Best buy I ever made was BOBCAD in about 1990. Cost me $495. Bought it from a dealer at the WESTEC tool show in Los Angeles. Later I bought an update to BOBCAD Gold Version 12 (for DOS) This was another $49 + $20 for FEDEX.
At some point BOBCAD called me up and sold me Version 14, but the shipped Dongal would not work so that install was aborted, eventually I did get a working dongal. Another shop wanted to try BOBCAD so I installed Ver 14 on a spare PC and let them play with it for 3 months. When they return the PC and dongal it went into storage and was eventually lost. (no tears here, no big loss) All this time I had been cranking out good G-code and basic prints from version 12. Version 12 did not use any activation codes or hardware dongals - it just did what it was intended to do - allow the user to put out good G-code. It is still my first choice goto for most 2.5D work. Often I can be loading the code into the CNC and setting offsets before I could have finished a 3D model in my Geomagic, and I too have the Mechsoft Visualcam plug-in - with has good 3D support while the Idiots who market it want you to buy the super delux version to get it to be able to use a simple corner rounding endmill which is a 2.5D only type tool. BTW, I need to program a CREM I switch to my BOBCAD V12 for DOS and its done in no time. For Linux, or Windows - I load a little app called DOS Box - it is a DOS emulator for people who want to play legacy DOS games. BOBCAD works perfect except for the DNC serial app. which I have not tested. BOBCAD for windows has been a perpetual disaster since the initial Version 15 was launched. Yup I bought it, so I can say total garbage. And the BC sales dept - They are the worst. BOBCAD v12 for DOS - been cranking out the code for me for 25 years now and I don't see that changing any time soon, I really got my money's worth. As to GEOMAGIC - Keep in mind the parent company 3D Systems bought out Gibbs - as in Virtual Gibbs CAD/CAM which used to be an OEM installed option on FADAL CNC mills. In looking at Gibbs now it looks antiquated still being more wireframe based (like my really old BOBCAD). Honestly I think they should support both the Visualmill plugin and the external (for now) Gibbs CAM because they use very different methods. A MasterCAM user is NOT going to be happy with Gibbs as is, but would not be too lost to work with the VisualCAM plugin. 3D Systems is going to loose 2 sales (Geomagic + Gibbs) instead of just one (Geomagic + Visualmill). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
