Checking into the Geometric CAMWorks website today in the hopes that they might just get on the ball for ST8 before my maintenance ran out this month has made me reconsider my statement to never post on these people again. Their True Constant Stepover tool path is worthwhile and I have paid for it although have not had much use of it since Geometric does not get yearly update permissions out very well. It is worth wading through all the myriad inefficiencies to use this on occasion and I had hopes perhaps they might get an update out for ST8 so I go there and check. While there one should never miss the opportunity to see what is going on with the SW guys. The only active part of Geometric’s forums as no SE CW4SE user has posted for five and a half months now.
What would we have to talk about anyway? Who wants to pick up where we left off and go through another round of asking why once again a new version of SE has no hook to CAMWorks and when will it be out. These Geometric people are so inept. I think about Inventor HSM Pro and how, somehow they manage to get two products to work together. Even when HSM was not a part of Autodesk the annual release for new versions of SW were within two weeks of the official SW roll out if my memory serves me well. When I got my copy of Inventor Pro HSM the CAD and CAM worked right from the first second the program was launched. The correct way to do things with planning and forethought. Autodesk takes integration seriously whereas the union of SE and Geometric’s CW4SE resides in never never land.
It is hard to tell who is most to blame between Siemens controlled SE and Geometric but in truth blame does not matter. What matters to customers are results they can work with and who knows when working reality will happen with CW4SE ST8. I tend to place the bulk of the burden of guilt on Geometric because they have a long history of problems that don’t go away. The SE guys in Huntsville are very competent in general except for second floor cubicle training guy and I can’t picture them being a major part of the problem. I can however picture the Siemens/UGS dictats creating budgetary problems and choking off resources available to SE developers for integration with outside products. I have absolutely no doubt SE would be wildly popular and very profitable for Siemens except for the cabal of small minded UGS veterans who have managed to insinuate themselves into a position of complete control over the Solid Edge product. These people have let personal emnity for SE trump overall corporate profitability and if SE died tomorrow they would be popping corks at the victory party. If SE died they might even offer an upgrade discount for unwashed plebian SE users to a real product like NX and we too could become royalty because they are such nice caring individuals. One could only hope somebody in Siemens above Chuck Grindstaff would become aware of this petty agenda driven erosion of Siemens software profit potential and stop this nonsense. This is something outside of Huntsville’s control and is a separate issue above and beyond competency. The biggest single problem SE has is it’s owners disdain and contempt. I can also picture the management and developers of Geometric who have a poor track record of diligence regarding timely and competent well working CAM products as being the major portion of the problems because they let serious defects linger for years.
The Tech Data Base or TDB and Feature Recognition are the keys to Geometric’s motto of “Program Smarter Machine Faster”. If these two things do not work their claims of efficiency break down into tedious time wasters that will eat your bottom line alive. Unless you are familiar with the product you have no idea how much effort is required to get this TDB set up to work and to try to keep it working. It can easily be a month of full time effort and then you can lose all or major parts of this TDB each year when upgrade time arrives. I am going to let a current post from the closed Geometric CAMWorks forum finish this post up. What real users are experiencing again and still and apparently to be never ending say’s it all.
I will tell you that these TDB problems go all the way back to when Geometric first bought out ProCam. They have yet to resolve serious problems that plague the program each year. What a reward for their loyal and in some cases long time long suffering user base from this $$$$ each year CAM program. Geometric and their partner VAR’s go out and basically lie about the wonders of CAM automation and the ease thereof. If they actually sat down and step by step took potential customers through all the hoops they were going to have to jump through to make the program work like the canned demos sales such as they are would drop through the floor.
So let us read what the SW guys have to say.
“Database question”
Home – Program Smarter, Machine Faster › Forums › User Forums › General › Database question
This topic contains 6 replies, has 4 voices, and was last updated by Ted Ellis 2 days, 22 hours ago.
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• June 10, 2015 at 4:37 AM #37895 Reply
MIke Bober
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I have been having database issues with every new install of Camworks the last 3 times i did them, but i had stopped updated mid 2014. Is it possible to make a copy of just my tool libraries from my current database, and copy just that tool list into a brand new Camworks database after upgrading to newest version of Camworks 2015? I have quite a large custom library of tools and it could take me months just to manually copy all those individually into a new database.
June 10, 2015 at 8:13 AM #37897 Reply
Jon Kirby
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Why can’t you just import your old DB into your new one?
June 10, 2015 at 8:20 AM #37899 Reply
MIke Bober
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The last 3 times i imported my saved DB to a new version of Camworks i lost many of my custom machining set-ups and have had many issues with things not working like they used to. Its almost like my settings arent all overwriting the original DB files, and some are. Its so screwed up now that its getting to the point of being useless except for the tool list itself. Almost like something in it is corrupt or something. But i have a humongous tool list of custom tools that has been working ok with no issues.
o This reply was modified 3 days, 20 hours ago by MIke Bober.
June 10, 2015 at 1:58 PM #37907 Reply
PPC Engineering
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I feel your pain. I don’t think I have ever upgraded CWx without some type of database corruption. The last time I upgraded I actually had my VAR watching in an online meeting while we worked together to import the techdb. I had a copy saved INSIDE of a zipped file as a backup in case things went wrong and WITH THE VAR HELPING ME do the upgrade we watched as CWx corrupted the original techdb AND the one within the zipped file. I don’t know a ton about computers but I know that isn’t supposed to happen!
If it were me, I would see if your VAR can take your original techdb and import it into the new techdb then send it back to you and just overwrite the fresh one in the appropriate folder. Just make sure you have safe copies of your original because CWx will find a way to destroy it if it can…
June 11, 2015 at 6:23 AM #37909 Reply
MIke Bober
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I am thinking maybe that the new database everytime lately has new features and additions that just dont work with the way i have things set up for the type of machining we do here, and they will not work together through the import of the old database. Really sucks that ive been using and modifying my database almost weekly for 5 years now and it gets worse instead of better the past year and a half or so everytime i update the software. Makes me not want to update the software sometimes, but i have no choice because of customers sending files made with newer versions of Solidworks than im using and it wont allow me to open them.
June 11, 2015 at 6:44 AM #37911 Reply
Ted Ellis
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We had issues with the lathe module when we imported our custom settings.
It wouldn’t see our tools even though the mapping was correct.
We would have to ‘refresh’ the path to each custom tool for it to work.
I sent our TechDb to Go Engineer and they fixed it and sent it back to us.
It took them a few weeks, but they did a nice job getting the lathe issue corrected.
I would just write up exactly what the problems are.
That can take some doing, but is critical so they clearly understand exactly what isn’t importing correctly and whatever other problems occur.
They should be able to fix it for you, just be patient and keep tabs on their progress.
June 11, 2015 at 6:46 AM #37913 Reply
Ted Ellis
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Topics Created: 11
Replies Created: 247
Having support do an online session is also very helpful, sometimes they can spot things working with you online that might be missed in your email version. They are good at writing up issues for their teams.
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