[paul h]

hi there,
need some advise please, i am planning to buy the nextengine 3d scanner but need some advise on which cad/cam programme to use.
I asked nextengine which software they advise for reverse engineering and they suggested radpiworks.
has anyone any experience of it? can i use it as a stand alone cad programme e.g. use without the scanner?.
the plan is take parts and both agricultural and automotive scan edit (eg add feature, eddit damaged area) in cad / cam and make on the Haas TM-1 i have on order. High detail rendering isnt a concern.
any thoughts on a cam programme to complement rapidworks with post processors for my Haas?

or has anyone any other suggestions for cad/cam.

p.s budget is a concern as i am just starting out and the full solid works isnt an option.!

Many thanks Paul H

[kenalb]

I'am also looking for an answer.
we just looked at the roland 3d scanner, but I think we will be buying a nextengine machine. We tried to use inventor to read the 3d data, it did not work. I think solidworks is the best way to go. We also just bought a Haas TM1 plus a TL1
Thanks

[lavrgs]

I just bought a Nextengine scanner and one of the issues could be the size of the parts you want to scan. It can do a good job on cell phone size stuff but the software still seems to have issues when things get bigger than a cereal box. The support staff is great but I've been talking to them quite a bit since I bought my scanner a month ago.
Rapidworks seems to be a full blown CAD system but I haven't found any drawing capability in it yet but it will take some time to learn. I bought it to scan motorcycle parts but I haven't tried any parts like triple clamps yet because I haven't made it past an intake manifold that looks very similar to their manifold demo. The rapidworks program doesn't have direct support unless you buy the Pro Care package. There are staffers than can help but for someone that's been using CAD for twenty years there are little things that the demos gloss over and you end up watching them over and over to understand how they did some simple but very necessary steps. There is no direct out to CAM, you would need to take an IGES or STEP file and program it in your favorite CAM package (Mastercam or ?) I haven't found that the raw data from the scanner is directly usable, even after its cleaned up. So you would have to rebuild that data in your CAM program.