============== CAM Software Market Leaders Named by CIMdata
ANN ARBOR, Michigan, June 3, 2008 ? In the recently-released Version 17 of the NC Software and Related Services Market Assessment Report, consulting and research firm CIMdata Inc. named the worldwide CAM software market leaders for 2007 and projected those expected to be market leaders in 2008. For 2007, Dassault Systèmes was the market leader on the basis of both vendor revenues received and end-user payments for CAM software and services, CNC Software was the leader on the basis of industrial seats shipped, and Planit Holdings was the leader on the basis of industrial seats installed. SolidCAM was named as the most rapidly-growing vendor.
Mr. Alan Christman, CIMdata Chairman and primary author of the report noted that, ?Even though there have been a number of recent mergers and acquisitions, the CAM software market continues to be highly-fragmented and competitive. There is no single vendor or small group of vendors that dominate the worldwide market. CIMdata tracks approximately 50 CAM software vendors and the rankings in the Report each list 20-30 vendors, depending upon the category.
================ Anyone here using Dassault Systèmes [CATIA] or Planit Holdings programs?
============= In this case I cut and pasted from the web site.
You can also use an included windows program called charmap.exe normally located in c:\winnt\system32. I put the icon in the tool bar.
You can also use the alt + number keypad combination. Hard to do on a portable [without numerical keypad] (hold down alt + 138 [keypad only] release) = è see
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many sites
You can also select an international keyboard with the dead key diacritical markings. You can hot key switch between the keyboards. Click on start -> settings -> control panel ->
keyboard -> input local. (I like Brasilian ABNT2 Portuguese.) To use you press the diacritical mark you want [in this case lowercase tilde] nothing will print, then when you press the e key you will get the è. To get the mark itself e.g. " (which generates an umlaut) you need to press the space key.
CIMData charges CADCAM companies to review their products. They are by no means objective or accurate. Occasionally a CADCAM company might provide Alan Christman / CIMData with some interesting info about their product but it's rare.
Heh, why thank you. Glad some of my scribblings could be informative/entertaining. I also learned something new from you the other day about DMU's having sight glasses on some of their machines. I've always thought trading knowledge was the main point of this newsgroup. I even made a sig. about this sort thing some time ago, let me see if I can dig it up.
#95 Help provided Machinists guided Shared ideas and tools Alt.machines.cnc rules!
==== I was under the impression that CATIA was mainly an aero-space product. Dassault is a major French Aero-space company, but I don't know if this is the same Dassault.
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to be very good for fitting parts/sub-assemblies together, and for engineering [FAE] model generation. Also there seems to be a super BOM add-on. All of which would be good for automotive.
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Anyone know for sure?
Unka' George [George McDuffee]
------------------------------------------- He that will not apply new remedies, must expect new evils: for Time is the greatest innovator: and if Time, of course, alter things to the worse, and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better, what shall be the end?
Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English philosopher, essayist, statesman. Essays, "Of Innovations" (1597-1625).
CIMData charges CADCAM companies to review their products. They are by no means objective or accurate. Occasionally a CADCAM company might provide Alan Christman / CIMData with some interesting info about their product but it's rare.
CIMdata Equals-> Lots of smoke, many mirrors, light only when a CADCAM company decides to *pay* Alan Christman and CIMdata and give him some honest information.
Investigative, objective, honest reporting from Alan Christman / CIMdata... not a chance.
CIMdata Equals-> Lots of smoke, many mirrors, light only when a CADCAM company decides to *pay* Alan Christman and CIMdata and give him some honest information.
Investigative, objective, honest reporting from Alan Christman / CIMdata... not a chance.
Here is someone who says he changed from Mastercam to OneCNC and no doubt many idiots will take what this CADCAM ignorant, lying, slimeball has to say without questioning it. He has some good points mixed in with his nonsense but the answer isn't and wasn't OneCNC. I wonder how many idiots believe all of this and think it's objective or accurate.
My guess is you have no idea what's correct and what's total bullshit in what he has to say below:
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"A year or so went by and I had a need for 4 axis software, I began looking at other CAM software to fill this need as OneCNC did not at the time have this multi axis feature. I settled on Mastercam, first
9.1 and recently "X". After several weeks of trying to configure the post, and output good 4 axis code I finally gave up and bought about $300 worth of video instruction. Thankfully this was pretty well put together but I was astounded at the complexity of doing something as simple as indexing a rotary table. It literally took months until I felt comfortable running code through my machine. "X" has been no better.
This class of software in my opinion really requires the time and monetary investment in a training class to use with any confidence, and even then the time investment to do even simple tasks is simply not reasonable given the state of manufacturing today. I have even gone back and looked at other software again but the more I look the more I see the same thing over and over. Tool pathing made much more complex than it needs to be, verification that does not truly represent the code that will be output, and interfaces that look they were designed to confuse rather than guide a user from one objective to the next.
It needs to be said that like a lot of shop owners I neither have the time nor inclination to sit at a computer all day or night trying and fighting to get done what SHOULD take less than an hour.
Recently OneCNC released OneCNCXR2 which solved the problems I had with the other software. I sat at my computer with OneCNCXR2, and without even looking at a help file, or getting any guidance at all, I run full 4 axis and indexing part from raw solid model through tool path verification and out to the machine with success. This only took about an hour first try with OneCNCXR2. I don't use a 5 axis machine yet but the 5 axis tool paths are run the same as the 4th. The interface is designed to be obvious to anyone that has any exposure to CAD/CAM. If you want to machine a certain face, that face or a plane is picked and then whatever appropriate tool path is applied, full 3 axis, contour, drill pocket etc. To rotate the part another face or plane is picked and the process repeated as needed. There are no issues with the x axis not pointing the right way, no post issues that take weeks to resolve, and no week long classes and inch think manuals to digest.
When shopping for CAM software one must ask the question "what is the goal?" If the answer is "cut good parts" then OneCNC is the clear choice. If the answer is "take weeks long training classes and buy instructional books and video and pray I can learn all of these little nuances so I don't scrap the first ten parts" then maybe "X" or one of it's rivals is your cup of tea.
The icing on the cake is the price of OneCNC.
Verification is an essential part of any CAD/CAM system and with my "other" CAM software I was forced to buy a third party verification module because I kept getting gouges that would not show up in the stock verification, NCI files are used by most other CAD/CAM systems so what you see is not always what you get. With OneCNC what you see in verify is what your part will look like, in more than two years of using it I have never seen something on my part that did not show in verify.
It only takes the scrapping of one part that has four operations on it to realize the value of a good verify module. The best part is that it comes as part of the OneCNC software package, no third party costs or add-ons for what should be there in the first place."
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