Delcam is going to demonstrate its new CAM system at SolidWorks World 2010. According to Delcam, this new version of their software is called Delcam for SolidWorks and it will be integrated within SolidWorks. In this, it joins the small but growing club of CAM applications that run inside of the SolidWorks environment.
The application is said to initially support drilling for 2 through 5 axis milling. Delcam claims that “future releases will cover the full range of machining operations, including turning, mill-turn and wire EPM.” They also claim that Delcam for SolidWorks is more intelligent than other CAM systems in that it will be able to review and correct the choice of cutting tools and machining strategies for existing toolpaths. They also claim, “all toolpaths generated with Delcam for SolidWorks can be checked by the integrated simulation module on the computer before being passed to the machine tool.”
Here’s an early press image:
It should be interesting to see all the CAM offerings at SolidWorks 2010. It wasn’t all that long ago when the number of CAM applications that ran within the SolidWorks environment could be counted on one finger. It now seems that one will need their whole hand. 🙂
A much more in-depth look at the up coming Delcam For SolidWorks can be found on Delcam’s Featurecam Web Forum in threads that I started and on my blog.
Delcam For SoidWorks is really Featurecam For Solidworks.
The biggest question I have in regards to this product is how much will a CADCAM programmer be able to do with SolidWorks Features to automate the process of creating toolpath? Will it really be a leap forward in automating what is often a tedious and repetitive process?
In most CAM programs the major benefit of the current feature recognition only occurs when machining holes!
The fact is that in the real world very few machining job shops think that the current feature recognition technology is really worth the time to setup properly and that it doesn’t have any major benefits. Further, machining jobs shops don’t like to pay CADCAM programmers to construct the elaborate database you need to get real benefits from feature based machining / feature recognition and wish to keep a CADCAM programmer focused on only on thing… cranking out good G code programs as quickly as possible.
Jon Banquer
San Diego, CA
http://www.jonbanquer.wordpress.com
This sounds like a good point to bring up to the Gold Partner CAM software companies.
If you care to elaborate on your CAM goals I’d be more than happy to offer an opinion / provide commentary. The CAM business in my opinion can be summarized in one sentence:
No matter what CAM system someone picks their choice is going to involve some sort of compromise.
In my opinion interactive feature recognition makes a lot more sense to me than automatic feature recognition which often fails miserably and only works on the simplest of parts.
Jon Banquer
San Diego, CA
http://www.jonbanquer.wordpress.com