Working with lots of different CAD systems – for subcontractors and suppliers this can be a real headache and especially if you are working with automotive or aerospace customers that use some of the high-end CAD packages.
In some cases there is no alternative to actually installing one of these CAD systems and employing a very expensive design engineer to run it, which can be justified if the majority your work is in the one market sector and you have to actively participate in the customer’s design process.
Thankfully for most people, CAD translation has moved on enough to make this unnecessary. For CAM systems neutral formats such as IGES and STEP or direct translators for products like CATIA, SolidWorks and Inventor are very reliable, enabling manufacturers to accept data from many different sources without a problem.
Once you have accepted that translators are OK, you can then choose the best CAM system for your application. Even if you have had to install the high-end CAD, transfer of model data is generally one way into the CAM system, so even for these applications a specialist, best of breed, CAM package will provide the best solution, reducing cycle times, improving quality and reducing tool breakage – real tangible savings.
