I have been having one heck of a bad time with CAMworks. I am currently considering the idea of making a move into SolidCAM. We have a Haas VF-3SS with 4th axis rotary.
What I am looking for is a real low-down on the good-bad-and-ugly about SolidCAM. I am not looking to start a mine-vs-yours argument here. I just want to know what, from the vantage point of experienced users, are the good things about SolidCAM and what I should look for during the demo period so I may understand where the warts might be.
How good is the supplied Haas post? Is it "production ready" or does it require a lot of post-delivery work to make basic parts?
How good is the simulator? Does the simulation match what actually happens at the machine or are there differences?
Does it have good options for managing and generating g-code files for parts requiring multiple setups?
How robust is it when part geometry is modified and it has to rebuild the operations?
Do the automatic feature recognition functions actually work or are they dangerous to use due to quirks?
How likely is the program to generate code that is dangerous (machine crash, tool breakage due to rapids into fixtures or table, etc.).
Is it capable of integrating calls to macros for such things as probing during a program?
How would you rate the help files and supplied documentation?
Does it work well on Vista 64?
...more later...
Thanks,
-Martin