[cadcam]

For that price it is a good place to start for sure.

[sansbury]

sansbury,

No, I don't think you should. If you are a salesman, don't be so easily dupped. A cheap, bottom of the barrel, system will not provide you with the needs you outlined above.

Mike,

Anything you would recommend then? I am also looking at Dolphin Level 3. It is mostly a 2.5D package but has some basic 3D functionality. Price point is roughly the same so that's not a factor. $500 is probably my limit since this is just a hobby for me. These days I am working with stuff I found underneath the barrel (nuts)

[harley4ever]

Sansbury-

I have expierience with several different cad cam systems. Bobcad used at our shop some time ago. COMPLETE JUNK. It's not by coincidence hundreds of users on here agree with all the bobcrap tactics.

Dolphin- I bought it for my own use (Level 3). Couldn't be happier. The cad isn't the greatest, however I didnt buy it for cad. I bought it for the cam and I am extremely satisfied with it.

Also surfcam. We use it at work for our complex 3d work. Does the job well but I surely would never justify spending the amount of money on it for my own use.

[HMB3000]

Sansbury-

I have expierience with several different cad cam systems. Bobcad used at our shop some time ago. COMPLETE JUNK. It's not by coincidence hundreds of users on here agree with all the bobcrap tactics.

Dolphin- I bought it for my own use (Level 3). Couldn't be happier. The cad isn't the greatest, however I didnt buy it for cad. I bought it for the cam and I am extremely satisfied with it.

Also surfcam. We use it at work for our complex 3d work. Does the job well but I surely would never justify spending the amount of money on it for my own use.

Sansbury, I will agree with harley4ever about Dolphin. I have some friends who use it and love it. I also have friends that think both Bobcad and Dolpin are COMPLETE JUNK. You need to find what is best for you. download as many demos as possible in your price range. Buy what you like not one some here tells you about. Yes user imput is always valueble on both sides. but you most of the time it is just a personal opinion.If you can afford 4K look at visual mill no yearly fee.

[ger21]

All off topic post in this thread have been removed. The original poster is asking for satisfied users of V22. Recommending $10K software and arguing about it isn't helping anyone.

[highspeedmazak]

Bobcad still shuts down all of the time so NO I AM NOT HAPPY AT ALL.

[wwendorf]

Junky software. I sold mine at 1/2 what I paid for it. Their support is aweful too. I'm using Alibre now. Great support. Easy to use product.

Wade

[smurph]

highspeed,

Have you called support? There must be something wrong because the last update have proven to be really stable for me. I worked in it 8 hours today and never had a crash. Doing tons of simulations too, and that is where I used to get crashes. But I don't really know if it was the update that helped or the fact the I got the newest video driver.

Either way, it has been stable for me. I'm really liking it now. It just clicked along and got some really good stuff done. Code that goes straight from the post to the machine. No edits. I think I'm getting the hang of it now.

The only thing I really really want is a "copy feature" option. Oh, and scripting in the post.

Steve

[Malish]

Overall it's not a bad package for what you pay. There are lots of things you have to work around becasue the software will not do it or in the case of V22 it has bugs still, but if you are willing to take on a little more work for yourself inorder to save a few bucks then it's worth it.

[HMB3000]

Bobcad still shuts down all of the time so NO I AM NOT HAPPY AT ALL.

You would not by chanch have a Nvidia Graphic card?


The company's results included a $196 million expense charge related to a weak die/packaging material set in specific notebook systems.
Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang painted a grim picture for demand for the quarter, which complicated what he described as the graphics chip company's "miscalculation."

[sansbury]

Well the song-and-dance routine got me. I spent a couple evenings with the software and decided to take the special-don't-wait-get-it-while-it's-hot offer. I'd gotten some competitive quotes so they dropped the price pretty quickly.

I can see though why these guys make enemies. The software is clunky in places and not what I would call intuitively designed at all. It also clearly has some quirks which might be bugs or poor design that makes things work in ways that are unclear or unexpected. I'm a software guy so I can live with this but it's no surprise that this would make some people climb the walls. My father who is a very intelligent guy would not be happy with this. Certainly the sales team will not tell anyone to not buy the product though so this is a recipe to piss a lot of people off.

As for the hard sell I found it more amusing than annoying, but wow, those guys do try to spin you like a top. You can always say "no thanks" and if a deal is offered "today only" then 99% you can still get it tomorrow. I moved fast because I was ready to buy and wanted to get it over with not because I felt any pressure from them.

Anyway I'll follow up in a month or so and see how I feel about the choice then.

[joefox]

I think I scared off the sales guy for good the last time they called "a year ago" when I told him that we now have 5 axis routers and if they can't do 5 axis they are wasting there breath. I'm just wondering what happened to there flagship 2007 software. The sales person told me at the time that the team that made v18,19,20,21 didn't make 2007 and that a new team designed 2007 from the ground up to be better than Mastercan and Surfcam. Yea, I laughed too.
Its now 2008 and I don't see a version 2008? Now its v22........ Did they fire the 2007 guys and bring back the "version team"?
I'm running Rhino Cam Pro because it does 5th axis indexing but would consider looking at Bobcad software again if they could do the same. Rhino had a very big learning curve because of there lack of training software. Thats one thing I have to say I liked about Bobcad is the training videos. Rhino is tricky at first but once you learn it..... WOW!

[orizaba]

You would not by chanch have a Nvidia Graphic card?


The company's results included a $196 million expense charge related to a weak die/packaging material set in specific notebook systems.
Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang painted a grim picture for demand for the quarter, which complicated what he described as the graphics chip company's "miscalculation."

I have a NIVIDA graphics card, would another type work better. I do get the unexpected shut down from time to time with the warning "resource unavalible"

[smurph]

I have a NIVIDA graphics card, would another type work better. I do get the unexpected shut down from time to time with the warning "resource unavalible"

Hmm... Well that error seemed to have something to do with the tool bar. I have not gotten that error since the last update. But used to, if you used the menu and stayed away from the tool bar, you would never run into that.

I have an older nVidia (440 GX 64MB) card in one machine that works fine. It's the newer cards that are giving problems.

On my newest machine, I went with dual ATI HD3870 512MBs (two cards linked together). At first, the ATI driver had OpenGL issues. But starting about two driver releases ago, all that got ironed out. Now they are rock solid and blazing fast. No printing problems.

For what it's worth, if you experience slowness while picking geometry for features, then it's the video card and/or the driver that needs attention. I thought it was a BobCAD problem. But it turns out that another CAD program I had suffered some of the same symptoms. The software programmers write to one API and cannot control whether or not the driver implements it correctly.

My point is, do not underestimate the card manufacturer's ability to roll out a crappy driver. And sometimes, "gaming" cards are the worst offenders because they are concentrating on getting it to work with the latest game of the day and not your CAD program. But eventually, they take care of the CAD type bugs, as was the case with my ATI cards.

Steve

[orizaba]

I'll use the menu instead of the tool bar and see what happens.
Thanks

[stan the man]

im about to purchase a Hp lap top with a Nvidia 8300 512 mb graphics card does anyone know if the problems associated with some of these posts apply to the Hp brand?