SmartCAM vs ?

[riverracer]

hi all,

how does SC stackup against other software, ie: mastercam x2, onecnc etc?

my boss is looking for software for our haas tm-1, value for money/ bank for buck etc.

we do simple diecast moulds and prototype castings.

have played with a non-posting demo of mc-x2, and wondered how it compares. any info would be handy.

thanks

[robert copeland]

smart cam in the u.s.a was bought out by another company back around1998 we switched to mastercam because we lost all are support for smartcam

[hgmorgan]

SmartCam was sold a couple of times to different companies that didn't do anything with it. Due to a strong base of users, some former Point Control people have bought it back and put it on the market. They have been doing some really good upgrades. SmartCam is a very good product for the price. We have been running it for several decades. One of the main strenghs is it's open code generators. We have been able to use this one package to run any machine in the job.

[riverracer]

on the new version v15.0, the screen shots just look like a basic program, compared to other cad programs ie; pro e, autodesk (which we use) etc.
can you do all your solid modeling in it, or is it best to import the models in?
another thing we do is tapered threads in our prototypes, at the moment using a tap, we have thought about trying to thread mill them, is this possible, creating a spiral/helix path and following that?

will proberly have more questions later

thanks again

[hgmorgan]

Like most CAM software, SmartCam is strong on creating tool paths. It doesn't create solids. You can create any shape you can think of using wire frame and mesh surfaces.

If we have just a drawing of something, we build it in SmartCam and create the tool paths.

If our customer has a solid model (90%+ of our business), we review it in CATIA, then import into SmartCam.

We sometimes design complex shapes, this is done in CATIA and imported into SC.

SmartCam supports thread milling and spiral/helix paths. If the CNC control will support those type of moves, SC can generate code for it.

[dansutula]

RiverRacer,
You should also consider VisualMill by Mecsoft, or the RhinoCam flavor of the same product. We have been using VisualMill for a long time and it has gone from good to great with the recent release of version 6.0. We use the pro version, but if you are on a really tight budget the basic version has approximately 70% of the functionality at 25% of the price. I believe you can upgrade from basic to pro at any time.

I've not seen the latest version of SmartCam but I do know that it was one of two very good products (Camax Camand - was the other one - that I used prior to VisualMill) that were purchased by SDRC and subsequently put on the shelf. UG ended up buying SDRC. I heard that Point Control bought back the rights to SmartCam about 3 years ago, but I suspect that they may have a lot of catching up to do.

Good Luck!