SW/CNC for woodworking

Jul 07, 2005 4 Replies

Does anyone know of software for using SW or Gold Partner to program a CNC router or mill for woodworking? Several years back there was a company in France doing this. They sent many posts regarding this at that time.



Regarfs,



Dennis Deacon


Check with these guys.

formatting link

They know Solidworks and CAM really well. They offer a couple different CAM programs and might be able to help you out.

Dennis,

How much do you want to spend. This type of software has a very wide range, from $500.00 to $20,000.00.

Don't think there's a specialized gold app. for routers. The only gold CAM products on the SW site are Camworks and SolidCam. I think both are in the

6K to 8K range. These are general purpose CAM systems, but will work for a router (it's just X,Y,Z, g-code)

Mastercam makes a specialized version just for routers, kinda pricey though. Downside, it's not integrated.

Mark

I got a call from someone at

formatting link
a couple of years ago. At the time she said they had a plug-in for SolidWorks.

Dennis, we have a CNC router we use to cut out the wood pieces for our wood carts. We use SigmaNEST to program our parts. It has a Solidworks module to import Solidworks parts directly without converting them into a different format. You can also have custom properties in your part files populate the dialog box in SigmaNEST when you set up a part. It will even differentiate between configurations of a part. To make it even nicer, You can import an assembly file and have it look at all the parts, one after another, without having to go and find each part individually.

Once I got all this funtionality set up the way we wanted it, an assembly of parts that used to take me anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour to setup the old way, now only takes me about 10 minutes.

It works really well for us.

Richard

Join the Discussion

Have something to add? Share your thoughts — no account required.

Didn't find your answer?

Ask the community — no account required