PowerMill and PowerShape won the year long benchmark that I held at my company. We have been using PowerMill for a few years now. We have it very automated using Visual Basic programs. I gave the shop some basic lessons on VB and one guy really took off with it. He created a program that he calls 'Cruncher' This program brings up a screen that you fill out like where the 3d model is, what roughing tool to use, what pre finishing tool and what finish tool. The program will crunch all the tool path that is needed to build the part automaticly. There is a batch function that can do many different models and crunch them one by one.
It is so easy to use the shop floor people can run their own jobs if the programmer is not here or is busy.
Thanks
Jeff Davis (HomeCNC)
http://www.homecnc.info
(Note: The opinions expressed in this post are my own and are not necessarily those of CNCzone and its management)