In the last two years Delcam has added PowerMill's toolpaths to Featurecam making it one incredibly powerful program.
With some CAD improvements and some user interface improvements, Featurecam can easily be the dominant player for machining job shops in the USA. It?s further along than almost every other CAM product in this regard and Autodesk marketing can really crank up sales at a much faster rate than Delcam was.
More details as well as an extended discussion of the Autodesk purchase of Delcam can be found on the LinkedIn group: CADCAM Technology Leaders.
******* Feature recognition is as good as its rules relative to the simplicity of the part. As the rules get better, more complex, and fatter the system can do more. Like the evolution of windows.
Some people love windows, some people miss the freedom of "not" doing things the same damn way as "everyone" else. These system evolute in two ways, one is like I said, better log routines, bigger log routines, and more log routines. The other way they evolve is more sinister, they change the need. I see it all over with other producs and systems. The need is dumbed down.
Like windows, feature based software wont be feeding the same need as now, they will dumb down the end products to facilitate the limitation in software.
I wonder where we would be if there was no windows?
You can keep your feature based crap, Ill stick with full control, a combination of many things including feature recognition. (in case I have a circuit board to drill),