[Nagle]

InventorCam sucks. Here's why.

(Background: I'm using InventorCam 2012 with Autodesk Inventor 2013, at TechShop. I've used Aspire's Cut2D and VCarve, and Sprutcam in the past. I've used Inventor extensively, and SolidWorks a little. I'm a programmer who does some machining.)

The program

InventorCam is terribly brittle. It crashes. A lot. When it crashes, it takes Autodesk Inventor down with it. Inventor then "phones home" to Autodesk to report the crash, I fill oujt the crash form, and get a useless response back from Autodesk. Things which will crash it include

• Trying to define stock with a 3D model without having deselected automatic definition of stock back in the preferences before starting. (Crashes every time, by bringing up a dialog box with one greyed out "Resume" button from which there is no escape.)
• Switching back and forth from the Inventor model to the CAM environment (Crashes sometimes, and sometimes just loses the CAM environment.)

The documentation (at Documentation - InventorCAM CAM software) consists of endless tutorials and fuzzy videos of screenshots. There's no reference manual that I can find that lists all the things it can do and what all the menu options do. The "contextual help" just throws you to the beginning of a big HTML document.

It's not clear where it saves its CAM files, what they do, or when they get saved. It seems to be necessary to reset preferences for the program to indicate where the files for a project should go. But after doing that, not all the files seem to go there. Most of the time, even with what seem to be all the correct options set, CAM files are saved in some default place, not with the project. Nor does file save seem to be integrated with Inventor Pack and Go. If you're using different computers, as we have to do at TechShop, you lose the CAM files frequently.

This is just inept programming and design.

The approach to CAM

InventorCam's approach to CAM is much dumber than the promotional material would indicate. It's dumber that Sprutcam. For the basic 2 1/2D operations, it doesn't really understand Inventor geometry. It just lets you extract edges from Inventor models. InventorCam doesn't really understand Inventor solids or faces. Unlike SprutCam, it doesn't understand what's already been machined away. So, for example, when you want to machine a pocket, you have to select the pocket's edge, section by section. Then you have to select the upper machining level and the pocket bottom level. You can't just select the bottom face of the pocket and have the program take the appropriate data from Inventor's model. InventorCam isn't smart enough to avoid machining air, either.

Inventor doesn't understand what's an outside edge of the part. It's possible to create a pocket with an open edge manually, which tells the system to go a little beyond the edge and smooth it off, but this only works if it's a straight line. Facing a flat land area requires more user work than it should. Again, the user has to tell the program something it already knows. Pocketing is also rather lame in that you have to manually set "Left" or "Right" in the "Technology" menu, depending on the direction of cut, to avoid cutting the outside of the pocket rather than the inside. Another example of InventorCam not really using the Inventor geometry in a useful way.

Yes, some of the checking and simulation tools understand what's been cut away, but the CAM planning tools expect the user to tell the program things it should already know.

There are about eight different machining simulation tools, most of which either don't work consistently or don't tell you much. One solid model simulator that Just Works would be more useful.

Conclusion

The overall feel is of a program put together with "agile" programming, resulting in a collecton of features in search of an architecture.

(I've tried SprutCam. SprutCam seems to have been written by Russian math geniuses but not debugged well. The hard parts involving understanding the geometry are impressive. The user interface isn't bad. Then, every once in a while, you hit some lame bug such as having some operation adjust improperly for tool holder length.)

[KUWill]

InventorCam sucks. Here's why.

(Background: I'm using InventorCam 2012 with Autodesk Inventor 2013, at TechShop. I've used Aspire's Cut2D and VCarve, and Sprutcam in the past. I've used Inventor extensively, and SolidWorks a little. I'm a programmer who does some machining.)

The program

InventorCam is terribly brittle. It crashes. A lot. When it crashes, it takes Autodesk Inventor down with it. Inventor then "phones home" to Autodesk to report the crash, I fill oujt the crash form, and get a useless response back from Autodesk. Things which will crash it include

• Trying to define stock with a 3D model without having deselected automatic definition of stock back in the preferences before starting. (Crashes every time, by bringing up a dialog box with one greyed out "Resume" button from which there is no escape.)
• Switching back and forth from the Inventor model to the CAM environment (Crashes sometimes, and sometimes just loses the CAM environment.)

The documentation (at Documentation - InventorCAM CAM software) consists of endless tutorials and fuzzy videos of screenshots. There's no reference manual that I can find that lists all the things it can do and what all the menu options do. The "contextual help" just throws you to the beginning of a big HTML document.

It's not clear where it saves its CAM files, what they do, or when they get saved. It seems to be necessary to reset preferences for the program to indicate where the files for a project should go. But after doing that, not all the files seem to go there. Most of the time, even with what seem to be all the correct options set, CAM files are saved in some default place, not with the project. Nor does file save seem to be integrated with Inventor Pack and Go. If you're using different computers, as we have to do at TechShop, you lose the CAM files frequently.

This is just inept programming and design.

The approach to CAM

InventorCam's approach to CAM is much dumber than the promotional material would indicate. It's dumber that Sprutcam. For the basic 2 1/2D operations, it doesn't really understand Inventor geometry. It just lets you extract edges from Inventor models. InventorCam doesn't really understand Inventor solids or faces. Unlike SprutCam, it doesn't understand what's already been machined away. So, for example, when you want to machine a pocket, you have to select the pocket's edge, section by section. Then you have to select the upper machining level and the pocket bottom level. You can't just select the bottom face of the pocket and have the program take the appropriate data from Inventor's model. InventorCam isn't smart enough to avoid machining air, either.

Inventor doesn't understand what's an outside edge of the part. It's possible to create a pocket with an open edge manually, which tells the system to go a little beyond the edge and smooth it off, but this only works if it's a straight line. Facing a flat land area requires more user work than it should. Again, the user has to tell the program something it already knows. Pocketing is also rather lame in that you have to manually set "Left" or "Right" in the "Technology" menu, depending on the direction of cut, to avoid cutting the outside of the pocket rather than the inside. Another example of InventorCam not really using the Inventor geometry in a useful way.

Yes, some of the checking and simulation tools understand what's been cut away, but the CAM planning tools expect the user to tell the program things it should already know.

There are about eight different machining simulation tools, most of which either don't work consistently or don't tell you much. One solid model simulator that Just Works would be more useful.

Conclusion

The overall feel is of a program put together with "agile" programming, resulting in a collecton of features in search of an architecture.

(I've tried SprutCam. SprutCam seems to have been written by Russian math geniuses but not debugged well. The hard parts involving understanding the geometry are impressive. The user interface isn't bad. Then, every once in a while, you hit some lame bug such as having some operation adjust improperly for tool holder length.)

I'm sorry you feel this way. I personally love InventorCAM only having used GibbsCAM, Mastercam, and NX Machining module. I would suggest that the crashing is either related to not having service packs installed or just a low quality installation. I rarely have InventorCAM crash. You get to specify where it puts the CAM part every time you make a new file by the way. Lastly, use iMachining. It's awesome. PM me if you have any specific questions you would like answered and I can try and help. Mostly just sounds like they have a low quality installation. Also, are you sure it is InventorCAM and not HSMExpress for Inventor?

Thanks.

[Nagle]

Yes, it's real InventorCam 2012. If such as thing as a "low quality installation" is possible, it's the fault of InventorCam for not detecting it at startup.

Things that can crash InventorCam include clicking on anything while InventorCam is launching or exiting. There are other race conditions in the user interface, but most are not fatal. It's like running a Windows program from 1990.

There's a postprocessor for the ShopBot on TechShop's machines, but I don't know where they go it. It generates bad ShopBot code, with missing commas, zero-diameter circles, invalid feed speeds, no spindle speed setting, and GCode instead of ShopBot code for drilling.

[glovebox20]

I'm sorry you feel this way. I rarely have InventorCAM crash.
Thanks.

I wish you would let us in on your secret. Inventorcam2013 was terrible unstable until they came out with SP4. And that didn't solved all the issues.

Nagle, what is your sync setting set to. I to had lots of problems with Inventorcam. When I change the synchronization from 'check synchronization always' to 'check synchronization on user demand' Things got a whole lot better. When 'Sync always' is selected, it checks the sync of the part almost every time you click on the screen, slowing the system down and causing system instability. The bad thing about turn the sync off, is you lose the automatic association that Inventorcam brags so much about. Don't worry, you can still right click on the cam tree and check the sycn yourself, witch is actually faster than if Inventorcam tries to do it by itself. The only bad thing you have to remember to do it yourself.

Yes, crashing is annoying, but when the cam system doesn't produce the code like expected.... that is uncalled for. With Inventorcam2013, if you mill a contour 1.780" deep with multiples depth passes of 7 with 'equal step down selected', Inventorcam generates an extra pass that is not needed. In Inventorcam2014, they fixed that bug, but now if I mill 1.035" deep with deep with multiples depth passes of 3, the bug reappears again. GRRRR! And thread milling may overcut your thread when clear offset is use with no finish pass selected. Before Inventorcam2012, I don't know how many taps I broke because Inventorcam could not calculate the tap feed rate correctly. And don't even get me stared with drill point depth calculations!

Another thing you might want to try is saving your parts in compress mode. This will save all the Inventorcam files into a single file when you close out the of Inventorcam part. If working with custom stock, always create the custom stock part outside of Inventorcam, then use assembly mode it place it into the Inventorcam part your are working with. Once this is done, you should be able to make edits to your 'stock part' inside of Inventorcam with out much trouble. Do not save the stock model inside the Inventorcam 'temp folder'. Do not put anything in the Inventorcam temp folder, unless you want to lose it.

You also want to keep as many files (tool tables, templates, postprocessors) on your hard drive as possible. This will make the system faster and more stable. If using Vault, you would want to create your 'stock part', and save it into vault. this way if you are working on a different computer, you still can have access to your 'stock part'.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a hug fan of Inventorcam myself, but I hope you find these tips helpful.

[glovebox20]

InventorCam is terribly brittle. It crashes. A lot. When it crashes, it takes Autodesk Inventor down with it. Inventor then "phones home" to Autodesk to report the crash

Ahh, the beauty of integration, don't you love it. With Inventorcam2013, Inventercam will produce a crash report and send it to Inventorcam.... sometimes. I don't know if this helps though. I always like to call tech support directly to report the bug. If I scream loud enough, they might even provide me with a fix for it.

I've been using Inventorcam2014 for three days now, and I already found four different bugs for it. Some test team they have.

[Nagle]

Well, after a few more hours work, a TechShop InventorCam class, and a talk with SolidCam tech support, I learned the following:

1. InventorCam 2012 and Inventor 2013 do not play well together. TechShop SF uses Inventor 2012 with InventorCam 2012, even though they have Inventor 2013 and 2014 available.

2. SoildCam support strongly suggests upgrading to InventorCam 2013 or 2014. I'm beating on TechShop to get all their versions in sync.

3. InventorCam only saves to the user's file when InventorCam exits properly. All that "saving" within InventorCam just updates a temporary file. So if InventorCam crashes, you have to restart it, recover from the tempoary file, and then get a clean exit from InventorCam to get a properly saved file. I wondered for several days where my file was going.

4. 4-axis indexial machining has constraints on axis setup that aren't documented in the InventorCam tutorial. Some choices of additional axis positions will result in each operation looking OK, but the moves between the operations wiill be insane - moves to huge Z values, moves throug the part, etc. Transforms in 4-axis mode with InventorCam 2012 to flip to the back of a part seem to result in badly-chosen inter-operation moves that cause machine crashes, even when the toolpaths for each move are fine. It's important to simulate all the operations at once, not just each of them in sequence, or the inter-operatoin moves are not checked. I haven't figured out how to deal with this yet; the user doesn't have much control over inter-operation moves. Anyone know how that works?

5. For 4-axis work where the rotational axis is aligned with the X-axis of the milling machine bed, the first InventorCam coordinate system must have X aligned with the rotational axis, and the center of the coordinate system must be on the centerline of rotation. That's reasonable enough. However, the "cylindrical stock" option always generates a cylinder around the Z axis. So the obvious case of machining cylindrical stock on a 4-axis machine doesn't work out.

6. Is there some good way to machine a land? Suppose I have a part with a low flat between two high flats, with the low flat also having outside edges. This is essentially an "open pocket". I'd like to get the profile of the solid ends of the low flat machined exactly, and I'd like to go a little over the edge on the open edges to get a clean edge. It's possible to define "open pockets", but only when they're a loop with one straight open edge.

The biggest disappointment with InventorCam is that it doesnt't really know what it's doing geometrically. SprutCam, and high-end systems like Hypermill, track the state of the part as a solid model after each operation. Witth those systems, each new operation is planned based on what's left after the previous operatoins. .So you don't have to tell those systems where to start a cut or what to avoid. They know that already. InventorCam requires more manual work and probably leads to more air cutting. I was kind of hoping that InventorCam had the solid geometry smarts of SprutCam, but it doesn't.

[Nagle]

Well, today I got far enough to generate G-Code. I moved the origins of all the coordinate systems to the same point as the first (machine) coordinate system. They just have Y and Z axes facing in different directions. Everything looks good in Solid Verify, except for a bogus move between operations which shows in all the simulators but isn't in the G-code.

So I load it up on a Tormach mill for a dry run. This is an indexed 4-axis job for a symmetrical part, so each operation has a "transform" of the 4-axis type to do the other side. That all works in simulation. But the G-code never operates the A axis for those rotations. It sends "A0" for both sides of the part.

I dunno.

[Nagle]

Further progress. Installed the 30-day trial of InventorCam 2014 on my home machine, to go with Inventor 2013. Some of the bugs have been fixed. I don't have a Tormach machine definition, so I set it to "gMill_Brother_4x_X_Eval", which has similar geometry as a Tormach. Better paths come out. The gouge caused by a bogus inter-operation move, and the bogus move to about 5 inches from the part in X, are both gone. "Machine Simulation" still crashes InventorCam, probably because the machine definition isn't installed. But "SolidVerify for 3D" now works, and SolidVerify doesn't seem to cause crashes any more. RestMaterial did crash once, but it works most of the time. Things are looking up.

I can't generate G-code from the trial version, so I have to wait until TechShop does their software upgrades.

[Nagle]

Progress. With the latest InventorCam 2014, Inventor 2013, and two new versions of the Tormach 4-axis post-processor, I was finally able to generate usable G-code, run it on a Tormach mill, and have all the axes do the right thing.

Until the very end, when the machine made a move to 0,0,-3, because the ending of the G-code sends it to machine home Z, not safe Z-height. So make sure that machine home is set to a nice high Z position. Fortunately I was air-cutting, just testing.

Anyway, it's starting to look like it's possible to do 4-axis indexial work. But it took a week of work to get everything right.

[KUWill]

Nagle, I'm glad it's working better for you. I've never used InventorCAM 2012 so I can't speak to it. Being a student, I always have the latest stuff. Right now I'm working on InventorCAM 2014 and Inventor 2014. (2015 Beta, too!) Sounds like you've had some issues to overcome. I know SolidCAM USA often provides post processors. I know the last time I asked though, they wanted to charge me a few hundred dollars for a 2-axis post.

Glovebox: In Inventor 2013 and InventorCAM 2013, I had automatically sync and it was fine. Every time I use it now it asks to sync though. Additionally, all my parts are in compressed mode. I'm curious if one of the things that benefits me so much is that I write my own post processors and do my own machine configurations and pre-processors too. I also build my own machine models so I know they're correct. It helps having high-precision engineering tools at my finger tips.

[warrenb]

I find these same issues with SolidCAM as well (InventorCAM). It is terribly unstable. I have a 60 day trial and I think I've gotten 2 or 3 useable toolpaths without crashing. I have the latest and greatest Dell computer (100% approved by Solidworks), the latest and greatest SP of Solidcam and the latest SP from Solidworks. Just when I had it working OK the latest Solidworks installation crashes now with SolidCAM. Their tech support has been good but the software is way too unreliable. I don't plan to maintain my subscription to either after this initial year so I'm going to have to pass on SolidCAM. The only redeaming feature that has kept me using the demo is iMachining. It is great but if the software crashes several times a day it's not much use. I am sure some people have zero issues with the software so I must have the unluckiest combination of computer and solidworks.

[imachining-6061]

I had the same issue my solidworks and solidcam crashed lot of times a day I could barely work 5 mins on the software . When I thought about it . It was working fine till I installed the latest SP from solidworks and solidcam . I did try a lot of stuff but no luck at all . So I decided to Clean my system I restore it to the factory settings and had a fresh installation of solidworks and solidcam . Made a few changes in the GPU settings and windows . Now it's very stable I believe the settings in the GPU plays a big roll and a clean installation . By the way I am using a Dell M6700 with quadro K4000