New Years Resolution

[Jim Smith]

Happy New Year one and all!

My 2016 resolution is too be more positive, especially when reporting problems in VW. I do, on balance, really really like working in VW. Today I was struck by just how great VW is.

I was helping a friend with his VW exporting to ACAD & something called BiesseWorks. Long storyhe didn't need the ACad step, so he's happy about that, but his CNC machine runs this thing called BiesseWorks.... wow, I forgot how bad other CAD software can be! This is an almost new (3yr old) CNC machine that runs this Biesse programme that makes circa 1989 DesignCAD and VersaCAD look user friendly!

Moral: While things can always be better- we don't know how good we have it

[Ride]

I use vectorworks to export DXF files to Biesseworks every day. Biesseworks is awful.

A big red flag should have gone up when I was researching the purchase of our CNC machine, and Biesse's software required Windows XP to run. Apparently it won't run on any later versions of windows.

I'm not saying that every other CNC manufacturer uses better software, but it certainly can't be worse. It feels like Biesse didn't want to outsource their software development to a company that can actually create software and tried to do it all in-house.

So I have to agree with Jim's statement above. If you're ever feeling down about vectorworks, try Biesseworks!

Edited January 2, 2016 by Ride

[Jim Smith]

Any advise for my pal who can import the DXF files but they exist only as geometry rather than a file he can start cutting from?

[PVA - Admin]

Apologies, I don't have a clear mental picture of why having the geometry wouldn't be what the file would need to have in order to cut. Normally thats all that is required other than the various smoothing options.

[Ride]

JimW - essentially you are correct, but there could be a lot of different geometries to which machining information would need to be assigned which can be very time consuming.

Jim Smith - is your client using layer names to assign machinings to the geometry? Names such as "TCHW0B1TC0PT0D1300TCD$TOOLNAME$IT0IA0OT0OA0"?

If you implement the layers names and then use "automatic import" when bringing in the dxf's then most of the machining will be assigned (though there is generally some small bit of tweaking before running the file).

[Jim Smith]

Ride:

Thanks! The Layer is presently called "0" so I'll give them this tip to have the Layer name match the tooling.

JimW

This Biesse software as Ride points out is very fussy, & the Automatic Import gives all the geometry but doesn't have the tooling info and assigning it manually once imported would take considerable time.

I feel I did bite off a little more than I can chew with this as my experience exporting to other CAM software (Alma Cam e.g.) is much more straight forward.