Tag Archives: Autodesk

The pitfall of CAM as a Partner

Posted on October 8, 2012 | 9 comments

With the purchase of HSMWorks I have to wonder if this will begin some sort of acquisition effort by Solidworks and Solidedge. I don’t think as a percentage of customers that the loss of HSMWorks was all that big of a deal financially to Solidworks. But it does affect every CAM user out there that relies on an integrated CAM program that is not owned by their CAD company and it is a big deal to them.

Autodesk has proven that last week with this HSM event that absolutely no one had ever dreamed of. SW,SE, you have been given notice. Whatever you thought was safe and an asset you could point to is not unless you control it outright. VARS found that out to as basically they were told a day later if there was an Autodesk VAR in their geographical region they were toast. I figure that means every one of them. I also figure it means SW style HSMWorks user support has ended as how can those who have no comprehensive SW/HSM background, experience or training provide this?

I want to quote from a post over at the official Autodesk HSMWorks forum a comment by an Autodesk guy. Now as far as I can tell this is a VAR employee which kind of indicates the quality of support SW/HSM users will get. My main point in bringing this up is because Autodesk cares so little for the opinions of the HSMWorks users whose world they have just wrecked that they allow this stuff to be there.

Jerry, I can see that you are one of those guys that can’t be reached…Someone went and moved your cheeses. Boo Hoo! You’ve resorted to spreading you vitriol all over this post. You also assumed that I have no experience in industry besides being in sales. On most points, you have been wrong! I have owned a manufacturing company for twenty years, and began my CAD journey with pencil and paper. I’ve lived through the DOS years (Ugh!), and stepped up to Solidworks, and Inventor. I also understand that they are just tools. I have also spent many thousands on software programs, only to see them discontinued, or the companies sold (Try investing in a 90s MRP system, and you will know what I mean). The fact is that you have no idea what the future of the software is, yet you throw out your doom and gloom like a monkey slings its own feces. I deal with the other companies that Autodesk has purchased on a weekly basis, and know firsthand that they have not only grown in their capability, but that it was the best thing that could ever happen for the companies and the customers. Better product. Bigger budgets for programming, and new markets. You obviously have the time to sling mud at Autodesk, but it has gotten to the point where it is just offensive. It serves no purpose but to make you look foolish. Dassault and Autodesk are both big companies, vying for an increased market share. They both have a solid product. I chose Autodesk over Solidworks because they were more responsive to my needs, not less. It was not an easy decision, and in the beginning, I had regrets, as SW had a better product. But I liked the people who went out of their way to understand my business. I see now that I made the right choice. But that was my choice. I would be remiss is I just stood back and let you troll all over these people with your armchair idiocy. You sir are WAY out of line. If you just can’t stand “evil Autodesk”, then switch platforms. Just stop your bitching!! OK I’m done Smiley    End Quote.
   I think it is safe to say that Autodesk bought this for the technology and the SW HSMWorks users are well and truly screwed. There have been and will be I imagine no contractual offers given to these users to prove the words of future support will be true. In any case SW will not co-operate with Autodesk when it comes time to share the little code goodies Gold Partners have access to so HSM as it is know today is toast.
  Every CAM user who has an integrated CAM program and a half a lick of sense, if they are even aware this has happened yet, has to wonder if this could happen to them. It is amazing to me how many CAD and CAM users are oblivious to events in the software world so I have no idea how quickly word of this will spread. But for those who do follow things this is bad.  I have to admit that while I wait for Geometric to integrate with SE this is now worrying. What guarantee do I have that Autodesk or SW won’t do this to me with Geometric?
  I think at this time Siemens and SE offer the safest mid range MCAD program out there in regards to corporate direction and long-term stability in three important ways.  They own the geometry kernal they use, I don’t belierve they can be bought out ever again, and there is no current move I know of to force cloud junk down users throats. Key words when you don’t want to periodically have to make new software purchases because of dumb corporate decisions.  I think they are less than a year away from completing the last part of the MCAD puzzle adding complex surfacing capabilities much which will be better than current ones and will be in ST6.
 To me there is nothing close to Synchronous Tech out there and I had to laugh last week. Happens to be that a new customer uses a version of Inventor from a few years back and I imported a SAT assembly file from him. Met with him on Friday and clicked on a part in the assembly, a cutter blade from a “Jaws of Life” extrication tool, opened it up for edit and did so right away on his dumb imported geometry. Seeing is believing as they always say 😀
   For some reason however SE’s masters  have never until recently thought they needed more than just CAD. I trust the current leadership of SE to truly have the interests of users at heart and I base this upon what I have personally seen and heard behind the scenes and then watch happen in public and there has never been a divergence between promises made to me and subsequent actions. But this CAM thing with HSMWorks has me worried because without owning the CAM solution outright all the good intentions and promises could be out the window overnight. Guys, consider what has happened here and make sure you nail Geometric down. You don’t want  your first CAM integration to be swiped from you and neither do your future users. We want what the big guys want too. Stability and the ability to securely plan for the future in the tools we elect to use.
  I have waited for this for a long time and I don’t want the rug yanked out from under me like has happened with the HSM users. But in light of what Autodesk has done to SW it is clear that all integrated independent CAM programs represent real potential economic jeapordies and disruptions to the businesses that use them.

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Editing the Imprecise Valve Body

Posted on October 8, 2012 | Leave a comment

This is a continuation of the post from the other day. https://solidedging.wordpress.com/2012/10/01/when-imprecise-is-good-enough/

Here we have a common problem with design and it is family of parts. The first valve was on four-inch centers to fit standard bread pans four across in baking racks. There is also a smaller size that fits pans on three-inch centers for things like small loaves or larger rolls or sub buns.  Here is how it is quickly done in Solidedge ST5 taking 1 minute 30 seconds to completely alter this for the new size. After the part is pulled up the clock starts ticking.

Turn on dimensions.

Now I see locked dimensions I know will have to be unlocked to control the movement of the geometry. I unlock these now. By the way, one of the things that trip up people most of the time is a locked dimension somewhere. ST5 has tools now that will tell you if something fails what dimension or face set stopped you so you know what to fix.

Change three of these to unlocked.

Window pick complete face set for second set of holes, click steering wheel and drag in direction of desired edit, type in what you need which in this case is one inch. I don’t know why the solution manager did not show up in the screen capture but when you see the mouse go down towards the bottom and hover what I am doing is clicking on the solution manager and accepting the change. The balloon that pops up shows roughly where I clicked solution manager.

After the edit completes I hit escape to exit and return to edit the next set.

This is repeated for the remaining sets of faces/holes.

If the valve block was shorter in this application it is easy enough to unlock the overall length dimension on the rotary valve. Window pick all the geometry past the last hole and drag it in the desired direction, type in the dimension, accept once again in solution manager and you are done.

Now as a tip here is something to consider when trying edits. In theory I should be able to just click the dimension and edit the part but since I used the geometry on the first cutout to drive the geometry of the second cutout to keep them parallel in the Y axis and have no driving dimensions assigned to the second set in the solid part I have to window pick what I want to move. In the sketch I aligned the geometry for these two sets and it was not necessary to add dimensions to the finished part to reflect this.

Some of these depositors require just two holes and a much shorter valve block. It is no time at all to edit a four hole valve and valve block and a whole family of parts is created in less than a half hour once the original parts are done. This family consisted of four hole on four-inch centers, four hole on three-inch centers and two hole on four-inch centers and when I say less than a half hour I mean to finished and saved parts in their own folders ready for manufacturing.

Here is the video

http://youtu.be/IBjnqd4xCmc

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Manufacturing IS the real end goal of Solidedge, Inventor, and Solidworks

Posted on October 2, 2012 | 6 comments

I am watching the beginnings of the shakeout over the acquisition of HSMworks by Autodesk. I see them coming up with a plan to implement a complete manufacturing solution for Inventor as they pursue the MCAD market and ancillary manufacturing that is the only reason for MCAD to exist.

Now I want you to read this again. Manufacturing IS the only reason for MCAD programs to exist. Why this has been such a blind spot for these three mid range MCAD programs for so long is a mystery to me. And furthermore when in doubt remember that CAD when it was born was implemented  as a method of feeding the fledgling CNC manufacturing base that had to have a way to talk geometry to machinery. It quickly spread into every area but ALL the areas were and are based upon producing a real thing.

Solidworks for some time has come the closest of the three to realizing the truth of this and has developed partners along the way to cover disciplines they had no interest, for whatever reason, in writing code for. The problem for Solidworks is that they never did more than grant partner certifications for companies that ultimately they did not control with anything more persuasive than a carrot held in front of the vendors.  So today we see the fruit that myopic vision harvests. HSMworks is no longer listed as a partner anywhere on the Solidworks site I can see. If I were Solidworks I would be wondering who is next to jump ship since none of the CAM programs out there are owned and therefore truly controlled by SW.

What does this say about customers who have to make things after the design who have been sold down the river here? And they have been. SW is already saying with the removal of HSMworks from their site that the war is on. I fully expect Autodesk to put the squeeze on SW users to switch to Inventor if they want to keep using HSMworks. OK, yeah the promises are out there of support for HSM’s user base with SW but does anyone really think Autodesk bought this company without an eye in part to  the peripheral benefit of scavenging SW customers? Users trusted SW when they bought HSM and figured they had a long-term integrated solution.

I like HSMworks and it was on my short list of programs to consider since SE really does not have integrated CAM yet and truthfully when they do next year I have no idea how good it really will be. It was the program I wanted integrated with SE to begin with and I can see now why HSM was not at all interested in SE. They were negotiating to be bought out lock stock and barrel. I have to wonder with Geometric who had a demo version of CAM software integrated with SE at SEU2012 what will happen to them as a Gold partner with SW when Geometric becomes a partner with SE?

Partner integration apparently is not sufficient to protect the interests of CAD companies and their users who wish to make parts and designs. When your time and effort and money can be yanked out from under your feet because your CAD of choice does not truly control your CAM of choice this can be a major problem. This is the lesson to be learned by SE and SW users here. Because SW saw no reason to have their own in-house CAM solution (but at least they did and do have integrated ones) all those who invested in HSMworks are I believe in short order going to be screwed. This Autodesk acquisition demonstrates the jeopardy we as users all face with any CAM program not owned by the CAD company whose products we use. I would not put it past Autodesk to buy out Geometric either and then where would SE be?

SE has never had any CAM partner except for NX Cam Express. Cam Express can be made to work with SE but so can a ton of other programs and the common problem with them all is that NONE are completely integrated with SE on the level that HSMworks is currently with SW. CAM Express is also complicated to learn and I know from personal experience watching shops close by me that HSM was easy to implement and produced pretty decent toolpaths. That is not going to happen with Cam Express and while there is good output it takes gobs of time to learn and program compared to HSM.

I think after all these years SE now understands that they have to be more and offer more than just CAD to their customers if they want to have a chance at knocking SW off of their throne. These ancillary programs are not optional if you want to be Mr. Big. Hope they back Geometric into a corner they can’t be bought back out of by Autodesk. There is sadly not much to say about SE in the integration area except that they know they have to change. But in the mean time multiple years pass swiftly and their competitors are not going to wait for SE to catch up or pass them up. Only concrete actions and not good intentions will take the throne of MCAD king away from SW.

I despise the model that Autodesk’s boss has espoused for the cloud and his comments that they are going to force people there. Look, I did not create the words that came out of his mouth nor did I put them there. You doubters just go and research for his comments earlier this year and see for yourselves. Jeff Ray on Steroids could not have beat this guy.

BUT,  I am in admiration of a company that has a plan to produce a manufacturing environment for Inventor, label this as midrange MCAD if you will, that seeks as its goal to control outright the pieces needed to do so and prevent the capability of any external source to interfere. Heck, they did not even have to go through the agony of arguing over endless integration details when they bought HSM. HSM clearly had spent the time to develop a good product and integration while complicated I am sure is a formality that rests on the solid CAM features in HSM and can be adapted to work with any CAD program. So Autodesk removed the headaches of develop from scratch and bought a proven product outright and now it is THEIRS.

I have to admit to being discouraged with having to shop for a CAM program this morning. There are lots of programs out there and they all have problems along with the good. But getting sold down the river is not one I had really considered as a part of planing for what do I buy to replace ZW3D. I had almost requested another trial of HSMworks as I was quite seriously considering how much longer can I wait for SE to get something going. Make no mistake here, my first choice would be something good integrated with SE but I have long-term CAM problems I am getting REALLY tired of having to deal with.  At some point in time the wait must end and I will buy something from someone but the choices in CAM are grossly complicated in comparison to the easy choice I had in CAD with SE.

I have a headache just thinking about all this and I think it is a good time to quit this post.

 

UPDATE

As an additional comment here. Going to the HSMworks forum today is pretty ugly. One poster in particular talking about $20,000 for HSM and somehow all these vacuous promises about the future, none of which I figure will be put in writing and contracts with existing customers, are at all assuring to him and others posting today. I think SW will also lose customers out of this because buyers get tired of smoke and mirrors from corporate bigwigs and negative comments are showing up there about Catia Lite too. People expect to be treated as valued customers for the amount of money they are spending with SW and HSM and they most definitely do not expect to be taken for granted or as CADCAM chattels with no choice but to fork over the dough. It is going to be interesting to watch this unfold and  I SURE am glad I did not go further with HSMworks.

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When Imprecise is Good Enough

Posted on October 1, 2012 | Leave a comment

Rotary valves for depositors and food sevice use quite often have a few critical measurements that need to be adhered to. The size of the  rotary cutouts to match the housing cutouts and degree of angle of these around the centerline of the valve and housing cutout. The diameter and angle of the lever at the end.

Perhaps the most difficult area of creation is where two cutouts meet where they are of differing sizes and the corner rounds also differ. How do you make this geometry work? Now keep in mind this is a part to be cut on a rotary indexer on a VMC and ability of product to flow through this valve is far more important than a perfect blended set of surfaces where the two cutouts meet.

Here is the actual valve we are duplicating and while it is not real clear you can see enough to get the idea of where we want to go. In the following video the creation of the majority of the geometry and all the sketches have been done ahead of time and what I want to show is how direct editing can quickly arrive at a factory produced part condition.

I extrude remove from the top plane a cutout and apply corner rounds at this time keeping the depth of the cutout just into the part enough to create the rounds.

I can now go to the sketch on the angular plane and extrude remove viewing through the right end and in wireframe mode and go until by eye I can see it is close to the vertical surface on the back side of the first cutout. I now apply rounds.

Now I can select the round feature on the first cutout and the steering wheel shows up. I select the direction and drag down in “Z” until I can see that the round on the first cutout does not protrude below the second cutout. Close is fine here and I don’t need to fuss with precise placement of a gob of faces with differing radiuses and diameters.

This valve by the way goes into a unit where dispensing is into differing size pans and in the future if it needs to go into smaller pans I can window pick each set of cutouts in the centerline one at a time and move them over accordingly without have to create a whole new part with new sketches like I would have to in traditional modeling. Here I just make the edits and save it as a new part and in no time have a family of parts.

Here is the video. http://youtu.be/v1QIrWP84-k

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CAD Goblins Arrive Before Halloween

Posted on September 18, 2012 | Leave a comment

Reading Ralph Grabowski’s article http://novedge.com/i/114113 this morning about Autodesk and the cloud. Also reading about how Microsoft wants to force everyone to the cloud in some form or fashion to use Office 2013. http://www.zdnet.com/what-you-gain-and-lose-with-office-2013-subscriptions-7000004386/   .

I have to conclude that the idea of having a superior product to sell to willing buyers is not enough anymore for some companies. They look to be trending towards models that will force a constant revenue stream from customers that prefer to lock in their costs with a permanent seat of software. How many people do you know who are currently using software years old in their business and doing quite well with it. I have to admit that within two years I may well be in a position that the software I have at that time will last me for the rest of my career. I manufacture primarily from my own parts and as long as my CAD can communicate with my CAM and my CNC equipment I don’t HAVE to get anything else from these software companies. I was using an 11-93 Haas VF3 and in part Surfcam from 2006 and VX from 2009 and doing good enough for quite some time. Now with current stuff in my shop I can go for many years without changes or costs to keep current and do just fine. There are lots of companies that can make the same claims and indeed use software from the past to make a lot of money. The true beauty of permanent seats. This includes major corporations like Boeing too where they still have a large CAT4 presence so it is not just the small players.

Don’t you know how much companies like Dassault and Autodesk (yes and Microsoft evidently) hate the idea you can earn money legally with their stuff and not have to pay them each time you do so?

So back to Ralph’s article today and I have some comments about  what Autodesk proposes. It is all about follow the money and how to force customers into never-ending cash cows. It has nothing to do with those mythical cloud efficiencies so oft talked about but never clearly and concisely demonstrated. It is about the iPhone model where you start out with unlimited downloads and in quick order after a level of market penetration is achieved it goes away to be replaced with data caps and charges. In other words after a short period of time your costs will go up. In the case of files your autonomy will most likely go away and indeed perhaps even the right to use your own intellectual property if you can no longer open and edit files because you decide to quit the pay to play extortion racket.  Assuming you have read Ralph’s article and are up to speed let us proceed. You do need to read it for the first paragraph below to make sense..

What would be of interest is the complexity of the jobs allowed for the count or are all jobs created equal for the purpose of counting? My bet would be for a data cap somewhere and that brings me to this point. For around $10,000 you get a Dell mini supercomputer with astounding capabilities for FEA and rendering which seem to be the current sweet spots for multicore usage and which utilizes the Cuda tech for the GPU. The first out of the box is always clunkier and more expensive than what follows so I think it is reasonable for there to be greater capabilities at a lower cost within a year.

Now this will sit in your facility and have no internet related problems with throughput or security (yes that dirty little cloud cuss word) and for the price of one years usage be available for three years. I am basing that upon how long my replacement cycles seem to be. NO data caps from your ISP or from benign corporations like Autodesk who no doubt would never ding you extra for high data uses compared to the norm.

Ah yes, the cloud. That wonderful vehicle for corporations to get you and hold you and charge you. Except that other corporations are building the casket for this cloud model with super computing power cheap enough to sit on most desks in the CAD world and do I bet 95% of what will be needed in a timely fashion. I dare say that the majority of companies that have large complex analysis or renderings also have the wherewithal to buy the more expensive models to sit in their facilities and not go on the cloud and save money and time to.

Don’t you just love the deliberate ambiguities from cloud vendors about exact details and the TOTAL lack of any real ROI true life studies where they take a desktop or server and directly compare it to a cloud doodad with same files usage? And I mean all costs as these cloud guys never cover the ancillary costs associated with their services from tech and IT support to the cost of data over the ISP’s and any special gear needed to make this work on the customer’s end.

https://solidedging.wordpress.com/2011/12/08/last-body-part-needed-for-frankencad-identified/

I vacillate between Frankencad or Draculacad and have a hard time some days deciding which is most appropriate. Today I think I will opt for the bloodsucker.

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Prepackaged Malware for you and the Cloud

Posted on September 14, 2012 | 3 comments

I think the rush to embrace new for the sake of new because a group of people see a way to make money is a foolhardy thing. Yes I know the cloud is going to be used in some areas as I have said before but not for critical data like CAD as far as I am concerned. I am rethinking even for banking as there are more and more problems and at some point in time people will lose out. At the very least to be safe you have to hire something like Lifelock to protect your identity online. There is a price to pay for convenience in either stolen identities and or cash or at the least fees you have to pay each month for insurance like Lifelock.

Cool, tech savvy, cutting edge etc but mostly executives looking to reduce expenses any way possible and believing too much in hype. My favorite types are of course MBA’s and CPA’s without a primary or secondary degree in real world disciplines like Engineering or manufacturing. Basically the same group of clowns that brought you tech support from people who can’t speak English and have to read from the script while they try to solve your problem. Big money saved for them but what about their customers?

Today I read this. http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2012/09/13/microsoft-disrupts-the-emerging-nitol-botnet-being-spread-through-an-unsecure-supply-chain.aspx

This follows what was recently revealed with Military items which were similarly compromised because our MBA CPA types have moved huge chunks of our manufacturing to places like China. Word to the wise. If the company that wants you to put CAD on the Cloud will not make a clear and binding commitment to you as a customer to make you whole from any damages from forced usage of the cloud can you afford to be there? The world is getting more complex all the time and you can ill afford to purchase a service that the offering company will not stand behind when it is you and your company who will be left holding the bag.

If you are wondering about the cloud or considering useage of the cloud for CAD perhaps this would be a link of interest. http://www.zdnet.com/topic-security/ Read this for a few weeks and see for yourself about why none of these cloud for CAD vendors will stand behind what they want you to buy into.

As an aside here. Our government is a serious participant in the undermining of the US manufacturing base. They inflict ADA, EPA, OSHA,  affirmative action, and tons of other things that have gone so far past reasonable or justifiable, like Homeland Security has become, and into the realm of confiscation and socialism that it is hard to imagine this is America anymore. Then they allow companies to relocate to places like China where they can do what they want with ten times the pollution introduced into the atmosphere as what would have happened here and no alphabet agencies to ruin their days.  This November there will be perhaps the last time to vote against all this crap before we slide over the cliff if indeed it is not to late no matter who gets in. I am afraid we are in for a time of real trouble which will last for years no matter what and the best we can do is limit the damage by getting rid of the big government socialists in BOTH parties and begin reconstruction for the future.

I don’t normally put politics in here but sorry, it does affect me as a CAD user and as a company owner and I am getting tired of being walked over by big bad government and lazy people who want to stay at home and goof off while I have to work. Oh, and 100,000 dollar a year teachers that can’t teach in Obama’s back yard. His buds don’t you know.

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Could the Cloud be the Death Knell for Your Company?

Posted on September 4, 2012 | 4 comments

I get emails on occasion questioning me as to why I am so adamant against putting things like CAD data on the cloud. I know the cloud is going to be common place for many more things in the near future than it is today. But the seriousness of your jeopardy there can’t be understated nor plausibly denied. Reading ZDNet stuff today and two articles rear their frightening heads.

http://www.zdnet.com/apple-patent-could-remotely-disable-protesters-phone-cameras-7000003640/

In part I quote.

“U.S. Patent No. 8,254,902, otherwise known as “Apparatus and methods for enforcement of policies upon a wireless device,” was granted in late-August, and would allow phone policies to be set to “chang[e] one or more functional or operational aspects of a wireless device […] upon the occurrence of a certain event.”

What that means in real-terms is “preventing wireless devices from communicating with other wireless devices (such as in academic settings),” and for, “forcing certain electronic devices to enter “sleep mode” when entering a sensitive area.”

What this also means is what can be disabled can be enabled and can be set up no doubt to transmit data back to whomever. I thought people figured I was over reacting to this kind of stuff when I talked about just this type of vulnerability with iPhones and the Chinese who make them. I am quite certain they would NEVER take advantage of this for back doors now would they. ” Could you prease turn you iPhone little, we need better picture” was a comment I made then and now this is in the news. Courtesy of the Cloud and Apple which has a really bad rep for creating hostages and data mining anyway we have your complete junior corporate/hostile government espionage kit soon to be included with every new iPhone. Now it’s not just iPhones that could be capable of this but I think they seem to be leading the way in this corrosive technology.

One of the other things is how much access your government has to your data because you allow it online. http://www.zdnet.com/bad-assumptions-about-cloud-computing-and-the-patriot-act-7000002614/

It was my assumption originally that the Patriot Act which was supposed to provide for the protection of US citizens had as its primary goal a George Orwellian motive and utilised hysteria from 9-11 to get it through. Well Animal Farm is here and along with it the ability of many to access your data and never have to tell you about it. ( By the way, Ayn Rands book “Atlas Shrugged” and George Orwell’s book “Animal Farm” are worthy reads for you and your children if you have not already  done so.)  Apparently when BAE defense in Europe decided to not renew various Microsoft Office products based on what they perceived to be security risks to their data because they felt the US government could access everything as Microsoft was an US company. It turns out there is no safe haven and the Europeans are doing the same to their own citizens to.

Corruption and crony capitalism involving government officials is well-known and sadly appears more and more to be widespread. How easy it has now become to force access to your data through this mechanism of domestic security via the vehicle of bribery or influence peddling. Do you dear reader trust the foxes guarding the hen-house to leave the eggs alone? Do you see any justification anywhere they are trustworthy? I see Eric Holder in this country doing as he pleases with your stuff for whatever reason and who is going to chasten the corrupt top cop? I see companies like Google harvesting tons of things to be used for whatever reason and not telling you what or why. I see the Chinese government who has built a huge economy in part through theft of intellectual property utilizing subpoenas to get what they want when they can’t hack it their way into it.

Now I have laid some actual and philosophical reasons out here for you to consider. I want you to think seriously about what I have said so far and then remember what is the common single thing that makes all this jeopardy possible. It is a method of data mining that you can’t stop or prevent except by one thing and that is to not allow it to happen in the first place. The ONLY known method to stop this type of breach is stay offline. Yes I know the iPhone has a camera that could be used just like a camera for later uploads but remember that the back door I am talking about here is enabled and directed over the web.

I don’t have any good answers for companies that are geographically diverse and feel the need for data transfers. It is in many ways a competitive advantage I know but how can any of this stuff be made truly secure?  I do believe it is time for companies to start a serious review of security measures however from allowing iPhones into your facility and onto the shop floor to what data can you afford to lose by exposure to the internet.

I remember reading of a story where the Russians were interested in some of our aircraft some time back. Well of course they were not allowed to take cameras into the facility but they did take sticky soled shoes in there and wandered around machining areas where they captured alloy samples which they took back with them. The jeopardy for your data lifeblood today is far more pervasive. I fear in many cases the thief is invited in through the corporate boardrooms where promises of security are believed and myopia prevents anything past purview of cost cutting for the next quarter. And make no mistake, the thief IS invited in when you use the cloud. Now you have to determine if the jeopardy is worth it.

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So, You Are Shopping For CAD and CAM?

Posted on August 29, 2012 | Leave a comment

8-29-12

I wrote this just after SEU2012 and never got around to publishing it till today.  If it is of interest to you readers this will touch on a bit of what I have gone through in selecting programs I choose to put my own money into and my observations on competing softwares that could have been contenders.

I truthfully have no idea yet what the integration with Geometric will be like but based upon a thirty day trial of Camworks I had and the feedback from people in the industry I respect about Geometrics reputation as the go to guys for this kind of stuff I believe this will be a good integration. Some of these CAM comments I make below are based on what I fully expect from my CAM software vendor.

7-1-12

For my Canadian  money printing follower here is the novella for the day EH!! 🙂

While I had not intended this to be a post when I began this reply the more I thought about it the more I thought it should be. I rely on actual users to help steer me in the right direction. Now users and pretend users can steer you wrong so it is not a primary decision maker for me but it is important. I research the users I listen to by the way as there are individuals out there who talk a good superficial line but apparently don’t use the programs they pontificate on. They  never produce work for you to see in a webex or in files to share to demonstrate just why they say what they do so I learn to weed them out. Since I am a small job shop I tend to look to other small job shops for my information.

How good is support, can they work with your files without seeing them before with confidence and produce a good part or tool path? Is the company stable and not about to do stupid things to their customers whom they really don’t care about anyway? Do problems get fixed and is geometry creation and good cam paths with users in mind the goal of the companies you are considering doing business with? Salesmen are at the bottom of the food chain most of the time when it comes to reliable information and you have to do some homework if you are going to protect yourself from them and bad choices. Due diligence is needed and never be in a hurry. You will have to live with what you choose in money and time.

Just as an aside here. In 1997 Geometric was the first company to integrate CAM with SW. They evidently liked something they saw there and time has proven this to have been a wise choice for them. This same company is now deciding to be the first to integrate with SE and I think they see in SE just what they saw in SW when SW was on its way to becoming the ProE giant killer.  I think they see the rise of SE and the demise of SW as history repeats itself again with another company that has become to arrogant to consider its users needs first.

So, on to the rest of the story.

Submitted on 2012/06/30 at 5:06 pm

I’m a fairly inexperienced CAD/CAM user from Sweden presently working with Alibre CAD professional and a 2D CAM system called PrimCAM. I also make what I draw using a Datron M25 milling machine and what I do is mostly “bed-of-nail” test rigs for embedded electronics or casings for other type of test equipment. Also custom-made heat sinks happen from time to time.
I export my Alibre work as DXF to PrimCAM, and as you can understand I either have to update both in Alibre and PrimCAM if I change something. If the change is of major kind, I’ll do best starting over.
This has worked ok in the past, but now as my rigs tend to be more and more complicated I’ve came to a point where I need to update my software tools to be more efficient.
I don’t really need true 3D milling capabilities as I see it now, I guess what they call 2 and a half D milling covers my needs. I also don’t need the absolutely most efficient strategy for milling my parts since I don’t do mass production – but it needs to be fairly clever tool paths generated so the part doesn’t take 40 minutes to manufacture if it could have been done in 20…
I find Solid Edge to be a strong competitor for the CAD part of my work (also most expensive) compared to Inventor, SW and another French system called Top Solid. It’s the Synchronous Technology and Live Rules that I like but other than that (but it seems like a big advantage) I don’t know if the differences are so big. Some people seem to like the interface better in SW but I guess that’s of less importance than ST. I would appreciate comments on choice of CAD – is SE the way to go?
I also want to ask what you know about Siemens CAM software. The company that offers me Solid Edge also offers (NX) CAM Express Foundation and CAM Express 2.5 Axis Milling Add-On. From what I understand it’s fairly integrated with SE and seems to be powerful enough for my needs. But compared to CAMWorksXpress it’s very expensive, about $6300 compared to the campaign price of $750 for CAMWorksXpress. But in my experience you quite often get what you pay for, but in this case it might be that NX CAM Express is more than I need.
Don’t know if it’s proper behavior to ask questions like this here, but I’d surely appreciate if you (or someone else) would respond to any of the questions embedded in the text above.
Lars

Submitted on 2012/06/30 at 9:19 pm | In reply to Lars B.

Hi Lars,

Some significant things are happening in the CAD world right now. Solid Works is a company that has stopped listening to it’s customers and many users are going to leave soon. Here is a link to the most popular SW blog and you can see for yourself what many long time power users think. http://www.dezignstuff.com/blog/ They are also going to be changing the geometry kernal for SW from Parasolids which Siemens owns to CGM which Dassault owns. With this many years of legacy files it is not going to go well. They are also going to try to implement direct editing and force parts or maybe even all the program to work off the cloud which is by itself in my book sufficient reason to either leave if I was there or not buy if I was looking. Add to this the joy of bad translations for quite some time as they fix the kernal change. Remember, this is the company that still can’t get Catia 4 to communicate completely with Catia 5. SolidWorks has the most users today but this is going to change over the next two years or so. Even this advantage to users will go away. NO direct editing in SW and I will not work any other way. They have this move face thing the sales guys will try to convince you is the same but they lie when they do. SW does have a number of integrated CAM programs some of which are quite good and there is associativity there although to what degree you can alter your part and regen I don’t know. If you totally destroy features nothing will regen past a certain point and then Feature Recognition is what you would be looking for to make major edits easier in your CAM plan.

I don’t know a lot about Inventor. Those I know say it is not as good as Solid Edge or SolidWorks. However, soon according to the head of Autodesk ALL their geometry creating programs will be working on the cloud. You can’t afford to go there for a lot of reasons and you never want to buy into anything where you can’t get a permanent seat to use. This is above and beyond all the reliability problems you would have working on the cloud and no guarantee of security either. Plus you have no idea how they will treat you in the future so those monthly or what ever fees you will have to pay to rent your data back from their servers which will for sure only go up in cost far quicker than the expense of owning your own stuff.

I did look at TopSolid when the buzz was going on about it a while back. No direct editing worth a flip compared to SE and I will not work with anything that does not have SE’s level of capabilities in this area. I have been spoiled. Cam there looked pretty decent but the GUI was very strange and convoluted to me. The modular like pricing quickly took me way past where I wanted to be and that was the end of TopSolid for me. They have also just been bought out and until time passes no one can say what will happen here. UGS had real problems in the past when they were owned by five different Investor capital companies and decisions that should have been made to benefit users were instead made to pay off investors. Siemens buying UGS ended all that for UGS by the way.

I had integrated CAD and CAM with my old software which is now known as ZW3D. I was not happy there because of lacks in the CAD side for MCAD, primarily sheet metal. This started me looking for a new CAD program and I was evaluating Solid Edge V20 and SolidWorks at the same time. I went to two SW demo days and the logic there never clicked with me. I am sitting there with these guys around me click clicking away and having no trouble and I sitting there saying “how did you do that again?”. SE on the other hand made good sense to me and the work flow I understood quickly. Then SE’s first version of Direct Editing called Synchronous Tech came out. I went to see a demo and watched this guy drag all the geometry associated with the front face of one of my parts that constantly changed around and my jaw hit the table. I wanted that power to edit existing geometry more than anything I had ever seen and it took about 15 seconds for me to decide I was going to have this. ST1 and 2 were pretty rough. ST3 was much better and by ST4 I would recommend it to anyone with confidence. Direct editing is too powerful to ignore and if you are constantly revising parts like I am there is no better way. Plus you import and work on files from other CAD programs without worry. I can edit stuff from SW faster than the author can and it’s kind of funny to prove this to SW users. Assemblies with huge numbers of parts (400,000 plus and yes I mean that) are done in SE and you can create parts in place in an assembly or edit parts in place in an assembly and not have to worry about breaking things. The Parasolid kernal which produces SyncTec has things Siemens does not sell to others so the best iteration of direct editing will only be available through SE and NX. Siemens bought out UGS and they have no intention of changing what they do so if you intend to be in business for a long time there is industry best stability here with the product and management philosophy. Siemens bought UGS a few years ago to assist in making their manufacturing capabilities better and they are all about geometry creation and customer needs. Unlike others who are getting busy doing things they want to and the heck with their customers desires.

Camworks Express would be the way for you to go. Geometric which owns Camworks is going to be the first company to integrate CAM with SE. I saw a crude beta of this at SEU 2012 in Nashville and it looked good. Camworks also has good feature recognition which will help tremendously in part edits. I think this integration will happen sometime this year. I have been holding off on a CAM purchase to replace this clunky ZW3D I currently use until something was integrated with SE and I think the wait is close to being over. NX Cam Express is never going to be fully integrated with SE. This is not conjecture it is the decision of UGS that this will be so. It is also complicated I hear to learn and you have to learn bits of NX to use it because it brings part files in from SE and converts the geometry to the NX CAD file type before the CAM program can work with it.

Alibre opened some doors for you but as you are finding out better tools make for better easier work. Alibre is great stuff to get your feet wet with but has limitations. It sounds like you intend to pursue this long-term as a living and are looking to increase your capabilities which will increase your income with more work because you can offer more to your customers. I don’t like paying for these programs any more than anyone else but there are things I can do with SE that even after four years still make me grin. I can’t believe that I used to think parametric history based stuff was so good. I bring a part into ZW3D to cut and I refuse to edit a part there. Back to SE it goes. I believed with my own time and money that SE was the best midrange MCAD modeler out there when I bought it and four years later it is vastly better. It saves me time and money over what I used to use even though it cost me more. With Geometric integrating soon with SE I would have it no other way. If you are serious about getting better tools for the future I recommend without reservation SE which I have used for four years now so I have experience. With the Geometric stuff I have very little experience but users I talk to say good things and the time I have spent with it in a thirty day trial looked good enough to me to decide to buy it when it is integrated with SE. I would do it sooner but I just can’t stand the thought of having to pay for SW just so I can use CamWorks so I will wait. You never find the crummy sides to a program in a thirty-day trial there is just not enough time. What I have seen though looks good enough and I know that every CAM program out there has problems no matter how expensive it is so there is no perfect choice.

I think the selection of CAD and CAM is a serious issue for users in both up front money and then in time spent to learn. I don’t like sales reps as a result as I have heard more garbage from them about CAM programs in the last half-year and I have become quite cynical about anything that comes out of their mouths. They just want a sale and the heck with you. I know from personal experience the cost and grief and also the benefits of software. What you are reading here today are my conclusions arrived at by spending my own time and money and I hope they are of help to you. You will have to improve your software if you intend to grow and not drag inefficiencies and problems with you though. Good luck and never be in a hurry to make a choice.

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Your Latest Cloud Update Served up Piping Hot

Posted on August 27, 2012 | Leave a comment

Ah yes the cloud. The answer for every woe any CAD user does have or ever could have. Robust and reliable in its implementation and cost-effective in how it eliminates all need for expensive in-house networks and computers/servers.  Get the latest and greatest without the needless burden of an IT staff as everything is done for you automatically and almost as though it were magic you just show up and it all functions as one cohesive unit. Unparalleled efficiencies are yours as

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/item?  siteID=123112&id=20327837&linkID=9240618

Ahem, as I was saying unparalleled efficiencies are yours  from the latest version auto updates to reliabilities far greater than any

http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/08/amazon-ec2-outage/

Alright look would you quit interrupting me?  Now as I was saying, unparalleled efficiencies based upon geosynchronously redundant server farms producing greater uptime than any in-house solution could provide.

 

Know what I mean Vern?

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Logic and Solid Edge

Posted on August 14, 2012 | 18 comments

One of the current posts at the Siemens BBS for Solid Edge has a topic of interest to me and it is in part about the useage of Synchronous Technology over traditional by current users and the logic employed by ST.  Dan Staples had a reply there and it was as follows.

“Re: OK, so why aren’t you using ST?

We had some good sessions at the Productivity Summits on Live Rules and it gave me an opportunity to summarize that they are nothing more than applying basic human reasoning to CAD. Take any part you see lying around your operation — it doesn’t even have to be in CAD — maybe it’s better if its not. Just look at it and see if you can name some of the design intent that clearly exists in the part (and of course a physical part has no sketches and history tree). What do you see? Stuff lined up? Stuff tangent?

I’d bet some things you are going to see (depending on the part) are;   1. The part is symmetrical.  2. There are tangencies between faces.  3. There are holes that all line up, either sharing the the same axis, or all in a row along X or Y  4. There are faces that are clearly in the same plane.   Do you suppose these things happened by accident? No, someone (maybe you) designed it that way. You don’t need a sketch and a history tree to tell you that — you as a human can look at it and see that design intent in the final part very clearly. Why can’t the CAD system see this?   Answer: It can. That is what Live Rules is –> Applying basic human-level analysis to a part to mine the intent that is inherent in it. Then, its up to you if you want to override that reasoning on a case by case basis, or let it do what is naturally apparent in that part to humans (and now to CAD via Live Rules).

Dan Staples  Director, Solid Edge Product Development”

I had an incident in my shop this past week reflects upon what he said. A friend of mine had a part cut wrong and he brought it over for me to weld the boo-boo so it could be recut. When you do a weld fill-in on a cut part it is always best to rough recut it before you leave the welder’s shop if you can. You can have low spots very easily as you have a fine line to walk between just enough and gobbing way to much on a part just to make sure.

Now for some reason Bobby just could not remember that my lathe was not the one in his shop he was used to using. So he would start it up and then immediately reverse it because it was going the wrong way. I let him do that a couple of times before I stopped him and pointed out that it was hard on my lathe for him to do that. He sheepishly admitted he knew that but my lathe was wired wrong. So I pointed out to him the logic behind the engage lever. I said think of the direction of rotation you want to go in and pull the lever in that direction and you can’t go wrong. My creature of habit friend never did it again once it was explained to him in those terms.

What you say about ST makes perfect sense to me Dan. ST is a different mind-set and while it does not do it all it does so much very well I can’t imagine working without it for the parts my company makes.

There is a learning curve with ST and a logic mind-set and as is true with any tool it can’t be used for everything. But once you use it I dare say that there will be no return to a world of straight history based parts creation. The power of direct editing is to powerful to ignore.

This is a go no go plate for checking filled capsules for defects like split caps. If there is a split the capsule will not fall through.  The holes have two draft angles and a cylinder. Now with ST I can create this plate as I did before meeting with my client without knowing precisely the size of the cylinder. He brought the data with him and I sat down and edited the hole that was the origin of the pattern and had a correct resized part in seconds. Literally. It is always a bit amusing to see a customer sit down for the taking of time for the editing of the part he knows is coming. He is used to traditional  history based editing after all. On a part like this it took perhaps a half-minute from beginning to end. In the future there will be other capsule sizes and each one will take more time to open the original part file and create a new file name and save the new derived part than it will to edit and  create a whole new part size. When you turn to your customer and say “thats it, were done” it is good manners not to tell them to pick their jaw up off of the table 😀

 

A change of mindset and learning new logic has been tremendously productive for this shop. I look at parts like this and remember how it used to be and I don’t ever want to go back.

 

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