Tag Archives: solidworks

Nomination for Design Excellence

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

RT or LT hand cup and manual

Huntsville Solid Edge User Group Meeting 4-17-14

Here is an update for our new monthly meeting in Huntsville. If you wish to attend please respond here and I will reserve a spot for you.

Attention Solid Edge users,
Get ready for the launch of the revamped Solid Edge users group for our North Alabama / Central Tennessee users. In the past we have had meetings on an irregular haphazard schedule but this next year we are going to try something different. We will be meeting every month on the third Thursday at Siemens in Huntsville. I know this is short notice for the first meeting but it was decided that we would start anyway. We are going to have a greater emphasis on students this time around as not only are professionals important so are the future professionals. Whether you are a seasoned grey haired dude or a student this is for you.
I think the whole idea of a local network that exists for users is important enough to have committed my time for the next year to participate. I think if you consider the value here you and or your company you will consider this to.
What is the value? Speaking personally for me I now have the possibility of future work with a facility in Huntsville because of a contact made through past meetings. The obvious benefits of knowing other users results in opportunities you would not have otherwise. Who do you turn to when your VAR or GTAC have gone home for the night and your rush job HAS to be done? Other users you now know of course. Remember when you had mentors that helped you out when you were first learning? Return this by seeding what could be your future peers and employees with the knowledge you have to impart. Take a part in training those who will in all likelihood be employed by you in the future. Learn from your peers and from actual SE employees how to make your work days more efficient.
Students may I point something out here? There can be a world of difference between what is taught and how real users do things to earn a living. Get insights into how our practical experience will improve your skills and abilities in SE.
Did you know that Solid Edge is developed right here in Huntsville? When you attend meetings here I can honestly tell you that you never know who might show up but there have always been those who do from SE. You can’t get better information on your software of choice than that which is available from those who write it. Dan Staples who is over Solid Edge will be at this meeting and I expect others to. This is one of the great sides to SE that I can vouch for with my own experience. They make an effort to listen and incorporate features into SE based on user feedback. Just like the opportunity you will have to give feedback at this meeting. These guys actually use and like their software and they are well worth meeting for the knowledge they will freely give you.
But you can only benefit from this if you attend so BE HERE. I look forward to seeing the familiar and the new faces. Please reply to this email to let me know if you intend to be here and to let me know you received it.
Regards, Dave Ault

Date: April 17th, 2014
Time: 4:00 to 7:00 pm
Place: 675 Discovery Drive NW, Suite 100, Huntsville, AL 35806 – In the Training Room on First Floor
Agenda:
1. 4:00 – 4:15 pm – Information on Solid Edge University
2. 4:15 – 5:00 pm – Modeling Techniques for Solid Edge, Dave Ault
3. 5:00 – 5:45 pm – Solid Edge Tips and Tricks, Dave Ault
4. 5:45 – 6:00 pm – “We are Listening” – feedback session with Dan Staples, Vice President, Mainstream Engineering
5. 6:00 – 6:30 pm – Open Session
6. 6:30 – 7:00 pm – Networking and Mingling, Pizza and Drinks will be provided.
This is a great opportunity to network with other users, students and Siemens employees. Bring your own laptops if possible.
Please RSVP by April 15th so that we know how many pizzas to order.
Best Regards

Job Shop Tech Data Base for CAMWorks

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CAMWorks for Solid Edge ASSEMBLIES Are Here

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

CW4SE assemblies mode

Ain’t it purdy 🙂

Big Changes On The Way For CAMWorks for Solid Edge

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

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

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

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

Autodesk May Be Off My Hate You List

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

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

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

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

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

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

Retired And Bored, What To Do?

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

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

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

CAM Tech Support Is Needed When It Is Needed

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

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

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

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

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

CW4SE CAMWorks for Solid Edge 2014 Update, Begining The TDB Jungle Journey

For those of you using CW4SE the SP1 update is finally out today and available in the customer downloads section of CAMWorks website. MP 4 for SE was released earlier this month and it had the fix needed to get assemblies up and running inside CW4SE so we are in the final days of the wait for assemblies capabilities in CW4SE. I expect within a couple of weeks this last remaining hurdle of integration will be jumped for those of you waiting for this. Busy downloading the update now and if any glitches show up I will comment. Otherwise assume all is well.

In another note. I have decided that the correct way to begin using the Tech Data Base is to go into it and into the mill tools section for instance and do the following. I use three flute and five flute tools almost exclusively and four fluters for ball end mills. There are many MANY hundreds of silly tools in there and all come checked for use and so you are doomed to things you never use showing up all the time automatically when you generate your operation plan. Look at the following silly stuff Geometric leaves in there for instance.
TDB tools

The second column is labeled “ON”. Just start from the top and keep going and uncheck pretty much everything. I saved a few ball mills and insert cutters but nothing else since this shop never uses all this junk. Add your own tools of preference at this time. I think out of perhaps a couple thousand tools some programmer dude who never cut parts put in there I saved maybe 25 or so. But now at least the TDB is going to start looking more closely at tools I intend to use. This is not the complete answer here but it is a start to fixing this bad tool library mess Geometric ships. While you are in there you might as well change the degree of angle for all the drill bits to. I use nothing but 135 degree split points and sadly the Geometric drill data base is exclusively 118 degree. So go through and fix this to.

I make a separate folder labeled “ENGLISH DAVE BASIC” for these updates and save it to “C:\CAMWorksForSolidEdgeData\CAMWorks2014x64ForSolidEdge” in the “LANG” folder. When you are done doing this open up the TDB and click the Maintenance tab and link to your new folder but leave the old “ENGLISH” folder there and don’t mess with it. Edit the new folder you have created by the way and not the old one which is a sort of backup of last resort.

I would also save save a copy of your new file edits independently somewhere else and keep it handy. I have read stories about version and SP updates that dump your hard work. To prevent this an independent copy can always be used and linked so there is no excuse for this to ever be more than an inconvenience at worst.

Anyone with some tips and tricks on how to tame this TDB mess I will gladly post it here if you are willing to send it in. Supposedly Geometric is going to fix these libraries but I don’t think it is very important to them so be resigned to at least a year or more before anything of significance shows up here. Otherwise you get to read what I come up with for better or worse.

By the way, the internal code is now the same for both SE and SW flavors so the only difference is how it interfaces with the two programs. ALL the CAMWorks stuff for both like the TDB are identical and so I welcome and encourage SolidWorks users who use CAMWorks and feel they have something to contribute to do so.

Micheal Buchli’s “Camworks Handbook 2014” is now out and I recommend it for any user of CAMWorks. Get the PDF version online and it has like 80 minutes of imbedded video and it is the best $50.00 you will spend for training anywhere. The Tutorial section for CAMWorks is also quite good so between the two of these save some money and fire your VAR when he shows up with those $$$$$$$$ classes. Now if your VAR offers $$ classes that might be another story but I don’t know any VAR’s that do $$ training. And of course make YouTube your friend.

I want to remind SE users that there is a video creating and uploading to YouTube tool right in SE and even though Siemens officialdom has forgot it you should not. Use this tool and help your peers walk through the ins and outs of your program of choice.

YouTube link

The Autodesk Juggernaut Starts Rolling

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

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

Autodesk Juggernaut

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

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

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

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

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

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