My first thought is that by being integrated into Inventor it is very slick and very convenient.
it would be good to change the name of the EMC post-processor. Due to legal problems with the EMC corporation we have been forced to change the name of the software. It has been LinuxCNC for quite a long time now.
I haven't got very far with it yet. It looks like I will need to modify my model to have sharp contours and faces. It seems something of an oversight to have "project geometry" when modelling, and not (as far as I can see) in the CAM. This is a fairly extensively-used process in CamBam (mainly because of how it works). Perhaps I just haven't found it yet.
I confess the part in question is not an ideal 2.5D part, I am expecting to have to change setups a number of times, then do some manual rotary-axis work.
I may try the 5-axis trial in a few weeks, but with only 30 days and a holiday coming up the timing is not ideal.
andypugh wrote: I may try the 5-axis trial in a few weeks
Well, I did, and I am very impressed. The Pro CAM is very nice indeed.
Unforunately, as a hobbyist, it is way outside my budget, but if I was making a living at this I would certainly consider it.
I have recently found that Fusion 360 has identical CAM capabilities to Inventor HSM Pro and is much cheaper.
In fact, for hobby use or startups making less than $100k it is free. For commercial use it is $25 per month.
It only runs natively on Mac and Windows, but other than that it is hard to see anything that can compete at the price.
I have been using fusion360 for a couple of months, I searched very hard for something inexpensive and as capable as the professional cad/cam packages and couldn't find anything that comes close to fusion360. Seimens has solidedge 2d and Dassault has Draftsight but neither is 3d and neither has an associated cam package, all they have in common with fusion360 is the cost and professional grade user interface.
I have gripes about fusion360 but that is a topic for another forum. In regards to the bundled emc post processor I have found it to be satisfactory for my use. My machine is a gantry router with roughly 12x20x1.5 travel. Because the z axis travel is so short I have the machine setup to search for the upper limit switch then back off -.05 for the a zero position. As I recall the default post processor geneated a line containing g53 z .1 at the start and end of the program which caused limit errors. I modified the post for my needs without reading any instructions on editing post processors, I found it to be no more difficult than editing config files in linux. I don't have a tool changer or spindle speed control or coolant that could potentially be a problem.
This is my take on Fusion 360 in it's current state.
If you are a personal user or one person operation and money is more important than time and if you fall under the free use license it's a great bang for the buck.
If you have employees who will be paid to use the software then you will loose more time and money paying them to deal with crashes, bugs, glitches, lack of features and switching over to other CAD programs to fill in the gaps than you would spend on a better CAD package. In the latter case I would bite the bullet and buy something that is better developed and more capable.
