Surfcam upgrade question

[kentw]

I currently manage the manufacturing for our company. We have 3 seats of Surcam2002/2002Plus. We also have 1 seat of 5 axis 2002 that we aquired on a buy of a local machine shop. Our design dept is now transfering into Solidworks from previously AutoCad. And now my programmers are needing to be able to program off of solid models from our designers. We are currently 1 year behind on maitanance (did not renew last year due to budget reasons). I have gotten a quote from Surcam to upgrade our seats to have solid model programming capabiliteis. My concern is this, we were quoted $7k to bring the 4 seats current, then another $17k to upgrade 3 seats to 3 axis full, and 1 seat to 3axis basic, this totals $24k just to upgrade to be able to program from solids. I dont want to drop Surfcam because all my programmers are VERY fluent. Does this sound right? My higher ups were questioning why we have to pay to bring our seats current just to add the solid programming capability.

[moldcore]

Surfcam doesn’t see solids, only surfaces and wireframe, even in the latest versions, so I’m not sure what they mean when they say “program from solids”.

The price seems ridiculous but doesn’t surprise me since you bought the 5 axis from a second party. Try to negotiate with them or try another dealer, I don’t think their dealers are tied to regional areas. It’s may be worth upgrading, even though Surfcam hasn’t changed much in 10 years. See if you can demo the latest version to see if it’s worth the upgrade.

If you’re one year behind on maintenance why are you still using Surfcam 2002? What were you getting for your maintenance fees?

[kentw]

Sorry, I mis-spoke about our maintenance. We had transfered ownership of the 5 axis 2 years ago and did not renew THAT seat last year, last maintenance on the other seats was in 2007. I just took over this area a couple of years ago. As far as "programming from solids", just meant programming from Solidworks files (.x_t files). We are o.k. with our 1 seat of 5 axis 2002 and are not really asking for the latest V5.1, would just like to have the other seats of 2002 to be able to program from the .x_t files that we are getting now.

[moldcore]

Ok I think I understand now, pay maintenance just for translators? I don’t think that’s possible without upgrading the program. Have your Solidworks users save to an earlier version of Parasolid XT and see if SC2002 will read it. Why not transfer the files using IGES? Or just bite the bullet and get the newest version, try one seat for now and you can use it for translating also. I know I said Surfcam hasn’t changed much but there is a significant enough improvement over SC2002 to justify an upgrade. I bash Surfcam a lot here but that’s because of the stupid interface, not because of the core product which is still very solid.

[Chrliev]

The 5 axis upgrades available in V4 makes it worth upgrading, V4 also uses native SolidWorks files but I don't think that alone is worth 24k. I would make them an offer, like everone else they are probably down on revenues too.

From the beginning SurfCam has always had a good IGES translator, I don't see the utility of transferring solid models as has been previously stated, surfcam only sees NURBS surfaces and wireframes.

SolidWorks makes very good IGES files you might try that option too...