[OT] What CAM software do You use (mainly) with Pro/engineer ?

NC Sheet metal by Pro Engineer.

Brian

Pro/NC of course

C.P

Of course. That's a very user friendly program ... NOT!

Guess that depends on the user, we use it to manufacture custom sheet metal products at the tune of over 6,000 NC programs a week.

el Diablo

We use Pro/NC exclusively. No third-party application can do what Pro/NC does. If your models are in Pro, it is a no-brainer regarding translation, associativity, family tables, etc.

Regards Pete

Yep, friendly or not depends on the user's IQ.

CP

I didn't say it was a bad program, it isn't. When working with it every day there is no problem, but it's outdated gui isn't very user friendly.

However if one fails to see that ProNC is way behind in user friendliness compared to many other CAM programs, that has to do with the IQ. Or maybe a thousand custom made mapkeys makes it better?

Maybe ProNC in WF2 is better, I haven't checked that.

"Knowing how to cut metal" is the only difference between Pro/NC and Pro/E. In other words, it's the difference between CAM and CAD. If one does already now know 'metal cutting' then no CAM system could help. And if one already knows Pro/E, Pro/NC interface should not be something new anyway.

In my experience. It's not the software, it's about the people. There're two types of people I always run into. One is initiative, resourceful, always professionally completes their project on schedule. While the other keeps on complaining the software's outdated, not user friendly. Seems to me like just an excuse covering up their incompetence.

I didn't say Pro/NC is 'number one' CAM either. But then, what MANY other CAM systems you said Pro/NC is behind are? I'm curious if you're even an NC programmer.

C.P.

Well ProNC does the job and does it good, but where other programs have icons and dialog boxes for selecting milling strategies and entering parameters, ProNC has a site file that you edit in ProTable. I just think it can get more graphical. PTC obviously think so as well, or they wouldn't have done Wildfire. They haven't reached ProNC yet though.

As for my experience with NC programs, I've been programming NC machines since 1984, first manually then with CAM programs. By the way,1984 must be the year ProNCs interface is from ;-)

I hate all those stinking icons !

I spent a good deal of time in school learning to read. Icons are _less_ intelligible than written text and take up more space. Graphical to me is a big window to draw in, not a bunch of sketches of a nun's head with an arrow thru it :-)

If you want to see something ghastly, grab a copy of UG NX-2. BLEUGH ! (AND the sucker is the slowest thing on silicon. What a fricking dog. Boy am I glad we chose Pro/E instead of that sewer sludge !)

Actually I do like the 2001interface better for part modelling but I didn't like ProNC to much. It's a bit frustrating that parts of the ProE package is moving on to a more 'iconified' world and other parts are left behind so you have to switch back and forth all the time.

I agree that most of these graphics don't help out in any way, it just takes up diskspace. Wildfire2 takes about

I should have stayed with 2001...