I have been a CAM (Computer Aided Machining) junky since 1981. Ooooooooooo it was ugly back then BTW. I still knew that CAM was going to be the future. Wait does that date me? Meh…That’s OK. I have used every one of them personally in my 20 plus years of making things. (No really I have from BOBCad to Unigraphics, Pro-Manufacturing, Powermill, Mastercam, Featurecam, Surfcam and some others) and we still use them to this day. Every one of them does something good. But since the majority of our customers live in the SolidWorks world, I like a single package. No exporting, No defining origins and boundaries. Things have definitely come a long way for sure – 64 bit native architecture, parallel processing, distributed CAM. The thing that I like about the HSMworks by Autodesk product is the great interface that is consistent with the SolidWorks platform. The other thing is the back-end coding is extremely clean. It literally takes 60 seconds to install. Those of us that struggle with the 2+ hour installs of some software packages are forever grateful when something is packaged well for install. I mean we ARE REALLY happy!! Being a “Hired Gun” of sorts I don’t have to pledge my allegiance to anything other than what gets me to the end goal as fast and efficient as possible. Let’s face it we are industrial prostitutes as consultation firms and we live and die by what the customers’ needs are.
Be a Maker.
Todd