Is anyone familiar with both to provide some comparison? I'm currently a CAMWorks user but may be considering a switch or addition.
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Is anyone familiar with both to provide some comparison? I'm currently a CAMWorks user but may be considering a switch or addition.
I been a CAMWorks user for the last 8 years and right now I'm going through a 30 day NX cam trial. I love CAMWorks for the machines that we currently have but we just recently purchased a 5 axis mill turn machine with a Siemens controller and are looking for a turn key solution to drive this machine without issues. Why do you want to switch? I would request a full unrestricted demo like we are doing so you can make the best decision. Also NX is very proud of there stuff and the price reflects it.
In the Siemens NX forums they announced 30-day free trials. I am not sure what level it is but the following page might shed some light on it for you.
Try NX CAM software free for 30-days - siemensplm
I have to warn you, NX is a huge, extremely capable software and IMO it's a good idea to have someone show you some basics to get you going. Are there any NX users in your area you can call? Also, if there is a sales or re-seller office in your area you might be able to get an actual applications person to show you some things.
Yeah I contacted my local reseller and they gave me the "kit" from Siemens for my machine that incudes the post and the simulation. So far I have gone through a couple of the tutorials that come imbedded in the software and I'm pretty impressed. We have set up a date for a web meeting with a tech that will do some more training.
Some good advice here, thank you both. Is it important to understand the CAD side before the CAM? Maybe I should learn the CAD before reviewing the CAM? I believe I have access to the CAD but we do not have a seat of CAM. I work for a 50-50 joint venture. One parent uses NX, the other Pro-E. I am getting by well with CamWorks but it would be nice to work with the original model without converting. I find I have to convert models to bodies so I can work with them. My thinking is that working with NX may be cleaner?
Firstly I am a NX user...Quote:
Originally Posted by ParkerMillguy
Cad or cam first? Depends what you will be doing. If you do not have to model anything you could jump into cam but if you need to do modeling you will definitely need to learn the cad side first. Playing with it on your own is okay but it's surprising how fast a month trial can whiz by if you just play around with it occasionally. On the training side you can get Siemens training and there is reasonably priced training using Siemens Learning Advantage which is subscription and online based I believe and there also are many articles and videos on the Siemens site as well as user forums. This NX docs have many how-to sections and there are some basic tutorials built into the app too.
As for a complete, integrated package it IS super nice to work in. Users may work on the multitudes of parts in an assembly simultaneously or simply standalone with customer supplied data. The point is it's powerful so you have many ways of dealing with data. I know a molder who develops parts for oem's in NX in house, designs molds around those parts and finally programs steel and edm electrodes from the design models and everything is parametric from start to finish. At our site we require a lot of flexibility and have to deal with a lot of unparametric, customer supplied data but that isn't a problem for us.
NX part simulation is good but not as good as Vericut (what is? lol). There are many sample machines built in for full machine simulation but if you need to create your own machine it can be daunting. Purchased machines are available. For us 99.9% of the time we use part simulation with only rare occasions actually needing full-on machine sim.
NX works well with combinations of solids and surfaces, it doesn't care one bit and you can even throw in stl models and skins to the mix if you like. NX cam eats them up and makes great paths from all of it. On the cad side there are tools for adding surfaces to solids to create new complete solid models. They are working on doing the same thing with stl's and solids but the release is a little ways off as of yet.
"Users may work on the multitudes of parts in an assembly simultaneously..."
This is extremely valuable to me. CamWorks assembly mode is great for a fixture with multiple parts but not to work on one assembly made up of different components. I usually save assembly files as a part before tool-pathing.
To clarify...for example if you have a file with 10 component parts in it, users can work on the various component parts and save them. (Cannot work on the same part at the same time, obviously) If the main file is open and a user makes changes to a component it will generate a message on the main file but I cannot recall if it prompts user to save or what; I would have to try it and see. Sorry but I work on my own assemblies at my site.Quote:
Originally Posted by ParkerMillguy