Tag Archives: Inventor

Solid Edge University 2014 Update

Posted on May 2, 2014 | Leave a comment

It is with a great deal of regret and sadness that I announce that I will not be going to SEU this year so you will have to tune into other venues for updates about Solid Edge. I hear there will be good things to see there so if you have a chance to go consider it. The incentives are all gone though so it will be full ticket for everything and none of the goodies that expired at the end of April. I am a huge fan of Solid Edge and believe it to be the best midrange MCAD program out there. If you don’t know about it and you earn a living designing parts you are only hurting yourself.

Due to ancillary things that have nothing to do with this most capable program itself rather than spending my own money again for everything I have elected instead to earn some and will be working. All I am going to say here is that you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.

I have had updates with Camworks because I am involved in the process and as more information becomes available that I can talk about I will. Suffice it to say that the SP2 update with assemblies has been delayed and the Geometric guys are working feverishly to get this done. The choice was made to fix some stuff rather than release something not quite right and it is turning out to be more complicated than they thought it would be. They are also of course working on the Job Shop tech Data Base and making good progress there. We had an update discussion last Friday about this and I will say without a doubt that the right things are being done as quickly as they can do it.

I wish to give a little tribute to Rick Mason from Australia. He was at the very first Solid Edge V1 rollout with Kim Corbridge and has been with the program since. Rick has been a major contributor with his ability to use SE and has been willing to pass his knowledge along to anyone who is interested. “Ricks Rules”, a methodology for robust ordered modeling I have personally heard mentioned with reverence by some of the programmers in Huntsville. Rick is also proof that ordered Dinosaurs can learn to feel the Synchronous love with a little effort 🙂 Sorry to miss your “Blunder Down Under” last appearance at the main SE events and wish you the best of everything.

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Nomination for Design Excellence

Posted on April 15, 2014 | 4 comments

There are times where you buy a consumer product that is so complete so innovative and so revolutionary in design that you are compelled to regard the genius behind such a thing in wonder. Here we have a common, well at least I thought it was commonplace item in most houses and many vehicles. A utilitarian device meant for both hot and cold climes and contents supremely purposed for YOUR satisfaction. Howdja like that PR and Marketing bit of babble speak there eh? At least I did not and nor did these wonder purposed universal utilitarian hot or cold multi-delivery enhanced designed containers purveyors state 200% increase over your current whatever. Be grateful for the small things in life which can mean so much when you are spared them. Ready to see this wonder of technology? Hint, it comes with a convertible handle and content containment device that will automatically work with the handles detente that allows for right or left hand use. Apparently there may be a third hand or perhaps even more ways too but I presume they have not fully developed a market yet for this and so just two hands are mentioned at this time. Please note that the picture shows the device in it’s left handle detente position.

RT or LT hand cup and manual

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Job Shop Tech Data Base for CAMWorks

Posted on March 31, 2014 | 3 comments

One of the paradoxes for me with CAMWorks is how the power that resides within the program has been difficult to unlock for quite some time. It was like two people with differing viewpoints and practical experiences determined the idea of Feature recognition and then the implementation of the same. One was brilliant and the other was, well lets just say that the other one was a programmer that probably figured chips came packaged in various flavors for your eating delight.

This is no longer the case and here is what is going on. As I type this work has been ongoing for a few weeks and will continue until done. This is not a back shelf finish it someday project but one that has priority and I fully expect that it will be completed this year. So just what is this Jobshop TDB?

There are two aspects to this and they are as follows. The tool library is being updated to current use and practices tooling using current available tools from current manufacturing catalogues. No more will you have to deal with a library that just had tools thrown in there to occupy spots. Real tools readily available and a reduction in overall quantities of tools. Tools bought often enough that companies make and stock them on the shelf as regular demand tools. Two, three, four and five flute end mills for instance will be in there in various substrates. In particular this is beneficial for things like Volumill where so many of the strategies involve three and five fluters. Now these will be there and you will be able to create your high performance tool paths out of the box with an expectation that the majority of your common use tools will already be there.

The second aspect of the rework is that the basic strategies used for cutting are being revamped by experienced machinists who are aware of proper cutting strategies so that once again out of the box what will be there will in many cases be immediately useable. Now look, I understand that there will have to be tweaking to dial in to your favorite exact strategies. But what is the big deal here is that for the first time ever CAMWorks is going to deliver something that will get you up and running pretty darned painlessly and afford you the luxury of developing your exact strategies and learning how to use the TDB over time. Quite a change from what there is today where you have to constantly fight this thing and learn to tame it before you see the potential become the reality. Feature Recognition with CAMWorks is the industry best and getting the practical immediate benefit of it without tons of fiddling around has just become a reality coming soon to you.

The TDB is common to both SE and SW users by the way so rejoice all you CAMWorks SW users, you to are going to see this come your way also. I know in speaking to SW users that this has been the principal major complaint expressed to me over time.

I like the moniker that Geometric has chosen in Jobshop TDB. But it is more than just a title or name it is the intent behind what they are doing and why they are doing it. It is a recognition that our time has value too and that there needed to be out of the box a far more user-friendly way of implementing this program. A recognition if you will of the hurry-hurry world so many of us live in where another complicated paradigm to master before becoming productive is not what we want or need.

I was not kidding a post or two ago when I compared this to the evolution of SE from ST2 to ST3. It was when SE learned to effectively communicate with itself yielding efficiencies that many of us though should have been there for ST1. In many ways I consider ST3 to be the first release of SE as it was meant to be. And like SE now CAMWorks is going through the same metamorphosis and the benefits to the user base are going to be considerable. I don’t know what stage Geometric will be at with this for SEU 2014 but I consider this to be one of the biggest “new” program features I am aware of at this event and probably the single most important one for those of us who use both SE and CAMWorks and then make what we design.

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CAMWorks for Solid Edge ASSEMBLIES Are Here

Posted on March 26, 2014 | 2 comments

Just a short post today to notify those Solid Edge users who have been long waiting for this that the date is 4-14 for the release of CAMWorks 2014 SP2 which will have assemblies mode for SE in it. I for one have been looking forward to this as it will simplify my life for sure. The day may shift but not by much and Geometric is confident enough on this date that they gave me the go ahead to announce it.

CW4SE assemblies mode

Ain’t it purdy 🙂

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Big Changes On The Way For CAMWorks for Solid Edge

Posted on March 25, 2014 | Leave a comment

I am sitting here excited this morning about some upcoming changes to CW4SE and I assume this will also bleed over into the SW side of things too but I have to confirm this. How many of you remember the transition from SE ST2 to ST3 and what made it so powerful? In truth this was the most beneficial of all the ST series version updates for the simple fact that it unified and made far easier work flow and file management. It took various aspects of SE from the Synchronous side and the ordered side and made them play together. Since then there have been a number of great refinements to how it all works together. Indeed not only that but in general how well the ST side worked. Ordered was not new and so it did not need this degree of work although the ability to blend the two work flow types was important.

But what this whole transition was really about over the years was taking concepts from academic to work place practicality and putting tools of productivity into user hands. I will be able to go into far greater detail soon but rest assured that this year Geometric is taking CAMWorks into an evolutionary process every bit as great as ST2 to ST3 was. The effort is on to have some of this finished before SEU2014. In some ways I think there are two parallels here between SE and CW. Just like the progress in capabilities happened. And just like the capabilities progress happened many thought, and I tend to agree, that the real launch of Solid Edge Synchronous Tech was in ST3. ST1 and ST2 were the warm ups to a full-fledged program ready for prime time manifested in ST3. This is the significance I attach to what is going on with CAMWorks right now.

I am a shop that builds more than I design and so the ability to manufacture here is probably more important than designing here. We all know shops that are job shops with little design capabilities that have just enough design talent to bring in files to be used for CAM plans. The other end of the spectrum is a shop like mine where we design build and reverse engineer and go through all the steps. But the truth is that at the end of the day my manufacturing software is often of greater importance. I can take a mediocre design program and fiddle around with it until I get to a workable part. But when it comes to machine time on expensive equipment and consumables that can run you over $50.00 per hour in addition to the cost of the shop and the material used your CAM program becomes extremely important to your bottom line. I only have to design a part once but may have to cut it thousands of times so the most beneficial efficiency dollar saved/earned improvements will be found for my bottom line in production software. Like CAMWorks. The basic power of CW is a given but getting there has been a problem for some time and unless you have dedicated programmers on hand to correctly implement the program as it has been you never see its potential realized.

This is all being changed in a big way so stay tuned. If this is all done right I believe that CW will become a force to be reckoned with in the CAM world instead of just another good but complicated to use CAM program.

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Value Is In The Eye Of The Beholder

Posted on February 24, 2014 | 4 comments

This paragraph is added on 3-26-14. Since this post is still being read fairly often I think it only fair to say that since the original post the situation has changed dramatically. The whole Tech Data Base is going to be reworked and indeed this has already begun. If it goes as I think it will the vast majority of all my complaints will be history soon and CAMWorks will take the place it should have had some time back as both powerful and readily useable. In other words for both major facilities with dedicated programmers and simple one man operations like mine. BIG things peering over the horizon for all CAMWorks users so don’t worry be happy. 🙂 Received yesterday this little notice to. The expected release date for assembly mode machining is 14th Apr. This could shift a few days but the time for this is at hand.

I want to note to readers of this post that Geometric is going to take some time this week to show me how I can work the way I want to work in CAMWorks 4SE, if indeed this is possible. I have had a couple of bad weeks with this program and I hope they can show me a better way to use CW4SE without having to fool around with this TDB.There have also been weird things that just happen that tell me there are still bugs to be worked out to. If I ever elect to use the TDB I want it to not interfere with what pays my bills on any given day and be implemented at my convenience and time of choosing to do so. Some of what I write below may change if my current opinion on things changes. Some like pricing and value will not because my idea of prices and value differs from Geometrics. In any case on to the post.

An interesting letter was received here the other day. But first the reason for the letters existence. I have had some very frustrating days with CAMWorks 4SE recently and some is due to my lack of knowledge I am sure and some is due to a rarely improved methodology for their Tech Data Base and how complex and pervasive it is to your decision as to how to use the program. In order to make automatic feature recognition work well you have to embark on a series of never-ending creations of entries of page after page after page of stuff for each type of scenario you wish in little undersized boxes that often can’t be expanded and you have to scroll back and forth in continuously. So if you cut 20 differing materials with say an irregular pocket in it you now have to figure 20 different procedures and save these and the TDB will recognize these when you bring in a part. And then add in the additional strategies of roughing and cutting and the assignment of these to the material types. Can you see the possibilities here for numerous additions that all take time and will at best merely be close in many cases? What I mean by this is that there is a limit to how many of these you will enter into the TDB and at that point in time there will still be feeds and speeds and cuts you will need to input for a particular situation.

The TDB can’t be omniscient. So just how much time does this thing ever really save me at the end of a year with all this added complexity to deal with. None as far as I see it right now and it will add complexity and require I learn things I would rather not have to. I have enough on my plate already. If Geometric wants to appeal to small and large shops they should offer two ways of CAM creation. One with and one without this TDB crammed full of useful tools like two and four flute 11/32 endmills. I don’t think I have ever even seen one of these but it’s there along with hundreds of other similar ones. And even though Volumill which recommends 3 and 5 fluters for most work is a part of the program it is not a part of the TDB or tool library because not one of these is in there. Get ready to spend some time entering in useful tools and sizes that reflect what you actually buy in real life and removing ones that do not. Theoretically you can do this by creating and using tools out of just one tool crib in CW4SE but I have not been able to figure this out. This is one of the things I hope Geometric will be able to show me how do to in a simple and quick fashion and I really hope they are right and I am wrong on this one. I have my money spent and at the end of the day I do want this to work after all.

There is another way and it is the way HSMWorks does it where you select with three easy fill in the blank and select prompts which quickly create the tools in your CAM plan and just fill in the blanks for the rest and go. This whole process takes little time and it tailors your CAM plan to your specific needs right there and then. A friend of mine has this close by and he has a pressure cooker job shop situation. I stopped by there last week to have a look and he cuts a ton of different things and the tool paths are generated quickly and easily. AND there is no reliance on some byzantine TDB set up procedure to make it all work.

So, the eye of the beholder and just what did this one see. The TDB combined with Feature Recognition is a very powerful tool and I can see serious production facilities with dedicated CAM programmers who have the time to use this and set up for it benefitting. For a shop that may not cut a part for a month because the work did not require any mill time it becomes an unneeded burden of complexity that does not save any time and complicates your life. My friend evaluated CW and HSM at the same time and HSM won. Easy to learn and implement and if you really feel you need automation of your strategies there are templates you can set up for THAT situation and not have to fool around with this TDB idea. Look, all these things that fascinate programmers with the absolute majestic beauty of this programmers wonder they have come up with, this thing they never have to learn from scratch or use in a production environment if indeed they even know what a chip looks like, are not fascinating to someone who just spent a gob of cash to buy a program they just want to work. Without needless complexity and decisions made to favor a shop with little time to learn and simplicity of implementation and add to this good tool paths. Obviously tool paths that work well are an essential ingredient and I assume you readers understand without me elaborating on this any more that this is a primary requirement that has to be in place.

Now about this letter I received. I was chided a bit for not appreciating the value of what was in CW4SE. The guy who works for Geometric felt they were offering good value and my reply was he was not a buyer and hardly had an unbiased opinion. That true value is in the eye of the beholder and the amount of cash they are willing to spend to express interest in something. One of the things I have striven to do is to remember that I am just another user. I look for advice on programs as best as I can and try to determine the truth behind what I read and see in person. I am an unabashed fan of Solid Edge. I think it is the flat-out best out there for mid range MCAD and so it is not hard to talk about it in glowing terms and feel that even though I may gush a bit at times it is all still honest and it is what I bought with my money and use with satisfaction. Then there are things like CW4SE where after some time I have big warning flags raised and questions as to exactly what type of shop should be buying into it. It is a lot of money and right at 18% yearly cost of purchase fees to stay current and complex to implement the way they have designed the program to be used. Plus they have been charging full ticket to customers even though this unfinished program still can’t import and use assemblies. This has impacted my work negatively and even though I have paid for it I still don’t have it. I have a set of extrusion dies that I would like to cut as assemblies and I can’t so instead I have to redo the whole thing into a separately created part whose volume and exterior shape mimics the assembly and this is a waste of my time.

What creates value anyway? For my shop it is not five axis or four axis. At least not yet anyway. It is not full-blown G Code machine verification. It is not metallic looking surfaces on verification. It is not a tech data base that is complicated to set up. It is quick and easy to create cam plans with great tool paths for up to three axis parts and two axis lathe. I don’t know what percentage of the market for CAM programs falls into this category but I suspect it to be the vast majority. I don’t have the time or desire to introduce unneeded complication into my days. I also don’t have the desire to pay extra for all these things I do not use or want to use. Make no mistake when you buy the three axis program or the two axis program you are supporting lots of things you did not want and will probably never want. This is true today for almost all software and Microsoft Office comes to mind. We all have it but only use parts of it but at least the price tag is reasonable. So how to choose? What is value? What represents value to YOU.

I am looking at HSMWorks and CAMWorks right now with this thought in mind. One is complex and about twice as expensive to buy initially. And one is one-third the cost annually from then on. One is attached to the CAD program I love and one is attached to that wreck called Inventor or SW which is another place I do not want to be in. One is quick to learn and implement and the other is not. At this point in time I advise CAM buyers that they should be very careful and meticulous in their evaluations of CW4SE. As a matter of fact I consider the idea of a 45 day full trial for CW4SE with tech support made available to you the only condition allowable for you to make an informed decision. If you can’t get this then caveat emptor. And they need to complete the product and make sure the bugs are out of it. I also think they should update the ease of implementing this TDB strategy and the programmer never cut a chip in his life tool database and be aware that few tools you will use are in there. Be fully aware of just what exactly this TDB will mean in time to execute correctly to make it work. As compared to out of the box functionality quick and easy to learn. There are solid reasons for choosing one over the other depending on the size of your operation and the degree of automation you may be able to achieve under certain circumstances and I chose these words deliberately. As far as I can tell the time to use fill in the blanks HSM is not much more time-consuming than a filled in after great time and effort TDB would be. Now some guys at Geometric aware of my frustrations and complaints are going to take the time to educate me as to how to work the way I want to work in CW4SE. My metric for comparison will be how long it takes to do the same things in HSM based on same parts and watching how my friend does it with these. Time will be time and complexity will be complexity. But right off the bat CW4SE is twice as expensive and even more so for ever after.

Value IS in the eyes of the beholders and if you Geometric guys think you are worth twice the price for what you deliver the proof will be in sales volume. Value is not what you wave a magic wand over and then declare it to be. It is what educated buyers or slick salesmen who can sell anything to anyone make it to be. I would rather depend upon honest value myself and at this time my advice to anyone who wishes to buy CAMWorks is to evaluate carefully what you need and what you wish to spend today and forever more. Integration is a great thing to have but it is not an end all be all unless all parts are right for each other and the intended market.

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Autodesk May Be Off My Hate You List

Posted on February 18, 2014 | 2 comments

Just a short post on this today. All the publicity I have seen for some time for Autodesk has been strictly cloud promotion oriented. I have been having some rather lengthy conversations with Anthony Graves about CAM and Autodesk things in general this last week. He expressed some surprise that I thought Autodesk was going to just the cloud. He was quick to point out that this is not so and some prices over at the Autodesk site seemed to bear this out.

I have been told that in the near future publicity for Autodesk will not overlook this desktop paradigm and indeed it is not in their plans at all to phase this out. Seeing will be believing and they have to publicly start making mention of this as official policy with time frames for it to be real to me. I am impressed with Anthony and not only is he a first-rate eloquent and knowledgeable advocate for HSMWorks he is also one for Autodesk. He tells me it has never been the intent by Autodesk to go purely cloud for the foreseeable future.

Software authoring companies might want to consider something here. All of you. What is the message you are really giving to readers and seekers of knowledge? Do you wonder why your plans and intents are not being accurately perceived by the public? I have looked a lot for info RE Autodesk and the cloud and honestly this is all I hear about and it is the only future way of operating I hear about so just what am I to conclude? And if you mean you think the cloud will be ubiquitous and technical problems all solved in ten or twenty years but not now why not say it that way? And I am most certainly not alone in this impression. And then in addition nothing ever comes out from Autodesk to correct this idea many of us have. So if you persist in half messages I am going to persist in comments based upon half reality because you made it so.

Sorry Dassault, I am not talking about you today as I think you guys are truly wacko and sold out to some sort of social media group think CADCAM thing. This thing you hope will sell to enough of those kids with iWhatever tunnel vision blinders surgically attached to their ears and lives to the exclusion of reality around them. An alternate universe that will go Nova when their batteries fail. I can see the sweaty palms as panic sets in. Thumbs futilely twitching the device as fear of having to actually talk to someone sets in. You know these people as the ones at the restaurant enjoying their night out as each sits there in silence never looking or talking to each other with their eyes glued to their iThings. The Dassault future world as far as I can see.

In this day of the internet what you say and what you don’t say carry equal weight. Your poor message or lack of messages can sink your future just as surely as poor technical capabilities can and word WILL get out for better or worse. This word can be negatively and severely exacerbated by your lack of product improvements or your lack of correct or corrective information.

This of course assumes that you have a marketing department of quality to begin with to do these things.

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Retired And Bored, What To Do?

Posted on February 18, 2014 | 2 comments

There are some videos you run across by accident that can be quite amusing at times. I live right next to my shop and so travel will never be a problem to get to work. Or to the play room when I get around to semi retirement. It is my goal in the next few years to develop a few lines of manufactured goods and hire a few people to do this so that I will not have to be here all the time. Now with this new-found free time what to do?

Men are quite free compared to women. For instance I can bet your wife has asked you when will you ever grow up as her eyes roll backwards and that expression of smug superiority is put in place. Admit it now. If it has not happened yet and you have a sense of humor and a lighthearted outlook on life your day is coming too when you will be asked to artificially age your mind to match your body. It is just a women thing I guess and they think you need to get all serious and grown up just like they are. But here is my reply to this nearly universal, I fear, womanly request. A request which I suspect is ignored in most cases and for sure in mine.

I want to build one of these and invite the grandchildren over. Check out the treasure this guy has for a wife as she assists the launch and overcomes her maturity straightjacket 🙂

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CAM Tech Support Is Needed When It Is Needed

Posted on February 17, 2014 | Leave a comment

OK today you get to hear Dave vent again. An unprecedented action I am sure. But I think something needs to be made clear here about the value of time to customers VS the value of time to VAR’s and CAD CAM companies. This involves CAM and it has an entirely different concern than CAD and here is the situation as I see it.

You have a part and a deadline for this part and you need to cut it TODAY. It is not like CAD where there are other things you can do in the mean time. You have one goal and one purpose in life this day and it is to cut this important part. So the VAR and the software companies try to walk a fine line between being frugal with their costs and I get all that. I do the same thing and that is why when I have an $84,500.00 dollar mill sitting there and a customer breathing down my neck with a rush job I really really understand costs. The cost to ME when I can’t get timely support for whatever reason. There are other times when you have a part on the mill and a problem and you really don’t want to take it off and do another part. You are dialed in and no relocation zeroing problems until you remove this part just so you can move on and come back to it later. There is some kind of immutable law written somewhere I am sure that says the more variables you introduce into your manufacturing life the more problems you will have. So we like to finish what we have started from beginning to end. It is not in any way shape or form like coming back to revisit your CAD file which is pretty painless.

That $400.00 chunk of metal sits and looks at you because you could not get support and it has problems from bad cuts. You machine shop owners all know what I am talking about. You have heard that silly stuff about just wait until tomorrow or Monday because you have the nerve to be cutting late at night or on a weekend. So you can’t wait and you take a chance and now the scrap that comes out of your pocket. Since it seems that all these CAM companies and VAR’s that sell this stuff do this is has become a condition we buyers have to suffer under. Where the customer is not king except for our customers who demand this from us and we have to service them to pay our bills. They never cut us any slack is the way it is most of the time.

Today I want to mention a rather good experience I had happen in regards to support. I call Ally PLM and I am sure I sounded as frustrated over the CAM support guy being out of the office as I was in real life. However I get a call from the CAM guy about ten minutes later and he pulls to the side of the road and gets his laptop out and has an answer for me in short order. Now I know I am not going to get him after hours but I can say for sure today I am off the hook because of a timely response.

I can’t begin to tell all you CAM authors and program vendors how important this is to us and we do not view what happens with CAM the same forgiving way we view what happens with CAD. Tip of the hat today to Ally PLM, thanks.

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The Autodesk Juggernaut Starts Rolling

Posted on February 12, 2014 | 4 comments

One of the things that started my sojourn into blogging was interest in CAD and CAM in general. This of course means interest in topics besides my CAD CAM flavors of personal choice and I have always watched what others are doing. The cloud has in many ways been tied for equal interest with software as it may have such a profound effect upon how we do business in the future for those who foolishly go there. The other side of the coin which was alarming to me and the single largest reason I have had for posting bad things about Autodesk and Dassault’s Solid Works was the idea that they were going to try to force the cloud upon users whether they wanted it or not. I believe that if this paradigm were to be proven successful that other companies would probably follow this path to if vendor and cloud lock in with forced subscription only models for these two companies proves to be successful. Other than that the software from these two is what it is and if they dump this cloud garbage I would not have a whole lot to say about them because at that time they would not represent a potential threat to my future anymore.

Today just for the heck of it I went to this Autodesk site. http://cam.autodesk.com/pricing

Autodesk Juggernaut

Now I have to admit that this is the first real evidence I have found that the cloud is not inevitable here contrary to the statements made by Carl Bass. It would serve him well I think to clarify just what really is going to happen here. But at least at this current time cloud and not cloud are available. But what most impressed me were the we want you as customers prices. And per comments from Autodesk regarding a question from Al Dean the other day that Delcams PowerShape had technology in it including Direct Editing that would be incorporated into future versions of Inventor.

Autodesk is gearing up here for conquest. Look at the prices for just HSMWorks on this web page and it is the same as the prices will be for Inventor HSM. Except that HSMWorks will be + your full price seat of Solid Works and I would imagine two maintenance payments per year. If Autodesk really does a good job of integrating direct editing and other needed capabilities into Inventor and they make it the equal of Solid Edge or Solid Works and maintain this pricing it will be hands down the value leader in mid range MCAD and CAM combos.

I like HSMWorks. The Tech data base in Camworks IF you spent the time to implement all the stuff needed to make it work will get you quick toolpaths on most of your parts. As a matter of fact it is the best out there for Feature recognition but set up is a fairly involved process. Volumill is the very best HSM strategy out there right now and HSMWorks does not license it so plus another one for CAMWorks. HSMWorks does not offer these two things but I have to say that for those shops that just want good tool paths quick to learn and not cumbersome to set up HSMWorks is pretty darned good. They also have their own version of HSM which is capable. A friend of mine close by has one of those pressure cooker job shops and he swears by it and does a lot of different stuff each day. To be honest HSMWorks was my first choice for integration with SE back when I was asked to look at CAM programs for possible integration with SE.

In this day and time with each dollar counting more and more I believe that if Autodesk keeps permanent seats available this combination of Inventor HSM is going to be tough to beat as value leader. Now I presume that they intend to make Inventor into being more capable. But even if they don’t it is still way cheap and for that kind of money many will make the choice to just deal with a cam program that is not fully integrated with their CAD as long as Inventor handles imported parts well. Retail on SE and CW4SE up to 3 axis + Volumill 3 axis + turning is now right at $18,000.00 or $19,000.00 and there is not too much to be had in the deal zone off of that. My maintenance on this duo is going to be right at $4,000.00 per year and I bet yours will be to if you buy this. I don’t know what a full five axis and mill turn seat would cost from CW4SE but I suspect it would crowd you real close to $20,000.00 just like Mastercam would and probably be $4,000.00 per year on maintenance and with the additional maintenance from SE would add up to $5,500.00 or more per year. I also have no way of judging the relative capabilities of HSM versus CW4SE when you get into 4 and 5 axis and mill turn because I have never cut parts doing this. The labels however say these two can do it and I can say that after a trial of HSMWorks I did about two years ago if the capabilities of the rest of HSM are as good as the three axis stuff was it is more than capable.

That rumbling sound from down the road and just over the hill where you can’t quite see it yet just might be the Autodesk Jugernaught heading straight for you.

UPDATE 2-14
I have been told that the maintenance for the inventor and HSMWorks combo is 11 or 12% per year. This gets back to the idea of compelling potential customers to consider you and to keeping customers as customers with reasonable prices. Money is money and as a small business man my bottom line is more important to me than Siemens or Geometrics. So we have for new customers with SE and CW4SE to get what I have will be $18,000.00 plus $4,000.00 per year and a cam program I am getting increasingly irritated with. I don’t think I like this TDB and I would rather have templates if I were to be interested in automation at all. I am hoping someone shows me how to work the way I want to work with CW4SE and I will be all smiles soon. Then there is the $9,990.00 price above for cad and cam and only say $1,200.00 per year and I get a cam program that does things the way I want it to. I have to admit to sitting here and thinking real hard about where my future money will go because the payback with this HSM stuff is three years based on my recurring costs with SE CW4SE.Then I would have annual costs of one third what I will have if I continue the SE CW4SE path I am on. It is my money and it does have to be earned if you want some of it. I have a lot of thoughts wandering around in my mind right now that I never thought I would have three months ago. If Autodesk promises to maintain desktop permanent seats indefinitely and I feel I can trust them to do so I may just buy into it. Truthfully CAM is the most important part of my business in some ways because I may only design something once but make thousands of them afterwards. It is just as important for my CAM to work right as my CAD because I am a manufacturer and the recurring costs are a part of my profit picture. I have to admit that when my must pay maintenance jumped over 4G recently it was a wake up call that began to ask the question do you really want to be here.

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