[lkenney]

I had a screen flash up today in V5 that said that I had to pay a maintenance fee by xx in april or TrueMill would quit working. Does anyone have any Idea wha the H___ is going on. I don't like the sound or feel of this and I have bee a strong supporter of TrueMill.

Lowell

[moldcore]

Finally gave up waiting for the CD/DVD and downloaded the program from a link that our dealer gave us, and I get the same screen flash every time we start the program. I thought maybe the license file needed to be in V5 directory but it made no difference. Makes no sense since TrueMill is a Surfcam product developed by Surfcam. Maybe what we downloaded was a demo version? I sent an email off to the dealer about this issue yesterday, probably will have to wait until Monday for an answer. This week is Westec so many dealers will be there and occupied with other pursuits. We may have to go to Surfware directly.

What build should we be running? Mine shows B177.

I’ve been using Velocity 5 heavily for the last 2 days and it’s locked up twice. Never had Surfcam totally lock up in 15 years that I recall. It also seems slow in selecting. Could be my video card (only 320 MB) so I’ve ordered a new 1GB one that won’t be here until next week. So far I’m disappointed in what few improvements I’ve seen but it’s only been 2 days. Still nothing done to its lame interface with very limited undo still.

[lkenney]

I have been in contact with them today (Sunday even) and it looks like they are tieing the use of V5 Truemill to paying our maintenance fee.

I don't like the way this feels at all. As far as I can remember we were allways told that we would have total rights to everything released until our maintenance was dropped. This feels right now like a change.

I have asked Eric to call me later today during business hours to talk about it.

Lowell

[lkenney]

Eric did call me this morning. If I don't pay my maintence on schedule then of course I won't get support and if I pay it late there are penalties, how ever I will not loose an functionality that I have loaded on my computer, I have a permanent license. how ever from now on True mill maintenance will be a seperate line item form Velocity maintenance which they have lowered.

Hope I have everyone confused now.

Lowell

[moldcore]

Eric did call me this morning. If I don't pay my maintence on schedule then of course I won't get support and if I pay it late there are penalties, how ever I will not loose an functionality that I have loaded on my computer, I have a permanent license. how ever from now on True mill maintenance will be a seperate line item form Velocity maintenance which they have lowered.

Hope I have everyone confused now.

Lowell

What a crock! So If I renew later this year when it’s due, and only pay for the cheaper velocity maintenance my TruMill will be disabled in all new and previous versions but if I don’t renew it will maintain its functionality in older versions. Why would I want to renew ever again. This is the kind of crap I thought only a democrat in Congress could think of. No wonder this company is on its last legs. My dealer has not returned my emails on this.

[Excelmachine]

We just got this message today too. We have been using Surfcam for 4 years now with full 3D and just added the 4th axis in December. Started up V5 today and got the license warning. Funny thing is, we downloaded it when it came available and got the license the same day, and now we are still getting that message. WTH? With all of the bells and whistles we bought with our Surfcam, it was a pretty penny. I sincerely hope they don't try to get more money out of us for the Truemill, specially since that was added through our maintenance program updates as an added feature that was being paid for through our maintenance payments. It would have helped if Surfcam would have emailed everyone about this before they implemented this policy with the warning message. It sure would have helped with PR.

Funnily enough, I am going to WESTEC this week to evaluate some other CAM programs to see what else is out there.

[moldcore]

"Funnily enough, I am going to WESTEC this week to evaluate some other CAM programs to see what else is out there."


If you’re going to Westec this week could you ask someone at the booth about this. We normally go but because of the economy and the fact that Westec starts on a Tuesday now we decided to skip it this year. We usually make it a 4 day weekend (2 days travel going and returning) but now we have to stay an extra day making the trip less attractive. Less time in LA the better.

I may have exaggerated a bit in my last post but I’m getting tired of Surfcam’s above it all attitude. They tried this with SRM a few years ago and few people went along with their stupid game then. Next thing we know they’ll be charging for each time you use the program. TrueMill is ok but we find few uses for it since we make small aluminum molds that can be hogged out in just a few minutes using the older tool cutting routines. If we did production were we could save a few minutes off hundreds of parts then yes it’s a valuable tool. We won’t miss it if they intend to charge extra for it. We never used SRM either. I wonder what maintenance will be without TrueMill? I can see a chance to save a few bucks.

[sinderal]

Call your local dealer to know about it!
1. TrueMill 2 Axis and TrueMill 3 Axis are the Option for All Surfcam level product start from V5.
2. You will need a New License File to Run TrueMill in V5 after April 15, 2010. Ask your dealer to get it(Still On Maintenance). You could run TrueMill in all previours version and don't need any new license.

[Excelmachine]

WESTEC:

I went to WESTEC yesterday and the show was quite a bit smaller than what I remember from 5 years ago. Surfcam was in a small booth and then they had another booth called Truemill that also had shared space with Swiftcarb. The Truemill booth was maybe 3 times the size of the Surfcam booth. In the Truemill booth they had a Haas VF3 working on some titanium 6Al/4V with a guy on a headset explaining how Truemill works. The machining process sounded sweet, full depth of cut with about a 1/2 end mill. Nice finish on the part after machining too.
The Surfcam booth in my opinion looked a bit boring. They had a video monitor showing their software being used. I did ask about the V5 licensing thing and quite frankly, I got an unsatisfactory answer. I explained that we had downloaded the V5 when it came available and we got the new license a couple of days later, yet when we open V5, we get that annoying message. I was told that yeah, that message will pop up until sometime in late April, WTH. What kind of crap is that. In all fairness,maybe it was a case of the person I asked wasn't up to speed with the latest result of the licensing of the Truemill module. Maybe it is just needing to get yet another license key to get rid of the annoying message.
We recently asked for a quote for a 2nd seat of Surfcam and the quote specifically has the Truemill 2d or 3d as an extra cost option. I'm pretty sure that any current version of Surfcam that has Truemill currently will have no changes in their functionality. Its just the new purchasers of Surfcam that will have to deal with wether or not they want the Truemill option. I was told that this provided the option to the purchaser in case they didn't need the Truemill process in their work and thusly could purchase Surfcam for a little less money without having access to Truemill.
I spent quite a bit of time at the Delcam booth and really liked the stuff that Featurecam had. I had a sample part that I programmed in Surfcam that took me an hour and the guy at Featurecam programmed it in 5 minutes. If I had the option personally, I would get a seat of Featurecam instead of another seat of Surfcam. Actually, even a seat of Solidcam since our engineers draw everything in Solidworks before another Surfcam seat. SolidCAM has a thing called Imilling that is based on chip thickness that had similar results as Truemill. They had a video showing an 1/8 endmill on 1014 steel hogging out a pocket taking a depth of cut that you would expect of in Truemill. It apparently varies the feed rate automatically in corners and that is how they control the chip thickness.
OK, tin foil hat time------ why in the world have 2 different booths, Truemill and Surfcam?

[moldcore]

I talked to my dealer and they are not happy with what’s going on in the company but wouldn’t elaborate beyond that. By your description it seems that there is two companies now that don’t communicate with each other very well. In marketing, perception is everything. Having two separate booths does not give a good impression about the future of the company.
What pisses me off is all the money we’ve spent on maintenance has been going into development of optional products while the core program continues to suffer with a crappy interface.

[Excelmachine]

Moldcore, check your PM's.

[sinderal]

Surfware has an announcement today on the website

SURFCAM V5 License Display Warning Information: Click here to learn more

[moldcore]

Anyone know how much less the maintenance will be for a 3 Axis plus package if one decides to drop TrueMill?