[CaptainVee]

Hi Folks,

I have alibre 9 expert which included a totally useless cam 1.0 CAM (REALLY useless, installing it crashes the rest of Alibre).

I am afraid of trying alibre 11 trail because of a big need to have 9 ready to go.

Has anyone tried alibre CAM yet as part of their expert edition of Alibre design?

I have a lot of trouble to make a good comparisson.

[cjdavis618]

I have Expert cam 2.0 and design 12.1 . I wish I knew more about the ins and outs of using it. The instructions are pretty limited and there are very little instructions on the interface between the Alibre design and Visual mill integration of it. The methods of selecting things as simple as holes, etc are very different and sometimes confusing.

[scudzuki]

For the CAM getting started guide, open AD, then open the machining ops browser (CAM). Click on the CAM menu again then "getting started". Click on GSG button in the dialog that opens to get the guide (it's a pdf so you can save it for reference later).

I think I read that the Express CAM functionality included with AD Expert is going to be dropped. It is a pretty stripped down product anyway and I imagine it would be too limited to complete many parts.

As for selecting entities in ACAM, I find it much easier (and more accurate) to select from the design explorer tree than the model. Incidentally this is the only way I've been able to select multiple entities.

There is a free version of VisualMill available, lacks the integration with AD but I think it has the same limited functionality as the CAM in AD Expert.
MecSoft FreeMILL: 3D Milling package

[freepiston]

Do not use it! Alibre is a fantastic 3D package but the CAM ad on is very poor. I bought BobCADCAM 24 and although its pre-window heritage is still evident, its a better bet for a low cost solution.