[Geckopuppy]

Why do I not see Geopath here? Does it really suck that bad? Or am I just passing right over it?

[Geckopuppy]

Really?

[JOHN PARSONS]

Many shops here in Silicion Valley use Geopath.
They have good salesmen that tell customers that since it's simple, it's faster.
Most Cad Cams have 2 pages of contour parameters.
(So much for being faster)
I know Geopath, Mastercam, Surfcam, and a few others, I prefer Mastercam because of all the stuff it does better than the others. If you have been programming as long as me, then you laugh at Geopath, there are so many things that it doesn't do, let alone, do well.
But it's the price, that is it's biggest selling point.
The people that buy it usually have no experience in Cad Cams, and it's easy for salesmen to tell them it's faster than other Cad Cams. Just because Mastercam and other high end Cad Cams have thousands of options for cutting that Geopath doesn't have, doesn't mean you have to use them all.
Mastercam is faster than Geopath in many ways, especially when you have to have an outside programmer make a program for a part that you can't program on your software, since it is a low end Cad Cam.

[devincox]

Why do I not see Geopath here? Does it really suck that bad? Or am I just passing right over it?

I have geopath as well. It's what I started with but I have noticed an almost complete absence of info for it, on the web. I don't think many hobby type people use it. I am trying to get away from it as the support (for the hobbiest) is nill and the software is about as non-intuitive as it gets. The help files drive me to insanity and rarely lead to a positive solution.
I have been playing with Google's (free) Sketchup and some ruby scripts that convert your files into .dxf. I can then export into GP or something else (havent decided yet) to create the tool paths.

http://sketchup.google.com/download/gsu.html

http://code.google.com/p/zomadicam/

Devin

[warrenb]

Just scrapped a few rather expensive parts that were cut on a shop using Geopath. Their IGES translator just doesn't work well enough to be reliable for us to use that shop again until they get something to replace Geopath.

[VaporFiend]

Good I found a thread on this subject. I didn't want to post and then be directed to 12,000 threads of the same topic. Anyways...

The company I work at knows I have a great deal of computer experience and they want to bring me up to speed as far as CNC programming is concerned. My boss tossed me a laptop with SolutionWare Cad/Cam on it and said "learn this". I agree with the person above, the help files are extremely lacked on information. It's as though you're only getting the second half of a lesson, with important stuff left out.

So I've never worked with cad/cam software before and I've only done minimal point to point g-code programming for engravings. But I have a strong computer background and am very good at picking up new software in a relatively short period of time.

Here's what I'm looking for. Any and all tutorials or insight about SolutionWare that some of the veteran gurus may have out there. I've been going through the "step by step" help files and learning various things about the software, but any seasoned users' tips would be extremely helpful as the company I'm with is expecting me to be up and running in just a couple months.

If it helps, we're aerospace. Some flight-critical parts. I highly doubt they'll have me jumping on those right away though. I understand that there's basically nothing out on the web about this program for tutorials aside from some spanish youtube videos but anything will help guys.

Also I could use some tutorial videos on mazatrol code. I'm learning that as well since we're using all mazak machines at my company.


Thanks in advance. You can email anything to me at [email protected] I check that more often than I come to this site.