What is the best 3D CAM Software?

[cadcam]

Jon,

(The ultimate cam will be the first to have multicore processor support, just not happened yet.) Mastercam support in most of its paths these days the multicore support for crunching paths. What are you looking for?

I also find it funny as many in the last months keep throwing SW in arena for a CAM software. SW is a CAD software. you can add a few CAM packages to it yes.

HSM Works is a nice CAM add-on for sure. But still does not have the power and the option of Mastercam. As for Price yes Autodesk is giving it away.I will also say for the home enthusiast using a samll home routors and Mach3 this is great as the cost is nothing and the power is big.

[Jon.N.CNC]

Jon,

(The ultimate cam will be the first to have multicore processor support, just not happened yet.) Mastercam support in most of its paths these days the multicore support for crunching paths. What are you looking for?

I also find it funny as many in the last months keep throwing SW in arena for a CAM software. SW is a CAD software. you can add a few CAM packages to it yes.

HSM Works is a nice CAM add-on for sure. But still does not have the power and the option of Mastercam. As for Price yes Autodesk is giving it away.I will also say for the home enthusiast using a samll home routors and Mach3 this is great as the cost is nothing and the power is big.

"mastercam aspects are becoming multicore processor aware" they haven't stated that any of mastercam actually has multicore processor support. As explained in person to me in by the owner of bobcam that for toolpath generation its much like being able to share equations across multiple cores which is complex and to do it efficiently enough to increase performance is even harder. No 3D cad or cam currently does this, what is happening is they are starting to compute tasks across multiple instances as a work around to utilise more of the additional cores. A bit like opening mastercam twice generating one tool path with one and another with the other then combining the gcode file. each instance will be assigned to one core. Not actual multicore support yet but a step in the right direction. This can be done with any exe instance that exist on just one core, sw are now including this practice in their training.

Mastercam is very good, I prefer hsm pro, in inventor not sw (seems to be less fussy to me to produce successful paths) because it does everything I need it to do and I find it simple to use. Nothing much more to it than that and it's a personal preference more than anything. Would be interesting to assign two trained technicians to see who could create effective toolpaths fastest for same part using mc and hsm. If it's within the capabilities of hsm my money would be on hsm.

I will say CADCAM does have its benefit of having just one program running.

It's horses for courses really, for routing a package with inbuilt nesting capability would likely sway their vote (bobcam would be a good contender) but as of such there is no such thing as best cam.

Autodesk are giving away the basic hsm package. But it's not the real deal. One must purchase hsm pro for all of the hsm features such as spindle tilt and five axis, not many hobby users have one of these laying around! But also quite a few additional options for 3axis I found from 360 trial.

[Harvey_1]

Hello Gents
a lot of good stuff here

First off it depends on what you need it for, we do a lot of aerospace wind-energy automotive marine simulators amusement
The machines I manage are large gantry 5-axis
envelope sizes
6' x 10' with 3' of Z
12' x 40' with 8' of Z
15' x 30' with 8' of Z
15' x 30' with 8' of Z
20' x 65' with 10' of Z
and we just put a deposit down on our next machine 27' x 67' with 13' of Z

In my past 15 yrs of experience.
routerCim
BobCam Garbage
RhinoCam
ProE/ProMAN
Surfcam Best cam package in my opinion
UG NX currently useing

[Tulak]

in my over 20 yrs experience

SmartCam
ProE/ProMAN
GriffoBrothers
Mazak Cam2
CimatronIT

CimatronE ver 12 (beta test Cimatron E13)

As was many times sad what do you need for?

Here is some beauty of Cimatron E: Autodrill (good for mold plates,components and Tool and die plates,ones you have Drilling Sequences created you will smoke plates!)
Extracting electrodes a lot faster with templates ones you set them up (cimatron E 13 will let you mirror, rotate and array electrodes)
+ programming with templates you will smoke electrodes! (get more information on templates and very powerful feature called "Criteria")
Programming is offering so many powerful option, that many people have no idea how to use them like "Local 3x procedure"

[warrenb]

1) The one your boss is buying
2) The one someone else is buying
3) The one you can afford

[ZachHSMCAM]

Autodesk owns Integrated HSM CAM Software and now has it bundled for the single price of $2470. In the bundle you get HSMWorks for SolidWorks, Inventor HSM for Inventor, Inventor Professional CAD, and Fusion 360. Having integrated CAM is the best solution for cutting down on steps, programming time, and machining time while keeping the tool happy in your machine. I will always recommend HSM unless you get complex 5-axis simultaneous machining or complex turning, then I would check out FeatureCAM.

You can try out the software free for 30 days too to test out the functionality for yourself. If you are interested, just shoot me a quick reply and I can get you set up.

[rahul9303]

I tried OnCreate3D recently. Check out www.oncreate3d.com. It seems to be the only other cloud CAM app apart from Fusion 360. But it does not need any installation like Fusion 360. It works in browser. Kinda cool app.

[cygnus x-1]

360 hsm cam is good but you don't get the full package unless you use hsm pro. Between mastercam and hsm pro I'd have to vote hsm pro for ease of use. 360 hsm and mastercam then no mastercam takes it imo.

The ultimate cam will be the first to have multicore processor support, just not happened yet.

HSM has had multicore support for quite awhile (years I think). In fact it even has distributed CAM where you can offload tool path generation to other computers on the same network. It won't necessarily work for regenerating a single operation because the calculations must be done in a linear fashion, but if multiple operations need regen (and they aren't dependent on each other, like for rest machining from previous op) it will use any cores (or other computers) that are available.


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[kodie100]

NCGCAM standalone software by far the simplest ive used even a child or 70 year old could write code for it
i will try and put a vid up next week showcasing Rhinocams premium 25k worth next to NCGCAM 6k worth and you will see the difference is crystal clear
it takes longer to open the file, link passes and post the process than it does to write 5 axis passes, and phone support in Australia is excellent mecsoft can only support if your prepared to fit into usa hours and at 25k aud i dont feel i should have to fit in, if there australian reseller 3dm world and mecsoft oceana could support it may be a little better but NCGCAM all the way
running on a thermwood model 90 10ft 10ft x 4ft z and a doughty drive
all mecsoft oceana will do is tell you your ignorant and delusional thinking there is a silver bullet cam solution haha
pretty annoyed with them one of my staff accidentally called tim at 3dm world and tim went on for 15 minutes telling my staff member that i had appologies to make and i had no clue of what i was talking about haha he recorded the conversation extremely unprofessional considering i paid him 25k and all he could say sorry i cant help i know nothing about 5 axis cnc SO WHY ARE YOU EVEN TALKING ABOUT IT STILL.
3DM world and mecsoft oceana james mcdowel should be banned from selling 5 axis all it has done is give me a talking point with the industry and at a guess it cost them dearly
i didnt buy the largest thermwood 5 axis in australia and new zealand for 400k aud with no clue of what im doing haha
Tim you shouldnt can people till you know how you are talking too and for the record we use Ben Tam at Qubic for all our cad needs the guys is a genius he can fix problems in minutes via team view the guy is a bloodly legend and Flecknoe for NCGCAM
Adrian
beware of plug in software it can be a hassel madcam seem to have it sorted they can actually machine mesh in a mesh program rhinocam should have been a solid work plugin as it can work with mesh for a toss

[dcarbonetti]

Is there any good free 3d CAM?
Lots of these are great bot for somebody that just wants to do some 3d cnc routing as a hobby, it is quite challenging when the director of financial affairs allows $0 for expenses

[cygnus x-1]

Is there any good free 3d CAM?
Lots of these are great bot for somebody that just wants to do some 3d cnc routing as a hobby, it is quite challenging when the director of financial affairs allows $0 for expenses

Yes, it's called Fusion 360. Free for hobbyists and companies that make less than 100k/year.

Cloud Powered 3D CAD/CAM Software for Product Design | Fusion 360


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[Matth3w]

From the list provided I have used OneCNC(XR3) and Mastercam(X5) extensively

I voted for OneCNC.

[Thad92]

HSM Works and Solid CAM were our two finalists. we went with HSM in the end because of the pricing deal we got. I have no complaints so far, it is a great program and easy to use.

[BJ_Gim]

Wow , Thanks.

It is really great!

[Green0]

I couldn't really vote. I only have experience with Mastercam, but I don't feel like it could be possible that computer programmers are so bad, that Mastercam is the best cam software in the world. Mastercam seems to have been designed with zero emphasis on speed, efficiency, and user friendliness. This is obvious as the operations don't default to useable parameters, the menus lack continuity from one tool to another, some of the steps require visits to areas of the software that seem to be purposely hidden, working wire geometry doesn't default to visible contrasting colors, lathe, and mill turn appear to be almost different softwares completely, so the end user with a base of learning in lathe is lost in mill turn,(I'm assuming mill and EDM are similarly like different softwares). The double XYZ plane based operation system makes no sense to me. It gives the appearance that Mastercam is just a dumb calculator that needs to be spoon fed all the details in order to post usable code when the software should have a post that understands the machine, where some post editor gave it definitions so that it doesn't need to be spoon fed redundant information that makes the software feel weak and inept. Maybe a dialog box in lathe could say "click the Z zero G54 face" or "click the G55 Z zero face" and eliminate 1 of the 2 planes in each combo that make little sense to none square headed nerds.

I have $36,000 in software and $12,000 in training alone, and a year of about 1/4 time on a 65 hour average week in a seat and I'm not confident. I get some work done but I feel like I fight the software, not that it helps me save time or do my job. I find that crazy because it should be the goal of the software to be easy and make people happy. I also do not run code straight to the machine. I work operations, post them to cimco edit approaches, coolant commands, sometimes tool positioning inside posted code, spindle rotations, feeds, speeds, tool life numbers, etc and only then can I run code to a machine. So I don't feel Mastercam is good enough to produce code for someone that can't already read and understand the machine language. This to me is non-sensical because it would appear at face value that the job of the cam software is to prevent programmers from needing to memorize many machine languages.

I keep waiting for a point to arrive that I would become a happy Mastercam end user, and want to tell someone else to buy it, but it just doesn't happen. I pay for more training, I spend more time in the software, and I feel inadequate like I will never fully understand the software, and will never be a satisfied or confident end user.

[big_mak]

Last year we switched from OneCNC XR3 to Fusion360, and have not looked back. It is amazing value.

That being said, any CAM software is really only as good as it's post. Green0, if you are still having to hand code into what is posted out, perhaps you need to talk to your CAM vendor to get you a proper post. In Fusion currently we run code from the software with out hand edits 99.5% of the time. Even that 0.5% of the time, I'm going in and just removing brackets to enable HSM G187 codes that I have yet to figure out how to add with out the brackets.

[Green0]

The issues I have relate to coolant commands in a tool change that I have to push above (high pressure needs time to drop), Spindle stops that are above G30 commands and should be IN them, and approaches which can be hard coded with Mastercam but are like the software so cumbersome and inefficient that they are easier to enter in Cimco (I and my operator want a Z.300 approach for many tools with a second G00 move to something like Z.08, but mastercam makes that a real time bath to get done. The human being proving that out wants to see a tool coming in out front and safe. Part handling for multi-axis lathe is just a horrible tool. It's just about as bad in Mill turn. It doesn't post good code and has to be wrestled with in another time SUCK. Planes are another confusing mess. In mill turn apparently they might have solved some of the planes issues so that is a plus. You get to play with timing codes and see a simulation, but the software isn't smart and won't even put the timing codes in for a part transfer. I thought it was going to be smart software AKA KNOWING HOW to tell the machine to part transfer. NOPE. I don't even have the right chuck on the machine sim.

A true solid post capable of handling everything if that's even possible would probably cost the initial $3500 or so, and then another several thousand (3-6) with the reseller for post prove out on site. It's really hard to communicate effectively what you want even when both parties are smart and speaking english. The undeveloped post and every post is different concept is lame. I want a proven product developed by a CNC guru. I don't want to have to be the CNC guru to develop it myself. Really a huge mistake for Mastercam to not have solid posts available for sale.

Sometimes when you program multiple pieces of a chain the way the software wants to approach the different pieces of geometry are screwed up so you do some Cimco edits there. It's pretty basic software so you get the feeling it's like the machine- STUPID. You tell it once which direction to use for a lead in and lead out, and then if you have 5 different pieces of geometry you want to program in one cut, it will want to apply the one size fits all approach to that, it isn't automatically doing anything that works. Some people would program that with 5 different operations, but it's one operation and should be able to be programmed that way. If it was smart maybe it would give you the ability to control the direction and length of approach and exit on each piece of the chain with a pop up dialog and a visual prompt.

We use multi function tools sometimes and it would be cool to be able to have an intuitive tool that could drill, bore, face, transition and turn another bore in one path correctly and safely without a programmer having to strategize all of it.

[big_mak]

I feel your pain. The Fusion model is to start with a generic post and work from there. And then you develop them yourself, or ask in the user forums for help. Which I find a bit bush league. But my machines are relatively simple to what you describe. 2 axis turning and 3 axis milling. But the coolant and such as to where it goes is something a good reseller should be able to configure for you within the annual maintenance fees.

Good luck in your adventures in CAM.

[Green0]

My problem is unintended consequences of post mods. The communication disconnect allows asking for something to turn into a mod that screws something else up. I pay maintenance because Mastercam is a minefield full of time sucking problems and you have to have someone to call, and the bright side of that is hoping Mastercam is forced by someone to become competitive enough to work some things out and make the software more easy to work with. I really think manufacturer cooperation on posts and certified posts would be great to have. It isn't cool to be trying to produce work on a thing that is changing as you go and it strongly encourages settling on something with flaws to just have the ability to produce work.

We have a 5 axis mill with a post that we've never powered on, because we've never gotten enough time to focus on learning that part of Mastercam. The dream would be a cam system as easy and fun to work with as solidworks. That would be incredible.

[OnCreate3D]

Have you tried OnCreate3D? It is first cloud CAM. Checkout www.OnCreate3D.com.

For desktop CAM, my vote goes for MasterCAM. The Defacto standard in Industry.