2 seats of Mill Level 3 (3D Milling) w/Solids & Pro-E Translator
1 seat of Mill Level 1 (2.5D Milling)
FeatureCam:
2 seats of FeatureMill 3D w/Solid Modeling & Pro-E Translator
1 seat of FeatureMill 2.5D
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What may help is to get a quote from your area's Gibbs dealer. MasterCam has in the past offered a discount on seats that replace those of the competition.
I don't envy your situation. It's a big can of worms. Good luck.
"Teach the ignorant, care for the dumb, punish the stupid."
Todd, here is some FYI in case you are interested. You probably already know most of this, though.
Yes, FeatureCAM maintenance pricing went up an additional 3% of the software cost last year to match the renewal percentage of all the other Delcam Advanced Manufacturing Products software so they are all consistent. FeatureCAM was actually lower and hadn't had any price increases for the software or maintenance since it came out (prior to Delcam) almost 20 years ago. Multi-year contracts are now available, though, and that brings the price down considerably. Multi-seat maintenance is still discounted on top of that. Definitely don't assume that the increase is a trend, just a one time normalization so the price structure is standard across the board.
To offset the increase, FeatureMILL 3D is now FeatureMILL 3DHSM and includes Vortex (Vortex: Revolutionising high speed roughing - www.vortexmachining.com) completely integrated for no extra cost. Two other version of FeatureMILL 3D are also now available for a lower cost, FeatureMILL 3DMX and FeatureMILL 3D Lite. The MX has functionality similar to the old FeatureMILL 3D of years past but all the existing 3D seats out there are now upgraded to the 3DHSM for free.
In the interest of full disclosure, I do work with Delcam.
Thanks for the info GoPowers. I'm working with my FeatureCam provider now to see where we are possibly missing something.
Re: Manager
They're technically both Heidenhain. And MasterCAM is better, but not the best. I recommend Mastercam, but CATIA is the best -- I bet. I'm not sure if CATIA uses Heidenhain technology, but most likely -- everyone does.
