We have very different experiences, because I know personally dozens of people that never go on forums that love using mastercam daily. I agree with some of the gripes that you guys have...but certainly not all. But I also love how easy it is for me to make money with mastercam.
Tim
I have never complained about the actual toolpath generation, that is MC's strong point. Our bad luck came from a rep with techs that did not give a rats butt about making sure our posts were correct. Then MC released X3, don't need to say more, its been down hill ever since. Most people are beating the drums on here in hopes of MC making some changes because its obvious they don't listen when bad news goes backward in the channel. Since switching to SolidCam my blood pressure is down and productivity is up, if MC would release an X3 (maint. expired) fix for everyone that is stuck on sp0, I will not waist my time to upgrade since SolidCam is stable and my posts work fine.
This should explain why you read the negatives on here, its their license agreement. The dongle cannot be sold, myself, if something does not perform to my satisfaction its sold and a large portion of the investment is recovered and everything moves forward. Cannot do that with MC (and others) so, everyday when you have to look at your mistake the level of frustration grows and continues to grow...........................
John, you got some really good URLs, you can get free forum software like this site uses and your expense will only be hosting. You will take in a lot of money when you get the traffic. This site takes in a fortune from ad revenue. I am sure you would not have any cad/cam vendors on their other than low lifes like BobC and Dolp. If you use a category structure like the PM site you should do well. My advise will be to lock in the common lower levels, when I started my company 10 years ago we got a top level .com domain and did not even think about lower levels, extremely bad mistake. I do have serveral domains but only a couple are top level .coms and the names, we felt were not going to be strong enough to pull in the traffic needed for a cash cow forum. Top of the page banners cost the advertiser around $2500 per month, the cheap ones are around 200-300 USD for the small banners!!!!!! Do the math!!
SolidWorks focus is on being able to design great products. The focus for SolidWorks Corporation stops there. I'm really not sure what CNC Software's focus is but neither SolidWorks or Mastercam comes close to offering a complete solution.
It should be obvious to an objective observer that this company truly has a complete solution where ease of use and power are not compromised.
True Solid Based machining – No curves required! » Clear Cut Solutions, Inc
I'm not going to e-mail prices. I'm going to put them right here for everyone to see:
Prices in the U.S.A. where given to me by the master distributor in the U.S.A. for TopSolid this week:
2D mill and lathe and some limited 3D machining, 4 axis positioning, 5 axis positioning, TopSolid 7 CAD Light (All part modeling (surfacing, etc.), all drafting, NO ASSEMBLY = $4,750
Full 2D and Full 3D, Full TopSolid CAD and CAM 7 = $8,000
TopSolid 7 CAM will not have what TopSolid 6 has (4 and 5 axis simultaneous, mill turn, twin turret) until 2012
TopSolid distributor in the U.S.A. has been around for I think approx 10 years.
They all seem to be very good at heavy post sale leverage, the only buyers for 2.5d are first timers or not in the know. 2.5d is pretty worthless, you can do work arounds but you spend alot more time than if you had a full 3D surface tool paths.
Now after talking to CNC Software I now know why Mastercam is so expensive here in Canada. There is a dealer monopoly and there is no price protection for customers outside the US.
I wonder if I can be a dealer? No service is better than bad service with price gouging.
Canada needs another dealer. Well not really.
John