| | |
New CNC Zone guy here, this is my first post.
I am using it. Just bought it this week, after cautiously evaluating it for two months.
I am a long time Solidworks user, and can model really well in SW. As powerful as SW is, I have been frustrated by SW in the past, and have lost tons of work when I had changes that gave me the old "rebuild error" and I had to go backward 25 steps. When I didn't think through my model 100% before building it.
Sometimes that is just because of the direction a re-design takes, and you cannot plan for everything. However, those days are gone! :-) Spaceclaim doesn't have chronological steps - the whole thing is one big solid. It doesn't care what order you do things! I can move a part wall on a finished piece and there isn't any rebuilding issue. This is extremely cool.
It also imports my most complex SW files perfectly, and they are now just one piece vs. 100+ sketches.
I also got the Bunkspeed Hypershot module with it, which I have not played with yet, but it is going to be awesome to see a part in the final metal finish vs. a grey blob.
I am extremely impressed with this software.
I am an engineer who has spent over 20 years using Autodesk products. I have been using Spaceclaim for perhaps 60 hours now and have to say that it is much faster and easier to use than Autodesk Inventor or Solidworks. They also have excellent customer support. I am surprised more shops have not caught on to this product as it is cheap and interoperable with many other packages--such as Inventor and Solidworks.
Hello,
I have a question for current users of SpaceClaim. What does SpaceClaim recomend as a CAM program to go with SpaceClaim? What are people using for CAM with SpaceClaim?
Chich
I'm not sure if they recommend any CAM in particular, but that's irrelevant anyway. You need to decide what you need CAM for (2, 3, 3+2, 4, 5 axis), what features you need, and how much you can afford to spend.
You'll get lots of people telling you what the "best" software is, but that's really only a reflection of the program they happened to learn. I'll tell you WorkNC is the best, but that's because that's what my employer bought 15 years ago and what I know very well.
If you outline what you need to do, and how much you want to spend, it will be easier to list the programs that fall into that criteria. It will be up to you to demo them and decide for yourself.
Dan
(Note: The opinions expressed in this post are my own and are not necessarily those of CNCzone and its management)
MECsoft is one of their partners. I'm demo-ing that now. If anyone has recommendations for 2.5D / 3D CAM milling please post. Something that won't break the bank would be nice. I think Gibbs and Master both are around $5K and up. Is there something that auto-detects toolpaths and does some work without telling it every path?
Back to SC: I think the coolest thing is the Bunkspeed / Hypershot plugin for Spaceclaim. It's incredibly cool to see what your part is going to look like when done in High Def modeled substrate vs. a green block. You all should check this one out, it's pretty damn amazing. I'm thoroughly impressed.
Oh yeah, and the crashes that dirtdiggler is experiencing I've never had on my desktop (I've never tried to run CAD on a laptop). The program is stable for me, there must be some graphics conflict on that laptop?
Regarding video card problems with Spaceclaim I have a Home build PC Asus A78n8x-x motherboard with an Athlon XP3200 and 3Gb of RAM. The video card is a Geforce 6200 with 265Mb of memory. Spaceclaim runs like greased lightening! By the way this card will run two displays which is great for looking at one of the numerous SC training videos while trying out the method in SC on the other screen. Spaceclaim cost me in the UK £1570 and was half the price of Solidworks and easier to use. I am still learning but it has some very powerful features as I upgrade my AutoCAD 2D skills.
My next step will be to be to translate Spaceclaim's 3D drawings into G code for Mach3. Any suggestions? I was wondering about Meshcam?
Last edited by Piper2007; 12-20-2010 at 05:17 PM. Reason: slight addition to original text before posting
Man, you really do need a good video card to use spaceclaim! My little IBM notebook could not handle it and was constantly locking up. I tried it on another laptop with a beefier video card and had the same issues. It got so frustrating that I just didn't buy the program after my limit was up. Now that I know how to use Rhino correctly I can do things quick and fast with no crashing. I still think Sapceclaim is great, but I think it's uses are better as a compliment to Solidworks or Rhino for fillets and modifications. I just wish it ran a little lighter.Originally Posted by Piper2007
I have been using spaceclaim since 2009, and it is hands down the best, most intuitive, most forgiving CAD program out there. I've tried ALL of them and given them all a good go, including SW and Catia... and honestly, its just fantastic. Not maybe the best for everything but for most things. Win win.
What is the latest with this software? Is it good for someone starting out?
I ended up renting Cobalt (Ashlar Vellum), but I spent a fair amount of time with the Space Claim demo and had 3 1-hour sessions with their tech.
It is very impressive. I thought the 2D sketch features were somewhat weak, and there were a lot of tools/processes that I didn't care for, but these issues are subjective.
For example, SC has a simplified user interface (UI), with only 4 basic tools. However, each tool has a multitude of ways that it can be implemented; each implementation is analogous to a tool/function of a more traditional modelling program. So, the only thing that is really simplified is the appearance of the UI. In Cobalt, there is one tool for offsetting curves (2D geometry), and one tool for offsetting solid features (you select whether you are offsetting/moving an edge or a face once in the tool). In SC, these are all lumped into the 'Press/Pull' tool. I find it easier to select the tool that does exactly what I want (Cobalt) rather than select a tool that requires a lot of mouse-motion and clicking to do what I want.
Modelling can be history-based or history-free in Cobalt, which to me is the best of both worlds.
On the other hand, I do plan to acquire SC in the future for the assembly, mechanism, and drawing-generation features. Cobalt's assembly tools are glitchy.
SC has the least in common with other modelling programs as far as I can tell. Learning it may be easiest with no modelling experience (because you won't have any preconceived notions about your modelling strategy), however, if you switch to another modelling program in the future, the new program may seem foreign.
Hi Patriqq,
I kinda went the same way: I used Cobalt from 1998 to 2008 when I learned about Spaceclaim during a trade show visit. I've been using SC as my main tool ever since, only fired up Cobalt now and then to use some specialty tools.
Cobalt and SC do in fact have a lot in common regarding modeling approach, though in comparison, Cobalt is by far the more outdated UI and it is awfully buggy.
SC has sped up the design workflow considerably, and has reduced the need to do things over due to crashes or data loss to about zero.
Best,
Martin
Martin, thanks for posting. Your thorough, genuine, critical, and yet positive comments about SpaceClaim (on other forums) were a huge part of my final decision to purchase it.
I started off loving Cobalt, but grew to hate it. There are some very basic things that I like about Cobalt, for example, the easy 3D sketching and the ability to easily work with absolute/relative XYZ coordinates. Renting made the 'goodbye' painless, and now I'm 2 weeks into a SpaceClaim license. So far I'm liking it. Once one gets used to the UI and the tool nuances, it's great.
I agree, Cobalt and Spaceclaim have a lot in common. In fact, since my initial 3D experience was with Cobalt, I couldn't understand or appreciate the "solutions" that SpaceClaim offers to the traditional modelling problems. It wasn't until I played around in NX that I got it, despite the fact that NX has 'synchronous modelling'. For my needs, Spaceclaim is (tentatively) perfect.
Posting Permissions
| | |
LinkBack URL
About LinkBacks
