Tag Archives: Solidedge

CAMWorks for SW 2015 and CAMWorks for Solid Edge ST8

Posted on July 3, 2015 | 2 comments

Tricked you didn’t I heh-heh. Here you might have thought I had the scoop on CW4SE ST8 but nahhhhhh. I figure CW4SE ST8 is going to be a Christmas or New Years present and Geometric aint sayin nuthin just like always.

( UPDATE  7-14

As amazing as it may seem today I go to the Geometric CW4SE site and  the ST8 version is there. Of course no communication from Geometric about this I can find. Maybe their ears are burning as well they should be.  To little to late for this guy but if you are still on maintenance it is there.)

Sometimes I just can’t help myself. The masochistic side prevails and I go to the Geometric forums to see what is going on. Geometric on the SW side of things has I have decided earned a new motto. It was earned some time back for SE though and I propose the adoption of “Program Farter,Machine Disaster” as the new motto for all the Geometric CAM endeavors.

For those of you who might be in a moment of severe mental confusion and considering the purchase of Geometric CAM please continue on. For those of you whom sanity has prevailed upon and you know better you may leave now. Unless of course you like the bizzare humor of the CAMWorks world. Then I encourage you to read on and smile with me as a past CW4SE victim observes the Geometric world of today. Kind of a fourth of July celebration here as we watch Geometrics blowing up.

First up is the robust and well attended Solid Edge CW4SE fan club forum update.

Solid Edge CAMWorks forum posts

The screen capture is far more eloquent than I ever could be. There is no more damning thing I can think of than this simple and stark evidence of what paying customers from Solid Edge who were to a man excited to be here initially think of their choice now. Perhaps for ST8 if there are any CW4SE users left they will get the use an ST8 CW4SE version that will exceed the two month duration of half usable ST7 CW4SE. Quite frankly I don’t see how Geometric can continue to even try to support CW4SE. They have completely alienated their existing customers and the word is out keeping any new ones away. As far as I am concerned Geometric does not have the talent, the financial resources nor the dedicated to quality management ethos to make their product work and then prove the value to an SE market they have screwed over with a bad product. So they hide from the world and their customers. Those poor souls whose only contact is the annual maintenance invoice. Somehow reporting the progress or lack thereof to people who rely on Geometric to earn a living is not as worthy and not communicated. Plain spoken word alert for the following comment. You have to be completely misinformed or insane to consider buying CAMWorks of any flavor at this time.

Say, lets do some math. If you bought CW4SE last year and had 3axis mill and Volumill along with two axis turning you spent over $13,000.00 and maintenance was $2,500.00. ST7 was released 8-8-14 and it was not until 4-29-15 that a mostly working CW4SE version was out. Well at least the milling side as Lathe never has. Lets say you use CW4SE for five years which is 5 x $2,500.00 + $13,000.00 for a total of $25,500.00. Divide this by 60 and you get $425.00 per month cost. You had basically 2 months from the release of CW4SE SP1 until ST8 came out and CW4SE was obsolete again. So our final number is 9 x $425.00 for two months usage. Cost of ownership——-$1,912.50 PER MONTH for CW4SE alone. SE is eminently usable the second you get your hands on it. SE Classic is $1,500.00 per year maintenance x 5 = $7,500.00 + $6,900.00 roughly for the program or $240.00 per month over five years. You have to use CAMWorks with SW or SE. So the true cost of CW4SE for ST7 for two months use is 9 x $240.00 + $425.00 or $2,992.50 PER MONTH. You can figure your own numbers for how much you lost during the months you could not use CW4SE and add this to the overall cost.

Geometric please note that my cost for Inventor Pro HSM using the same metric for five years for CAD and CAM everything Autodesk has to offer is a gross of $17,500.00 for a real cost of $291.66 per month since the very second you get Inventor Pro HSM everything works. This does not even get into the calculation of how much time does it take to output worth while code where in my experience CW4SE can consume whole days and get you no where. Where the very best days only take three and four times as long as HSM to do simple things.

So with bombs bursting in air and owners angry eyed glare lets give truth to the fright because Geometric’s still there. Onward stalwart soul to the SW side.

I will say one thing for these SW guys. Geometric does not deserve such long suffering but still paying customers. I can’t for the life of me understand why these guys are still there. Darned few posts over on the SW side and it has been twenty or so posters that I can see for years now. Another ringing endorsement of customer satisfaction. Today we find……….

“Here we go again…

Home – Program Smarter, Machine Faster › Forums › User Forums › Universal Post Generator › Here we go again…

This topic contains 3 replies, has 3 voices, and was last updated by Dave Ault 2 seconds ago.
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July 1, 2015 at 7:59 AM
#38057
Reply

PPC Engineering

Participant
Topics Created: 28
Replies Created: 111

My lathe post has been a train wreck since day 1. My VAR was never able to provide something appropriate for my machine, so I have cobbled one together that works. It involves a lot of manual changes to the code after posting, but it gets me by.

I started using coordinate conversion (X,Y,Z) on my mill/turn machine instead of C-Axis interpolation (X,C,Z). I altered the .SRC file to include the required G137 at the beginning of the milling cycle to recognize the X,Y,Z coordinates but didn’t like where it put the command in the posted code. I dealt with it manually for a few weeks since we were busy and it only took a few seconds to move. So today, I decide to change it so it outputs the G137 in the correct spot, make the change in the .SRC file, compile the post and go to output and I get this.

(1/2 EM CRB 4FL 1 LOC)
()
G00 X30. Z30.
M05
T090909
N09
G17 M110
G94 SB=4250 M13
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
; Machine does not Support -Fixed Milling on OD
Z20.
X20.
M01

To be clear, this is all face milling and drilling being done with a 1/2″ end mill. I’m not even doing OD milling/drilling.

My first assumption is I screwed something up, so I go back and double check. All I did was remove a G:137 (with tags of course) from the first_rapid_z_move_down section and put it in the tool_change_mill and sub_tool_change_mill sections. I made sure to include the :T: and EOL commands. Now the kicker…I got frustrated messing with it and decided to revert back to an old post from a few months ago. I delete the new files, replace them with the old ones, compile and BOOM, same problem! This tells me it isn’t the standard post files causing the problem, since older files without the changes made to them don’t work either. Anyone have an idea of where to look to figure out why it is doing this all the sudden?
July 1, 2015 at 10:03 AM
#38067
Reply

PPC Engineering

Participant
Topics Created: 28
Replies Created: 111

Hmm, nevermind! I just recompiled (for the 10th time) and it went back to normal. I can’t imagine what the problem was but it seems to be working now.
July 2, 2015 at 5:16 AM
#38121
Reply

rainman

Participant
Topics Created: 19
Replies Created: 296

Not having any post issues with 2015, but numerous lathe issues… another buggy release by Geometric!
July 2, 2015 at 4:33 PM
#38157
Edit | Reply

Dave Ault

Participant
Topics Created: 2
Replies Created: 29

Program Farter, Machine Disaster. Well at least you guys have something. We got a month and a half of CW4SE for SE ST7 and then ST8 came out. Which of course CW does not recognize and I had to remove before ST8 would work with the license. So basically for a whole version release there was one and a half months of pretty buggy stuff to work with and now for those who stay with CW4SE how soon will they do anything for ST8? Merry Christmas I suppose so just be patient.

Does this Geometric clown posse ever do anything right? I am really bitter about all of this sorry saga with SE and I have to ask. If it has been this bad on the SW side too why do you guys stay? Can you afford these never ending glitches without taking a hit to your profits?

They wanted more money from me at the end of June for a program I could somewhat use for a couple of months the last year assuming I wanted to be current with my design program. Which I did because of worth while improvements. I went to Inventor HSM because I just could not handle the problems anymore. Funny thing here, the day Inventor 2016 was released HSM was fully functional and I did not have to wait one second to use it.”

Please note the above month and a half comment. When adding it all up it was two months but I am not going to go back and change it there.
No since you are wondering I did not add any lines to the OP’s first comment. The pure genius of real life exceeds anything I could have done.

A 4TH of July comment that has nothing to do with Geometric or CAD CAM. I am going to break a cardinal rule and talk politics here. It’s my blog and as far as I am concerned after these past few weeks and years some things need to be said. I have not done this in four years and may never do so again but today here it is.

Happy 4TH of July All. Get out there and blow stuff up and pollute the air with copious amounts of pyrotechnic smoke and noise. Maybe even shoot a demon possessed firearm. Celebrate freedom and what this country was founded on and for. Enjoy pissing off PC liberals and the anti-American racist Muslim radical in the White House and wave an American and a Confederate Flag this year. Perhaps a Don’t Tread On Me flag with a reason for existence just as real today as it was back then should be added.

Isn’t it strange how all these illegal immigrants come here and bitch about us and our ways after they make their own countries unlivable? Isn’t it funny how a man who is not provably a legal citizen is in the White house and breaking laws left and right to bring anyone but working honest Christians into the country? Isn’t it funny how bought and paid for mainstream media help tear down the things they have benefited from never understanding Stalin and Lenin called them useful idiots before they slaughtered them? Isn’t it funny how we have to work and these criminals come in here and get tax refunds for work they never paid taxes on much less earned legally as a citizen? While they rape rob and steal from those who built this country? It is time to stand up and be counted America. You legitimate citizens can’t hide from reality anymore and expect to pass anything worthwhile on to your grandchildren. There you go Democrats, for the children just like you advise.

Read what the Founding Fathers had to say in literature written by them in their day and time about tyranny and treacherous back stabbing leadership and think real hard. Read how intertwined the King James Bible and the Christian God Jesus of Nazareth was in their thinking and precepts for this nation in their own words from literature they personally wrote at that time. Think about how this nation rose from nothing to world leadership in so many ways in record time with record prosperity and freedoms because these concepts were considered and incorporated into the fabric of the USA. These Founding Father’s were wise with timeless wisdom and the proof is in the results generated in this unparalleled shining human endeavor called the United States of America.

We are at the cross roads and can’t afford to waste another election cycle re-electing or electing trash talking anti-Christian radical socialist heterophobic career politician serial lying Democrats and Rino’s whose sole desires appear to be the destruction of everything that made this country great. (Or sitting on our hands and not voting against this mess. You stay at home and you are a vote for the destruction of this country.) Who value the votes of illegals and fringe lunatics more than mine and I have had family here since the revolution. Choose, is it going to be rainbow lit White House socialist Muslims and their fellow traveler enablers running the insane asylum or is it going to be a Christian ethics dominated society again where you are guaranteed a stable and prosperous future as it was in the past.

I Pledge Allegiance to the flag
of the United States of America
and to the Republic
for which it stands,
one Nation under God,
indivisible,
with liberty and justice for all.

Teach it to your children and be prepared to defend it if you value what made America great. Freedom is not free and it will not long remain to the ignorant who willfully neglect to learn the truth and abide by it.

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Inventor Pro HSM Six Months In

Posted on June 25, 2015 | Leave a comment

Sometimes as a blogger there can be a compulsion to do SOMETHING all the time. If you happen to have to earn a living outside of blogging though time does get away from you. Sitting here this morning reflecting on various things and it dawned on me that day by day I have been using a new program for a while now and how remarkably trouble-free it has been. The trauma of CAMWorks for Solid Edge fades into the back ground as time passes and getting caught up in finally starting on my own line of manufactured equipment it’s easy to forget just how fundamentally life has been changed for the better here this past half year.

HSM has been a bit slow in development in some people’s eyes, notably SW users in the pace of improvements. These HSM guys have had a huge job on their plates the last two + years and have done well considering the numbers of people they have to dedicate to it. Speaking of which Autodesk has and is hiring new CAM people and while it will take a bit to get them up to speed these are additional resources being employed to speed the process up. Later this year the move over to some significant new logic in HSM should be done. One can go to the Autodesk CAM forums and read the gripes but I just sit there and think about where I came from and just how bad it really could be for these guys. Familiarity breeds contempt as the saying goes. I just use HSM and enjoy the rapid deployment of CAM plans and go on.

HSM has just plain worked here without any real complications and this is a problem. For a blogger that is. Unlike CAMWorks for SE where there are a ton of things you have to do (And extraordinary program coding complexities that can and do fail on you which is another topic I am happy to not have to rant about anymore) all the time. Or a labyrinth to wander through which can yield a ton of how to or commentary videos and articles. HSM is straight forward and quite simple in comparison. I did a video a while back https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lW6GfkmdSo Considering it this morning and how quick and easy it was to go from A to Z on a basic part and how do you follow that up?

There are other things as you get further into the program for sure but the basics of how to from zero setting to code posting is so simple. That perhaps is the biggest part of the genius behind HSM. Why make things overly complicated so you can try to fit every possible variable known to man? This kind of complexity takes time to use and set up and in the end unless you are going to cut tons of those parts does not benefit you time wise. Most of us would rather be able to knock out a CAM plan quickly with good to great tool paths and be done with it. Do most of us really want to spend hours trying to eke out that last millisecond of cut time? To take the same amount of time that in HSM does a number of parts for oneseys and twoseys or a handful as is typical for most of us?

Templates is something I am slowly learning about. There is not a lot of information out there and this surprises me. It is the way to go compared to trying to shoehorn tools, procedures and strategies into a Tech Data Base strategy which introduces so much complexity to code that it is impossible to do well. HSM is working on Templates and indeed already has more than I thought. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhITd_sAbdk will take you to a most excellent video that talks about setting default behavior and templates. I guess I am like most of us and I learn just enough to get out of the fire but not into the lake. Somewhere in the how too’s and literature I missed this default setting stuff and in combination with setting up templates I can see utilizing this a lot in days to come. It is nice to discover new good things today. I remember dreading every day in CW4SE and wondering what would go wrong now.

HSM is the primary reason I came to Inventor Pro HSM. I have recently started to create my parts in Inventor and as always the new program just does not do it as well as the one you have been using for years. You know, the one you have taken the time to learn. So the new kid gets beaten up on until you take the time to learn it to. Some of the logic behind the Inventor GUI is under my belt now and it is not bad just different. Since integrated CAD CAM is so much more efficient where it is possible the migration to Inventor has begun from SE. I can’t see that there is anything as powerful as Synchronous Tech in Inventor and working with imported parts is nowhere near as efficient in Inventor. How much of this is newby problems on my end and how much is reality I don’t know. For now though I am going to say SE is better by a wide margin in these two areas. The ability to use integration though means more and more all my new parts will be created in Inventor and the end for much work now done in SE is in sight. I am becoming more impressed with Inventor as time goes on.

Six months in to the belly of the beast is a time to reflect upon the philosophy of the company whose products you have bought into. Siemens has basically killed the public face of Solid Edge. I noticed today that even the once super active SE BBS has dropped of a lot in posting. Is it any wonder that people over time respond to what is put before them? 600,000+ posts at the Inventor forum and 60,000+ for SE was pretty shocking the first time I saw the numbers and it kind of put some things in perspective. The larger trained user base and potential for peer work relationships clearly belongs to Autodesk. They have worked for a long time to get here and you benefit from this. I now benefit from this and actually have files sent to me now by people using the same program for the first time in seven years. While I have been sent files from SE users for a variety of reasons they have never resulted in paying work. The closest I ever came to that was last fall and the problems with CW4SE shot that down because I could not guarantee parts delivery with all the problems going on with CW4SE. Let me restate that. I did not even quote the work because who knew when and if I could even do it?

Autodesk is doing everything right as far as I am concerned regarding making a software suite for people to make things by. The only fly in the ointment is this stupid insistence upon no more permanent licenses issued past this coming February. Now I am covered since I do have one and they are not going to stop updates to these as long as you remain current. And whatever you get will be permanent at that point in time if you ever do drop off. The price is right as the industries best bargain for what you get in Inventor Pro HSM or Inventor HSM. I can’t even buy worthwhile CAM alone from Autodesk’s competitors much less have it all from soup to nuts like I now have. Six months in and the value of this over anything else out there for what I do is proven every week.

I have to admit that the idea of no more permanent seats disgusts me. I also have to admit that after the debacle with CW4SE that I am tired of fighting stupidity or corporate arrogance and dismissal of customer concerns. I just want something that works and does so competently and for my days to be as painless as possible. I live in that world now. I have also taken care of my future concerns about stupid rental only data hostage taking. Hey, that’s what it is when you take idiot marketing cubical automatons cutesy verbal slants on reality away from the situation. What do they do when they train marketing people anyway? Do they teach them that by calling the foetid stench from a pig sty Organic Floral Essence somehow changes reality and their clever words really hide things from us? I don’t know about you but it insults me every time these people speak down to me and it seems like every one of these companies hire these goofs. I would rather they just be honest and say something like “at this time we will move to subscription only for new customers in the future. We want to preserve cash flow in the future because we think the world is heading into troubled times and we figure it is better for us and you the customer to make sure we survive long-term.” This is the only true benefit to Autodesk customers I can see out of this whole paradigm as in the end somehow being chattel always costs more and in ways not yet fully apparent.

People you are being warned ahead of time this may happen. Autodesk may not do this at all or for long if the response is bad. I happen to think it will be. Think Space Claim here. The reality is though once you get past corporate babblespeak PR stupidity Inventor Pro HSM is the best buy and getting your permanent seat before February if you are shopping for something new would be prudent. Do I think this data hostage thing is reason to stay away? No. It is reason to however make your move before it is too late and avoid the mess to begin with. There are so many compelling reasons to own this program that along with the price it mystifies me why this is even going to happen. It is the only thing Autodesk has done or is going to do that goes against the idea of value for money and selling new and existing customers on the merits of the program and ecosystem rather than just saying pay up or else. Personally speaking the old-fashioned way of earning my loyalty with value was what brought me here. Were I new and confronted with subscription only I would have walked on by. Time will tell how it all goes but don’t expect me to get to excited or say a whole lot about this. My life raft is in place and I like where I live today.

I can honestly say that today it is fun to work again. Well not when it is 95 and humid but you know what I mean. I don’t know how to calculate the true value of trouble-free productive days. All I can say is that I know I make more money and my wife really likes it when software is not putting me in a foul mood all the time. I happen to like not being in a foul mood to. Make chips, smile, go to the bank and come home to domestic bliss. What a deal.

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Solid Edge ST8 Is RTM and CW4SE Is Kaput Again

Posted on June 9, 2015 | Leave a comment

Much to my delight and amazement I received my license file on Saturday. Of course out here in cloud never never land the 4+GB file takes me about a day to finish but there it was finally and off I went. I have not had much time to play with it but walking through it this release seems to me to be primarily about fine tuning capabilities that are already there. Now I know there is some hoopla about working with Microsoft Surface pro’s and from what I gather this is considered perhaps the biggest “new” deal this year. I don’t plan on owning bitty screens and compromised power in the field so this is of absolutely no interest to me. Even at the age of 61 somehow I can still subject myself to the extreme burden of being a pack mule with 6 or 7 pounds of gear in tow. It’s tough to carry all that weight and I amaze myself with my never ending endurance. I get about seven hours in the field with my 15″ workstation laptop and can do anything I want. The extra battery is proof against no electricity but in practical experience it is rare that I can’t plug in if I wish.

I know the theory is about how convenient it may be for the uber small eviscerated CPU guys to show stuff to prospective clients but my customers and I somehow manage to get along. And quite frankly there are a lot of us who young and old have to wear glasses and don’t need the convenience of eyestrain compounding future problems.

But anyway on to ST8. I am in two worlds right now and the design is almost completely in SE and machining is totally Inventor Pro HSM. My old data from years of work is in SE and Inventor of all the major CAD programs has elected not to have a direct import of SE file types so bringing it all over would be a lot of work. I only work in Synchronous though and I intend to work VIA direct editing for the rest of my career. And of course as a half job shop and half design build entity there has to be a good way to deal with imported geometry. The very best way I know is with SE in hand. I hope for the day Inventor will step up to the plate in this area but until then I stay where work is most efficient. As of Inventor 2016 I still can’t import geometry and do basic things like assign driving and notational dimensions on imports from my parts. It is completely true with SE that what I bring in I can work on as though it were a native part with little loss of intelligence and that primarily in hole data.

My initial impression is that there are a lot of little things that are going to improve work flow based upon what I have read, been told and see in person with my cursory examination to date. SE is for this shop the very best MCAD program available. I very rarely get into complex surfacing and like the majority of shops around here will never see a fru-fru coffee pot or car tail light housing. So complex surfacing is something I have never and probably will never need to know and I am the wrong guy to give input on this. I will say though that I checked out “T-Slines” the other day in a video and the power there reminded me of some of the stuff I have seen in NX. Of course “T-Splines” along with other strategic buys is part and parcel of forward looking management at Autodesk in assembling in Inventor what will in time be the best mid range MCAD suite out there. I went to the app store touted by Siemens SE and just shook my head. SE guys don’t go to Autodesk or SW’s app sites unless you want a bad case of app program envy.

Autodesk is a forward looking company and T-Splines is now a part of Inventor. I have to say the pace of improvement with Inventor is greater than SE right now and looks to be for some time. I don’t expect to have these import problems in the somewhat near future and I figure Autodesk is working overtime to improve Inventor. You see the owner of Inventor wants things right and better whereas Siemens would kind of like the Red Headed step child to just go away. As Scott said buy the company. I trust the direction of Autodesk and I do not trust Siemens one bit to consider my future unless I buy into NX.

I will probably not do anything in the area of how to’s or videos for SE ST8. I will tell you my opinion and that is it as I refuse to spend time helping to promote such an inept group as Siemens and sadly they are the overlords of SE.

Well as you all know I have left CAMWorks for Solid Edge because of a boat load of problems. The 2015 SP1 release was I think their best yet since the involvement with SE. Sadly by this point in time I had moved on to the far greater simplicities and efficiencies found in Inventor HSM. Note to software companies. You make your customer mad enough to look elsewhere you better fear what they may find. So anyway after Geometric gets forced (Never forget they were forced into this. They had no concerns about product quality until a big public stink was made and it is their long time corporate management philosophy towards customers as far as I can tell.) into getting their act somewhat together I get the thrill of about a month and a half’s potential use out of it. Had trouble getting ST8 to work initially and one of the problems was— you guessed it—CW4SE.

CW4SE time to fail again

We could not get SE to run until this little jewel popped up and once the license server for CW4SE was shut down SE worked just fine. I am SHOCKED and sitting here in stunned disbelief that this could happen. Perhaps in a few months Geometric will get up and running for ST8 but I wont be there. Inventor Pro HSM 2016 in comparison worked from day one as an integrated program. My maintenance is up at the end of June and this headache is history. These will be my last comments about this most aggravating Geometric CW4SE saga and my cost per part cut with wasted time and the expense of the program and the inherent inefficiencies here far exceeded any rational performance expectations any business owner I know would have. I have no idea how bad sales for CW4SE are but Geometric deserves to sleep in the bed they have made for themselves. Check out the frenetic most recent post CW4SE user activity at Geometrics closed forum.

HaHa program smarter machine faster

The SW side of things there is pretty bleak too considering that this was the first integrated CAM program for SW and I don’t know what their market size is. I can tell you that HSM has been a topic of discussion over there too with users who vent extreme frustration over problems that never stop looking elsewhere. Geometric is pretty tone deaf and some of these fed up SW guys are begging them to get their act together or lose them. A situation very familiar to me.

Buy SE ST8 for the efficiencies it can bring to your in-house and imported parts and family of parts designs. I think even big SW and Inventor shops should have one seat as a secret weapon back there somewhere. Avoid SE because Siemens does not care if market share in seats will ever get you work or trained individuals to hire. Buy Autodesk for the future and for todays economic savings as inventor Pro HSM is by far the best deal out there right now and you won’t have to train anyone with a ready and available labor market. For the same $1,500.00 I will have to send Siemens to renew SE only I get Inventor PRO HSM everything and I like my money in MY pocket. HSM just works and CW4SE just fails again and again and again.

Sadly SE ST8 will be a release of a tremendously capable CAD program smothered by ex UGS people at Siemens and destined once again to be the best software you won’t hear much about. Sure do miss you Karsten and Don and the hope and plans and excitement that lived here for the future with you. I have yet to hear anything from the mouth of Miller whats-his-face who is supposed to be in charge and it has been over a half-year now. No plans no direction no user interaction AT ALL! I find the attitude of Siemens/UGS management towards SE to be the single largest reason to never buy into SE and it just should not be this way.

6-14-15 Update.
I had mentioned above that I would not be discussing CW4SE anymore. I went to Geometric’s site today in the faint hopes that they would have an update for ST8 out. You see I would still like to use their constant step over tool path at times but I am not willing to stay a year behind with SE to do so. Much to my amusement/disgust I read about current SW CAMWorks user problems with the Tech Data Base which is in combination with Feature Recognition the only differentiator for CAMWorks. This being the whole basis for their grossly exaggerated motto of “Program Smarter Machine Faster”. So I retract my never talk about them again statement as I will be talking about them again at least once more.

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New Direction

Posted on May 27, 2015 | 4 comments

Obviously there has been a shift in my loyalties in the last couple of years. With Solid Edge it has been a ride from ST1 until now with very few regrets regarding the software. Direct editing is what I came here for and while the first two versions were really rough the rest has been nothing but a validation of how correct this choice was. My principal complaint about SE has always been Siemens and UGS not caring if we make it or not.

What I mean by that is except for a period of time under Newbury and Cooper Siemens/UGS could care less whether SE’s market share grew or not. The ramifications to buyers ARE serious. From not having work from others who demand you be on the same page as in same software. Then not having a resource of institutions to train potential employees which of course leads to a lack of trained people. The lack of trained people stems from having few companies that use the program and since the job boards have few SE listings students do not ask their prospective educators for SE training. They look to SW and Autodesk courses because the job boards say they can find work with that training. So you as an employer have to find someone and then train them and then suffer under the other Siemens imposed handicaps to. Most just go on by and purchase SW and Autodesk whatever because these programs come equipped with better market/work presence and trained at no cost to you people to hire.

With the CAMWorks for Solid Edge debacle in combination with Siemens running off people who wanted the same things I did, namely for SE to thrive and acquire market share, has finally worn out my desire to even promote SE beyond saying it is the best mid range MCAD program out there. No more time with videos or how to’s or examples. Really I quit this some time back as I refuse to help those who have hamstrung my favorite CAD program. The Geometric CW4SE forum has not had a post in four months now and it is another sign of user fatigue over Siemens imposed problems. Yes that is right. I do believe all things go back to Siemens and the UGS people who have poisoned the well there for SE. It is a pervasive and under current management irreversible problem. Geometric has a lousy philosophy towards users but if Siemens had really cared about SE and CW4SE customers they would have kicked Geometric and kept kicking to make things right and in a timely fashion. Siemens/UGS has clout but zero desire to help SE in any way.

So I have changed the blog title to more accurately reflect my own personal direction. SE is and will be my principle modeler for some time I think. My maintenance will take me just over into ST8 and I have no intention at this time of ever renewing past this. I don’t believe in rewarding bad management that does not consider my needs with my money. Even the pace of improvements is dropping fast with SE. The very idea that they are touting as a major new ST8 deal the sparsely populated App store boggles my mind. You have to be a dofuss Siemens marketing dude grasping at straws and trying to turn a pigs ear into a silk purse to even put something like this out. last year it was all those partner products until someone went there and mentioned publicly how few there were and most certainly way short of claimed numbers. Of course marketing with Siemens is run by idiots so no surprise there but don’t you know if great things were happening they would at least talk about it? They aren’t so they can’t.

This takes me to Autodesk and what I see going on there and it is the only exciting place out there for future oriented people who are looking for a software company that believes in them too and wants them as partners and not chattel. Even as clunky as Inventor is compared to SE I fully intend to cut Siemens off and keep Autodesk. Siemens has malign intent towards SE and it’s users and Autodesk wants their users to succeed. Even to the point of donating free software to start-ups and trusting you to become a customer when you get past that point. And you bet most will and Siemens will never see any of these as customers. I had use of Surfcam 2 axis machining for free in 2002 and as a result when they finally did go cash only I bought from them. Autodesk has run free stuff far longer than anyone out there I have ever heard of. They believe in what they have enough to let you determine just how good they are for free. Who else is doing this at the same level? Who else is planting seeds for the future along with fertilizer and nurturing. Who else is confident enough in what they are doing to earn customers and their loyalties to do this?

Inventor Pro HSM everything both programs at $10,000.00 and $1,500.00 per year after. And I can tell you that if you are someone with a ton of money wrapped up into a program you have grown to hate they will probably take that into consideration when you negotiate for a final cost. Ask, all they can do is say no and you just might be really surprised. SE and CW4SE on the other hand for the same equivalent stuff would be well in access of $20,000.00 and well north of $4,000.00 each year after. Inventor HSM is right now producing about one update a week you can download if you wish. CW4SE had garbage until about seven MONTHS after the release of ST7 and have had one update they were forced into doing. These HSM guys want you to have tools in hands and work hard to get them there. Yes CW4SE has some capabilities beyond HSM right now. But the darned thing is so cumbersome to use and has been so buggy that why would you bother to try unless you were trapped there? The few shortcomings I see in HSM I happen to know they are aware of but more importantly they do intend to fix them and they don’t have to be forced to do so. I would crawl across nails before I would rely on CW4SE as my main CAM program ever again in the current state it is in.

Once again we see intent with Autodesk in HSM. Buy great tools and gain complete control over them and then use them. I don’t say much about Delcam products because I just don’t know much about them other than by reputation and peer comments. Bass bought them to though and they are part of the forward-looking plans. Carl Bass is the only big wheel out there that can program and cut on five axis manufacturing equipment and he gets the maker things from A to Z. The other guys talk about it but he does it and the programs he is assembling into the Autodesk fold prove his intent and hands on knowledge. Outside of NX CAM and maybe some CATIA stuff Autodesk now controls best high-end CAM with Delcam and it was no accident that HSM was bought before them. HSM is going to be vastly improved over the next year or so and really hard to beat for general CAM usage.

Why in the world would I not want to be here? So you see in the new header and name the beginning of a progression away from a combination of deliberately smothered great CAD and a duplicitously managed over priced CAM program made by people who don’t care if your days are ruined with SE and CW4SE to a company that is doing it all right. Yes there are problems with the programs but at this time I completely believe they will fix the problems. There is a lot on their plate right now and I know that. But they have not lied or give evasive excuses/answers to me and I have run across no-show stoppers yet. They just get in there and solve the issues in order of importance one after the other.

Perhaps some day this will be an Inventor Pro HSM blog only. For now though with my workaday feet in two worlds my blogging shoes will be to.

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Inventor Pro HSM Development Updates Available

Posted on May 22, 2015 | Leave a comment

One of the things I envied for years when I was on the outside looking in was the speed with which HSM has made updates available. Besides the year updates there are two other types. The latest official version is the one that has been vetted by means I do not know of right now for QA. The other is developmental which comes with the admonishment “not for production use”. In practical experience though if there is something you really need in one of these all it means is to go slow the first few times and make sure it works right for you would be my opinion. There are some turning things I want to try so I intend to grab this one.

Inventor Pro HSM update

While there were things that did not get into the official 2015 release it is HSM’s intention to as quick as possible work on getting the new turning and the Hole Wizard done ASAP. Turning by the way is supposed to be a complete revamp which would be good since turning has been a big weak spot in an otherwise powerful program. My guess would be that these will first appear here in the development side so early adopters keep an eye out. The philosophy that HSM has had for some time now is to have regular updates figuring that it was more beneficial to the customer to get working tools in hand rather than making us wait for an annual or semi-annual update that made a big old impressive looking list but also delayed significantly the improvements put into users hands.

HSMWorks for example had at least seven official versions for 2014 so if this is a typical average every other month will see new tools or bug fixes in your hands. There have also been thirty-seven developmental releases for HSMWorks for 2015 so far so there have been many things made available to users if they need them before the aggregate official versions get out. The pace of the official versions for HSMWorks has slowed down a bit for 2015 but these guys have had a ton of stuff on their plates with the integration with Autodesk so I can understand. Considering the world of CAMWorks which I came from the update rate here is amazing and quite frankly the idea that we users are important to HSM is a big breath of fresh air. It is HSM’s intent that some time this year the SW and Inventor and online programs will achieve near parity in features and be handled the same from then on.

By the way http://cam.autodesk.com/inventor-hsm-experimental/ will take you to the developmental I-HSM page where there are links to all the other flavors to. It is worthwhile to have a look and see what people who want you to succeed think is the right way to bring new features and bug fixes quickly to you. It is one of the things that influenced me when I was shopping some years back and still does.

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Solid Edge and the Night of Sharp Knives

Posted on May 20, 2015 | 4 comments

This author catches flack sometimes from various places and one of the ones lately has been from some fans of Solid Edge. Of course I am in that number but I am not blind to what the plans just might be for SE as demonstrated by the actions taken and not the few words spoken by Siemens SE and the Siemens Corp people. I get an email today reminding me of the October SE University and following the bread crumbs tells me why for the first time this premier annual SE event is to be well after the typical SE rollout time frame. It is because the whole thing is to be buried as a footnote into the world of Siemens PLM World and pretty much ignored from there. Why do I say this? Follow me as I use Siemens own pressers and words and I ask you to tell me how I am wrong in my conclusions. Then if you think I am wrong present evidence as compelling as what I bring forth here today regarding the future for SE to support your opinion. Please, it would be nice to be wrong here but where is any evidence to support the bright future idea.

http://blog.industrysoftware.automation.siemens.com/blog/2015/05/18/solid-edge-st8-design-without-boundaries/ will take you to an interesting release where it is announced that SE ST8 will be released at—- PLM World in Dallas this week. I had not seen this before and the only announcement I remember seeing regarding SE ST8 which I had assumed would be rolled out at the premier SE event has been announced instead for this PLM World. So now I begin to understand why SEU 2015 was so delayed. There is history here and I sat there in the middle of it and what I will tell you is from personal experience with witnesses who also saw this.

The year is 2009 and I ran all the SE sessions with the dreaded blue survey forms in hand for the PLM World in Nashville that year. It was what directly got me involved with SE as an active advocate for change when much to my amazement there were only 37 actual SE users there in attendance out of over 50,000 SE users by a Joe Greco estimate. I’ve been told there were over 500 in the annual Summit as it was called back in Cincinnati in 2005. But some wise people somewhere in the corporate UGS food chain decided that they needed to save money and looked for unnecessary things they could afford to cut out. So they killed the Summits and rolled it into PLM World where SE users DID NOT want to be. It was made clear to them they were not important and by 2009 the results were irrefutable. Karsten Newbury and Don Cooper and I along with a few others decided that it was time to restore a specific annual event for SE users and thus was born the Solid Edge Universities. It was decided that yes an SE user community was worth while and the Universities would be the kick start to a hopefully vibrant user community. There was a lot of fighting over all this and the PLM World people were quite upset. Now these PLM World people are really tight with the NX/UGS side of things and they never did really care about SE. Talking with one of the PLM wheels after the 2009 PLM World he interviewed me to get my opinion on what had happened. I told him that SE needed to have its own separate meeting. You see SE guys are polo shirt casual work a day types and the PLM World people are fussy “professionals” with a bit of look down their nose attitudes for any other than their NX etal peers. We did not belong there and the numbers proved it. Tom Both’s response was well hey, if we do something for you then we will have to do it for all the others who whine too. The concern for user opinions was quite touching and the war against the PLM World way was born that day.

SEU 2012 had a surprise visit from PLM World just after the University was over. Karsten and I were walking to the room that the user group wrap up was to be held in after the last sessions were over. I remember Karsten saying to me that a PLM World guy was going to be there and he asked me not to say a word no matter what this guy did. So we get started and the PLM guy, John something or other and no I am not going to bother to research his last name again, says he is there to find out how to get us back under PLM World auspices. Now poor John is such a perfect example of the problem and no clue about it either. He was the only person in the room including the leadership from SE who had a suit and tie on. It is how they dress you know and also how they think. Two separate worlds. I even asked him as I walked with him after the meeting if he had noticed he was the only one in the room with a suit and tie on. He laughed and said yes but was, he was in marketing now I kid you not, oblivious to there being any significance there. I find this attitude bleeds over in other areas too and it is why the UGS NX guys try to smother SE and never understand that these programs appeal and sell to two different markets. They perceive it as a threat to NX.

But anyway back to the meeting. I am listening to poor old John pontificate a bit and sitting there in silence fulminating. Finally Matt Johnston had enough and he spoke up rather bluntly about all of the junk the PLM World guy was saying and Mr. PLM John says they would form a committee to study what the problems are. I kid you not. The true Siemens answer for anything I guess. Form a committee and have lots and lots of meetings and decide nothing in them but bury the problem so you don’t have to deal with it. In any case Karsten knew what I thought and he wanted to see what the other users thought. Karsten you see cared and I will never forget him looking time and time again at the actual users to gauge their reactions to PLM John. It was quite clear that SE users wanted no part of what PLM John had to offer and John was being given enough rope to hang himself by. But you see the good guys that used to run SE are now gone and we are back to the loving hands of PLM World and UGS/Siemens.

SE ST8 to be rolled out at an event that has not one thing for SE I can find in the agenda. http://www.plmworld.org/d/do/5396 is the link to the full agenda and I have looked twice for SE anything. Please help me to find what I may have missed and point out to me the nice little SE things. So exactly what are they rolling out and to whom if it is not on the agenda anyway? Why even bother with this stupidity is my question and do they think SE users appreciate this type of patronizing attitude of out right neglect after some thrilling empty words announcement? No sad to say the thought processes never got that far. Siemens UGS PLM World just simply does not care.

http://www.plm.automation.siemens.com/en_us/products/solid-edge/st8/index.shtml will take you to the ST8 new stuff. Go there and please tell me how exciting you find it. I can only hope they have a lot more held back. I see incremental improvements on things already there which in aggregate can be quite beneficial but nothing new unless the idea of porting to a Surface Pro is exciting to you. Personally speaking I find a real 15″ Workstation Laptop at a minimum to be worthwhile in spite of the larger size since I want to be able to fully work when I get to my destination. But I know little bitty screens and crippled computing capabilities excite some so there you go.

Question for you dear readers. Is there a discernible pattern of behavior here and what does this foretell for the future of SE if this current attitude is to become permanent Siemens policy? I want to hear from any SE user regarding what you see and hear this week at PLM World. If indeed there are any SE attendees to begin with. RIP.

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CAMWorks for Solid Edge 2015 SP1 with a bit of Inventor HSM 2016 for comparison

Posted on May 11, 2015 | Leave a comment

Made some time to work with CW4SE 2015 SP1 this weekend and other than some inherent inefficiencies with work flow it went without problems. If you are a current CW4SE user you really need to get this one. I went through a couple of parts and the post today will cover this and do some comparisons with Inventor HSM. The guys at Geometric did some pretty worthwhile work this time and hopefully they will treat the product like this in the future.

Two typical parts were used for this post and as of today no assemblies have been tried. One is 3D and the other is 2D.

The libraries and the Access driven TDB worked without problems. I did not try to edit anything in the included libraries nor add anything to them. This has been troublesome in the past. In any case there still are no 3 or 5 flute endmills in there and all drills are still 118 degree. For example there are 685 Bull nose mill entries and not one for 3 and 5 fluters. For me this would mean starting from scratch for bull nose mills since about all I use now are 3 and 5 flutes except for ball mills. But the links all worked problem free.

There are still no posts out of the box. The short list has big admonitions against use of the few there. If you are looking at CW4SE get commitments in writing regarding any needed posts before you buy and make working to YOUR satisfaction posts part of the deal.

post list

posts not for use

There is still no post output editor unless you want to spend extra cash to get one. I believe Predator Editor is in there but it is more $$ so consider this when negotiating to. This is the basic output screen.
cw4se nc code output screen

And this is code which you will have to edit in notepad or an equivalent.
CW4SE output sample

In comparison Inventor HSM (I-HSM) and HSMWorks have included an editor with every version along with gobs of posts for free. Here is some output code and note also the inclusion of tools used right at the start. A quick glance at the tool list and the tool carousel can save real grief and the real editor is quite useful.
HSM code output.

The first part CAM plan was this.
basic die part

CAM products represent two basic classes of thought here where automation or feature recognition are concerned. CW4SE uses feature recognition and automatic feature recognition. My default method of using CW4SE however is to pick all surfaces as the feature and then input tool paths one by one on it and use contains or avoids from there for specific features. I have never and will never take the huge amount of time required to set up the TDB so AFR in CW4SE will work according to the 80/20 rule Geometric espouses as ideal. This rule means basically that you have taken the time to set up all this to such a degree that CW4SE will automagically work roughly 80% of the time. When the demo jock from CW4SE or CAMWorks for SW comes to your door though make sure he shows you step by step a complete part set up on your part including generating the TDB entries and strategies relevant to making something “automatic”. It demos well but real life is far more complicated. I find the vast majority of CAM users do not want to have to do this.

The other paradigm is to use Templates as programs like ZW3D and HSM do. I have just started using templates with HSM and since the “hole wizard” is not complete yet my understanding is that templates will work well with only 3D shapes right now. The part I did this morning was the above one and taking a similar part with five oval holes instead of eight round ones worked by merely using the template and regenerating the tool path. I did not have to pick anything or any feature to create a complete adaptive tool path for the top side. Still a lot of work to do here though to be able to save a template for a complete part. With the wide variance of parts I cut the speed of initial tool path generation is the biggest deal for me and while AFR and templates are interesting I still prefer to just knock the tool path out quick and be done.

I used Volumill for this part CAM plan and this is an interesting comparison. CW4SE and Volumill worked fine on this part and I have no complaints about this understanding of course the extra time it takes to generate tool paths in CW4SE over I-HSM. One thing CW4SE does have that HSM does not is their true Constant Step-over tool path. This is the single best finishing tool path I have ever used for complex 3D cavities on food extrusion dies yielding a true constant X and Y step-over irregardless of angle or slope. This is the only thing I will be using CW4SE for in the future by the way. It is that good. In many cases HSM Adaptive or Volumill with small enough intermediary passes will give you a useable finished surface for most parts. On straight side walls you might need a finish pass and the same is true for flat surfaces but for 3D work on most parts intermediary passes will finish up fine.

Time is a consideration though and here it gets interesting. This part was as close time wise all things being equal between Volumill and HSM Adaptive as any I have seen yet. Still though HSM Adaptive cut roughly 20% quicker.

Volumill
cw4se volumill 8 hole

and HSM Adaptive

hsm setup

Now the HSM setup sheet shows 400 IPM but that is rapids no cutting speed.
HSM no cut feed rate max

hsm s & f

CW4SE
CW4SE S & F

Both use the same end mill and a .01 step up intermediary pass and .112 step-over but yet HSM Adaptive cuts faster. In the past half-year I have yet to find a single part where Volumill time wise does a better job. Getting into true end mill life and true cubic inch material removal over the expected life of the cutter between these two is something I can’t give concise data on. But I can say that I do know the cost of my end mills and the reduction in time to cut and make an accurate judgement on benefits to me. The end mills seem to last about the same number of pieces where I have cut exact parts to compare by and HSM does so quicker so guess who wins in my shop.

The second part was a basic 2D part.

cw4se corner round crap

It is a mystery to me why 2D can be so tough compared to 3D. I spent little time on the above 3D part but trying to get this “simple” part right in CW4SE was problematical. I spent about a half an hour trying to find the magic combination to get two sides only to cut in corner round. I never did find the actual command for this but there was mention of corner round in one of the feature picking prompts. But then you got all four and not the two ones required. Where is the corner round or chamfer in the strategies?

wheres the corner round

Good question and I never did find it. There is probably a simple answer here but this is my point. Stuff is hidden and finding them is time-consuming and not straight forward. Dirt simple in HSM and since I knew I was not going to cut this kind of path in CW4SE I just quit looking. You go look and have fun without me. Tell me what you found and I will add it here.

Geometric has done a lot of work with this release and if they were to continue to do this where usability is concerned they could be a market beater some day. It would require them two have two basic programs though in order to cater to most shops I know. One could be the existing complex and hard to use/set up TDB AFR way. The other could be a simple easy to use without the AFR TDB baggage way like HSM does and this would be where most of the seats would be sold. I have discussed this with them in the past and HSM is a topic of discussion for them. So far however they are adamant about the AFR TDB way and kind of stuck in it since this is their principle differentiator from other CAM programs. It would require years of serious effort and a complete rethinking of who they want to target for two ways to evolve. As it stands right now they have to be somewhat deceptive with prospective clients and get them in there with cool demos and not real life efficiencies. I do not see this philosophy change happening quite frankly until their backs are really against the wall. By that time of course people like HSM are marching on with improvements so it gets harder and harder to play catch up.

The integration with SE is the single biggest thing Geometric has going for it with this SE user. Second for me is the Constant Stepover tool path. But I find myself using HSM with imported parts because I just like simple that works predictably, quickly and reliably and with good tool paths. Geometric is on the right path and really fixed a lot of things this time. Problem is that there are just so many more to go for CW4SE to operate like I want my CAM program to be that I doubt it will ever happen. Plus it is far more expensive to buy and hugely more expensive each year after and I refuse to spend more money hoping they make something I will really like some day. If you are already there with CW4SE though and intend to stay this latest update will put a smile on your face. The best by far of any version I have yet used on some parts typical to this shop.

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Solidedging and Solid Edge and the Future

Posted on April 28, 2015 | 6 comments

This will be a long post today and is an accumulation of thoughts and conclusions I have been having for some time now.

I went to Matt Lombards site “On The Edge” this morning and I see now that a link to my blog has been removed. While I am not at all surprised it did get me to thinking about the last few years and where I want to spend my time in the blogosphere.

Regarding Siemens it is funny how the question of why someone who was such a fan of SE has had this change of heart is never asked. But then asking in sincerity would mean a desire for SE to succeed and this does not exist inside of Siemens corporate where the decisions are really made regarding SE’s future. This is all I have ever wanted and as I have said many times and will again today SE is the very best mid range MCAD program. I see articles on direct editing in SE and picture my head nodding up and down in agreement. It is so powerful and all my major work is still done here. I wanted for SE to take by merit of capabilities it’s rightful place in the CAD world. Such was not to be.

It is hard to take the future of SolidEdge as a positive when so much is going wrong. The pace of improvements is slowing down and I hear nothing about any revolutionary new stuff. Only tinkering around the edges and improvements that are merely moderately evolutionary based on what is already there. Don’t look for any breath-taking announcements for ST8 would be my guess.

No I don’t think SE is going away. I remember thinking that SW would when it was clear Dassault corporate had determined SW was not the real future. It is still there and I guess will be until they can figure out how to keep their customer base intact while eliminating the program they came there for. Like Dassault Siemens is stuck with something that they can’t sell and don’t want and is not any part of their desired plans for the future. So the future is auto pilot but do not sell and don’t waste money on it either. SE represents income already paid for though so at least they see this and will keep it going to some degree. It will however remain the adopted red-headed step child that seems to be SE’s fate in life. Overseen by stupid people who do not want or desire for SE to have the success it technically merits for whatever reason. The idea that North American Siemens Software, and by extension I mean Chuck Grindstaff directly since he is in charge of it all has cast aside SE is plain silly. All because of a perceived threat to the sales of NX. The UGS people never did have much use for SE. I was there in person to see the love they had for SE in 2009 in Nashville,TN PLM World where SE user attendance was down to 37 people. You can lie with words but actions trump these and this was proof of the regard UGS etal had for SE and users responded likewise.

Just like this current user behind the SolidEdgeing blog is responding. Really don’t look for much in the way of hope for SE anymore. Follow me as I assembly bread crumb trails that make me think like I do. I still know a lot of people associated with SE from Europe to Huntsville. They know I was and am a huge fan of SE. They also in most cases share my discouragement over the plight of SE’s future. So let us go through some random dot connecting here.

I knew Don Cooper and Karsten Newbury fairly well. They were wholly dedicated to the idea that SE was the best and should take its place as number one. They lived and breathed this idea and worked for it. When Karsten left he still had about three years if I remember right on a five-year contract. I don’t know what Don’s status was. But the idea they left or were run off is the important thing here. It heralded I believe edicts from Siemens Corp to deliberately stifle SE and I figure that after a while Don and Karsten just quit fighting. After all why should eminently qualified people stay where their success is artificially limited by those who have no desire to see SE succeed.

I remember standing in a circle with Karsten and Tony Affuso and myself at the first SEU in Huntsville. Karsten insisted I come over there and meet him and I was really hesitant to do so after some of the things I had written. It was kind of strange and no one came to join the huddle so it was just the three of us for quite some time. Tony made clear his desire to beat the pants off of Dassault. He also made mention in reply to a comment Karsten made that the budget he had was his to spend as he saw fit. I left with a different opinion of Tony Affuso. I also noticed that with the changing of the guard to Grindstaff that the desire for SE to beat the pants off anyone was gone from Siemens.

We now have John Miller as head of SE in Karstens old spot. I don’t believe he has contacted a single user. There have been two posts by him at the SE Siemens BBS since he acquired this job. Well let me rephrase that. There have been two posts written for him. No one talks that way and I have been around long enough to see deception as blatant as those were. So the new guy could care less and has not evinced one iota of interest in SE’s users or future. He is a place holder by his very actions as far as I am concerned and this is not the sign of a company that wants SE to thrive.

Absolutely no mention of SE in any of the major Siemens Software grants I can see. I have asked for breakdowns of some of them and no one will provide them. I do see lots of high dollar Siemens NX and PLM Teamcenter related things though. Is SE in there? Who knows but for sure Siemens does not care to say so if it is. WHY?

SE has a custom car building kit thing of some sort. No it is not Local Motors it is a purely academic thing. The link evades me right now and I am not going to bother to look it up. I think however it is mainly the result of caring people inside of SE’s educational branch doing what little they can as they can. Siemens has not and wont be getting behind this in any major way I believe. Think about it. When was the last time you saw any pervasive long-term acted upon marketing strategy for SE? That’s right there has been none and this is solely because UGS and then Siemens do not want to allocate funds to something not important. You would not believe the fights that went on over stupid turf things with UGS and Siemens people where rational profit seeking corporate decisions were out the window. It is not like SE sells into the same market but try to tell the UGS and Siemens dudes this. Back to UGS veterans don’t like SE and until they go or have a change of heart forget it.

I admire the stance Carl Bass has taken with Autodesk. He has made long-term plans and bought control of key pieces for this and looks I believe decades into the future for the seeds he plants today. Siemens plants no seeds for SE and makes no acqusitions to bolster it and can’t even be bothered to vet the only major manufacturing integrated app SE has ever had. I am talking about CAMWorks of course. I don’t care about rendering and all that stuff I make parts. All design software has to make parts at some time to have a reason to exist. When Karsten left and SE was in Siemens loving hands CAMWorks went to crap. I to this day don’t know how much of the problem with CW4SE 2015 was with lack of co-operation from Siemens SE. But I do know that development budgets for SE are not what they should be and some top talent has been taken from them and put on the Siemens side to boot. So we see here intent by Siemens. Take good people away and make funding problems and do not pursue an integrated family of aps for SE. So just how does this indicate concern for SE’s future and yours to if you are a user might I ask?

There has never been a real aggressive marketing campaign for SE since ST1. I came on board just as ST1 was released for $3,000.00 and that bought one years maintenance and SE Classic. The main reason was to get SW users but if you really dug they would take any equivalent design package for this. This has not happened since then. I knew some people who wanted to do this but their hands were tied. Why when SW was doing all they could to give sales to SE for a few years did Siemens not take advantage of this? Perhaps what is going on in places in Europe right now might be a clue. SE can’t I guess discount beyond a certain price. I would imagine there are corporate hoops to jump through to do this. NX however is discounting to whatever level is necessary to clinch sales from, you guessed it, SE. Is this the hallmark of a company that might care about the future of SE or is it part of a plan to slowly subsume SE users into the NX side of things? In any case is there any sound fiscal reason to do this to part of your corporate body that could be making a lot more money for you? I don’t believe or subscribe to the idea that SE and NX serve the same basic markets. There is a place for both and not a whole lot of overlap. But for seven years now SE has not and never will do what was done for ST1 and I believe it is a deliberate choice by Siemens to not allow SE to thrive like it should. But apparently it can be allowable for NX. Why? I still remember the post by a major US VAR Saratech touting how easy it was to learn NX over SE https://solidedging.wordpress.com/2014/06/05/is-siemens-retarded-or-just-anti-solid-edge/ How did this bit of insanity ever even see the light of day except for the culture Siemens and UGS have created for SE to reside in. Funny thing about this post. It has been read more than any other past posts the last couple of weeks and I wonder why?

I remember sitting in an office in Huntsville talking to one of the marketing dudes who now works for Siemens and not SE. He belongs there to as far as I am concerned. I asked him why there were no spots made for bloggers and people who might give them favorable publicity at the SE Universities. I would have like to get a free pass for myself to no doubt but my main reason for asking was to try to get them to bring in bloggers that would give them press. His response was that this was too expensive to do. A short time SE employee sat there and heard this with me. We left and the comment made by the employee was that was just so wrong on many ways.
“You should NEVER tell a customer to their face they are not worth it”. I just shook my head sadly and said you see what we have had to deal with? This employee did not stay there long and left because it was clear Siemens did not intend to see SE thrive. Why stay at a dead-end? Subsequently that same year over fifty percent of the attendees were Siemens employees who were not going to write any press releases, not publish one blog post nor in any way do the good some free passes to bloggers would have done. Vacations for result free Siemens Employees however were dollars well spent. Is this the way an outfit that cares about the future is run?

Siemens promoted Dan Staples to be above the day-to-day management of SE he used to be in. Dan is brilliant as far as I am concerned but he is not a trench warfare fighter for SE who will battle corporate like Newbury and Cooper did. When Siemens promoted him they took this guy who was responsible for so many good things at SE and pulled him out of the real hands on loop. I hope he is making a lot more money now but as an SE user I have to say that I miss him in his old spot like I miss Newbury and Cooper for the same reasons. There is a dynamism certain teams have that can’t be easily replaced. They can however be easily dismantled by corporations that do not care. Like Siemens. I figure like Karsten and Don Dan will get fed up with seeing the thing he loves dearly wrecked by Siemens and he to will leave one day. Or acquire a trench warfare mentality and be told to leave because SE is not a part of the plan. How would you like to be in his spot with this great thing and then see it hidden under a rock?

CAMWorks for SE. Before I burned my bridges there with Geometric’s US guys I remember a conversation I had with a big wheel. He wondered why I had stopped blogging about SE and had started complaining about corporate and marketing. I told him exactly why and this was shortly after Don Cooper left. I explained to him what my suspicions were about corporate sabotage of SE and he said that could well explain why they were having trouble getting co-operation from SE. Like I told him Siemens NX people would rather we just buy Cam Express even though it was not truly integrated. I have to wonder how much of the 2015 CW4SE debacle blame should be allocated to which side. For sure Siemens is partly to blame and is this the action of a company that cares about what the SE users have to make a living with?

Speaking with some attendees from last years SEU in Atlanta. The general consensus was that Chuck Grindstaff did not want to really be there. Considering what is going on with SE I think these guys are spot on. You do not have to be present in a room where decisions are made to be able to discern what decisions have been made. The actions corporate officials take in so many ways telegraph what is going to be. I tend to think this was another indicator and since this was followed up with the appointment of John “Place Holder” Miller and the loss of Karsten do you have any doubts here about the veracity of the SE users observations regarding Grindstaff’s apparent disconnect? I don’t.

Marketing and Publicity. Where should I start regarding this mess? Or is it really a mess or is it by design? Siemens is eaten alive by rules and regulations and don’t even sneeze without running it by legal first. So we have this aspect of Siemens and it is a worrisome one. The paralysis created by meetings that do nothing and never reach a result is unbelievable. For this alone I fear for SE. Once a policy of neglect and or outright suppression is reached you are not going to change it. Once it has been DECIDED it is carved in stone. When the UGS people poisoned the well for SE I am afraid it will be so for many years. But above and beyond that does a company that wants a division of theirs to succeed spend some money and make a plan to do so? I think so. By the absence of a plan they also indicate their desires. You can go all the way back to the stupid days of Bruce Boes Velocity junk and continue to this day and see an unbroken string of marketing and publicity failure for SE. The reasons are two-fold. One, the UGS guys don’t want SE to make it and 2, Siemens corporate suffers from self-inflicted paralysis and they literally also do not have the ability to formulate and implement a marketing strategy. Thus you see Siemens but not Siemens what in advertising such as it is. Bold generic say nothing about anything but have generalities and say Siemens somewhere in there and you are done. WHOO-HOO!

I was sent a link to a video some time back and the premise of the author was that when a company that is big becomes old to there is a paralysis of bureaucracy that sets in and it stifles innovation. One of the methods to fight this by CEO’s who see this but can’t prevail against it is to buy competitiveness. Buy a lean mean going somewhere outfit and bring it in-house to improve your company with an end run around the killer culture of old, tired and bureaucratic. I have always felt that Siemens bought UGS to improve manufacturing efficiencies and to do so with something they would have sole control over. But now as it is subsumed into the monster what happens to it? Now decisions are in the hands of those who make a living by perpetuating layers of inefficient bureaucracy and they are not ever going to make or allow to be made decisions that might in any way reflect back upon them. And in this culture they are rewarded with weekly checks and almost guaranteed jobs irregardless of performance so in essence they are being trained that this stifling stupidity is right. SE is never going to have a bright future with this paradigm.

I could go on but I think you get the idea. Quite frankly my interest in this whole SE thing has been killed by Siemens and this debacle with Geometrics CW4SE was just the icing on the cake. I use SE now and regard it as my main design tool but since manufacturing is far more important in my shop now CAM must and does come first. Is it not ironic that I find myself in this spot with software bought by a manufacturing giant to improve their manufacturing? That I have to leave them and go to Autodesk and get Inventor HSM Pro to achieve manufacturing efficiencies in my shop? I am going to keep this SolidEdging site for some years yet as I believe in what I say and think it should have life on-line. But the desire and excitement all belong to Autodesk now and I will probably startup another blog for that. Hopefully Inventor will be improved enough soon so I can just quit the whole Siemens induced disaster for SE. For now though it is with real mixed feelings I still use SE. I have pretty much decided that I will not be renewing SE as there are just no new exciting things on the horizon worthy of more money above what I already have and I don’t believe in rewarding mediocre corporations with my hard-earned money so Siemens is OUT. I can use SE for years to come after all.

I may very well attend SEU in Cincy this year. It is the best bargain in annual cad conventions and this year it is cheaper yet. If they really end up having it. I will not be going because I am excited nor to make waves but rather it will be to see friends I have made over the years once again before I close the SE chapter of my life.

Thanks a lot you crap heads for doing this to a product I really had high regard for. Pardon my French but it is the way I feel about all this today.

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33 Weeks After ST7 Release And Still NO Viable CAMWorks for Solid Edge

Posted on April 13, 2015 | 8 comments

Today I am going to talk more about the Siemens SE side of the equation than the Geometric side. First though the count.

37 Weeks since the last communication from Geometric to SE CW4SE users about CW4SE for ST7.
33 Weeks since ST7 was release to customers.
14 Weeks since the last CW4SE user post at the Geometric CW4SE user forums.

Can you offhand think of a single example of such woeful neglect of a buying customer user base? I mean it. Think about your experiences over the years with any software vendor and can you think of another debacle equal to this one besides perhaps an outright bankruptcy of a software company or Dassault Cloud Vaporware? Refund our money Geometric. You can’t fix this mess and your inability to do so I think has been pretty well established. Give us our money back and just GO AWAY. What are you going to do this time? Give us another extension of maintenance so we can have another year or half-year of waiting for nothing? I have really enjoyed my half-year extension which is now four months up and still nothing to use in sight. In reality this means as an SE user I would still have to be using ST6 and LAST years cam program to have a semblance of working software.

The other side of the equation is of course Siemens Solid Edge. I don’t refer to Solid Edge much as an independent entity anymore as those days died when Karsten left. Thus the Siemens Solid Edge moniker. Look at the contrast with the following two screen captures. First we have one from a real person who cared.

ScreenHunter_06 Apr. 13 08.50

Now we have one from somebody whom I am not certain exists as a real functioning head of Solid Edge/Siemens Mainstream Engineering Software.

ScreenHunter_07 Apr. 13 08.52

I want you to pay particular attention to the rate of comments posts per month and the stark contrast between one who cared and one who quite frankly can best be called MIA.

Now read this. http://community.plm.automation.siemens.com/t5/Solid-Edge-Forum/Welcome-from-the-new-guy/m-p/296259#U296259

Can I be blunt here? This is the most mindless empty bunch of verbage, referring to what was supposed to be coming from John Millers mouth that is, it has been my misfortune to have read for some time. It is just as bad as the first introductory post he supposedly made some time back.

I remember sitting down with a couple of marketing people while we had just a couple of days under our belts with CW4SE during beta training before CW4SE was released. These marketing people were silly enough to actually ask us how much improvement we were going to gain by using CW4SE over our current CAM programs. My response was I have no way of knowing when I have not cut a single part with it and I forbid you to use my name in association touting the wonders of a program I have yet to cut a part in. The stuff that John Miller is supposed to be saying reminds me of the empty Marketing garbage they wanted me to sign off on. I mean it literally. They were presenting me with comments from their fertile imagination and all I was to do was sign off on the use of my name. They were not there for real feedback or commentary although that is what they ended up with. Subsequently they never used anything from my “interview”.

John Miller I am beginning to think has yet to actually speak to the SE user community. I base this on the marketing and publicity babble-speak nonsense it has been my misfortune to see from empty heads in the past who are however paid to produce something. So the end result is an eruption of industry accepted phrases and empty words that fill a spot that we in the intended audience are some how no doubt going to get excited or pacified over. That is how I regard the commentary that has so far populated Millers “posts”. The direct contrast between what Karsten Newbury used to say and the clear interest and genuine interaction is diametrically opposed to the empty junk coming from the automaton P&R generated script purportedly coming from Miller. Marketing and Publicity has I figure been given orders to fill an empty spot is my guess with something because perhaps the idea that Solid Edge has been cast adrift with a place holder manager is gaining traction. But even here the paucity of comments and the vapid empty words used reveals the lack of interest Siemens has for SE.

Mr Big has yet to reply to my questions about CW4SE. I don’t think “he” will and marketing for darned sure will not touch that one with a fifty foot pole. I am sadly coming to the conclusion that the CW4SE users are being cast adrift and are of no consequence anymore to the decision makers at Siemens. BUYER BEWARE! Buy Solid Edge because it is the best midrange MCAD program with the best direct editing capabilities out there. Do not ever consider SE for any other function though as there will probably never be a robust family of integrated aps and pursuit of market share which would gain you additional work potential. If you do work in-house design SE can’t be beat. I use it all the time and can’t imagine working without it. Even if you are an SW or Inventor house you still would benefit from at least one seat of SE just for editing imported parts and best in class sheet metal. But you are not going to work with other SE using companies in all likelihood and you probably will not have a resource of trained users unless it is you who creates them. I have yet to work with another company that uses SE here in southern middle Tennessee, just north of Huntsville by the way, and quite frankly I am tired of hearing surprise about my choice of CAD programs from others. Comments like you are the only one I know of using it.

Solid Edge, the best software you’ve never heard of from Siemens the company that does not care if you ever hear of it. Co-sponsored by CAM prize fighter Geometric that could not punch it’s way out of a wet paper bag.

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Cutting a Basic Part in Inventor HSM Pro 2015

Posted on April 7, 2015 | 6 comments

A few posts back I mentioned delving into tool libraries with Inventor HSM. I decided to do a complete part instead as it has been my experience that so much of the YouTube video seems to cater to five-minute bites of time. You can hardly do much in that time frame so here is a complete part and yes, it exceeds five minutes ;-).

This is a basic walk through from zero setting to tool library creation and editing to a finished part and simulation. It is a complete part walk through and not just snippets of various aspects of CAM plan creation. This video is a basic demonstration of why I like HSM so much. Quick and easy tool library creation to tool paths and an interface that just works. Without bells and whistles and un-needed complications that things like Tech Data Bases and Feature Recognition can bring to the table and so often do.

I am a typical small job shop. Well can I say very small at one man? I have used Surfcam, CAMWorks for Solid Edge and VX now ZW3D prior to my arrival to HSM and I will say HSM beats these guys hands down.

What first drew my attention to HSM was a nearby shop that was a real pressure cooker deal with lots of small parts runs that had to be out the door fast. I know these guys and the work they do and I could hardly ignore the proof before my eyes. Their experience was mostly with Mastercam and OneCNC before HSM. I remember going over there one day as they were cutting a formed support back board for some medical group. 3D all the way out of plastic and the gouging with OneCNC at the high speeds needed to cut this part in reasonable time were driving them nuts. OneCNC never did get a post right for them on their Haas VF5 that would not gouge. Desperation led them to try HSMWorks and the rest is history. They have been there for about five years now and have no intention of leaving. They also went through the Autodesk buyout and the ensuing trepidation that brought to HSMWorks users. The way they were treated was also another serious plus for HSM in my eyes. Autodesk has lived up to every promise they made these guys and two years later I think we can safely say the words spoken by Autodesk to treat their newly bought customers right has been followed with proof as manifested in this shop.

They regard HSM as having sophisticated algorithms but a simple intuitive interface that produced great tool paths quickly and easily. I can only say I fully agree. As a bonus it has been my experience that with Adaptive Clearing I now had a high-speed machining capability that beats the current Volumill capabilities and I have current versions of both to play with. In side by side comparisons with same parts, mill and end mills the ease of creating tool paths and the always but sometimes dramatically fewer total inches of travel and thus better cut time HSM was a clear winner. I was pretty surprised about that aspect considering the reputation Volumill has. But like they say the proof is in the pudding and when you can cut parts more easily and quicker it is what it is.

Here is the video. As always I do not represent myself as an expert. I am a shop owner who will rise in ability to the level of parts I accept for work in my shop. These are the strategies I have adopted for better or worse and I encourage HSM users to step in here with better ideas for us all to profit by. Part of my reason for having a blog is the help I have received from those who are better than me who graciously have shared their time with me. The other part is for potential users to see what a real user does and not have to wade through some sales guys canned demo rigmarole.

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