Anyone here ever use BobCAD?

I have Bobcad, I have used Mastercam, Edgecam, One Cnc, and a couple that I cant remember.
I have Bobcad hard to manipulate the drawing prg. Not quite the same functions as auto cad. Old habits with other
programs are hard to break. I would not advise a first timer to buy. I think anyone looking to buy a cad, cam , should find
someone using the program of interest and try it first.
 
I have OneCNC XR2 Mill, have not updated it in years I think they are up to like version XR5 or something. I would not say its easy to learn, but its not impossible. 2D is fairly straight forward, 3D is another matter. Its not cheap but compared to say Gibs or Mastercam its a lot less.
 
I should mention that I use autocad for drawing (CAD) and BobCad for CAM. I seem to be doing OK with the CAM stuff but the CAD part just seems terribly slow and awkward to use.
 
I hear you can negotiate their price way down. I'm not sure if that is the case for all of their sales.

The high school robotics competition team I mentor has a license of v24 and use it to create code for Mach 3 to drive a Taig mill. I don't like how time intensive it is to set up the programs and sometimes you aren't sure if the menu you went through is a repeat of what you just did. I haven't been disappointed with what we have done with it, but it isn't as quick to learn as some other options. We have access to SolidWorks as part of a sponsorship, so I just use HSMXpress.

What CAD program are you using? Autodesk Inventor and Solidworks can use HSMXpress for free and it is far superior to BobCAD. I subscribe to Autodesk Fusion 360 primarily to get the CAM portion (it shares the Autodesk HSM kernel).
 
compsurge said:
I hear you can negotiate their price way down. I'm not sure if that is the case for all of their sales.

The high school robotics competition team I mentor has a license of v24 and use it to create code for Mach 3 to drive a Taig mill. I don't like how time intensive it is to set up the programs and sometimes you aren't sure if the menu you went through is a repeat of what you just did. I haven't been disappointed with what we have done with it, but it isn't as quick to learn as some other options. We have access to SolidWorks as part of a sponsorship, so I just use HSMXpress.

What CAD program are you using? Autodesk Inventor and Solidworks can use HSMXpress for free and it is far superior to BobCAD. I subscribe to Autodesk Fusion 360 primarily to get the CAM portion (it shares the Autodesk HSM kernel).
Click to expand...

If you are involved with a school you and all the kids can get a free 3 year license for all Autodesk products. It would be nice to teach the kids Inventor HSM Pro (The new Autodesk Inventor with HSM integrated.) with them having copies at home to work on. Some kids might really take to CAD/CAM and it might start some in a nice direction career wise along the way.
 
That's true and I am aware of Autodesk's awesome student software licensing program. We're more trained in SolidWorks so it will still likely be the go-to program. The students are also primarily using SolidWorks in the schools so it helps a lot.

Personally, I have a subscription to Fusion 360 Ultimate, which has several of the same features as the standalone program and has the HSM kernel.

I think I'm the first mentor that has really taken a step in the "push the machine beyond what we think it's capable of" direction and the students are excited at what they can use CNC for. Not trying to brag, but I got it running a factor of 10 faster than it had been. This has opened up a lot of possibilities, now that we know it doesn't take an hour to machine a part.
 
COMachinist said:
....................... I took a Solidworks class out at the community college and they offered a student version and converted it to a hobby lic, and love it. It is so much easier to use you want believe it. I was making great looking models and genning G-code in less than a week. ........................
CH
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Please tell us more about the SolidWorks hobby license. I knew about the student license but have never heard of the hobby license.
 
EmilioG said:
I found this Cnc program that looks like it can be easier to learn than G-Code.
Has anyone here ever used this?

http://bobcad.com/
Click to expand...
I purchased BobCAD V 27 about 6 months ago, and I have mixed feelings about it. Sometimes it is quite easy to use, but other times it is not so easy. As for the CAD part, I have used AutoCAD for decades, and Autodesk Inventor for a couple of years. BobCAD uses a totally obscure (to me anyway) method of drawing objects and a awkward method of manipulating them in my opinion, and the learning curve is quite long. I have spent hours trying to figure out how to snap something to the center of a circle, to no avail. I can snap to just about everything else you can imagine on the circle, but not the center! The sales staff is very aggressive is selling the software, and also the support for it, which costs several hundred dollars a year.

The program does allow you to merge files from many other CAD programs including 3D (IGES and STEP) files. In general then you need to extract edges to perform 2D operations. Sometimes the 3D milling works OK, sometimes not so good. If your part has any oddball glitches in it, BobCAD will probably drill a hole or cut a slot or plunge where you do not want it. If you happen to have duplicate circles or lines, or similar features in your drawing, it will make duplicate moves over the same path. The program will select a default tool of 1/2 inch diameter even when your toolpath has inside corners of smaller radius, so you have to be careful to select an appropriate tool. It also uses default tool offsets that probably are great for a production CNC machine, but if not over-ridden manually on each toolpath can lead to plunging a tool an inch or two into your part or your vice. If you try to merge some file that BobCAD does not like (an AutoCAD 2000 or earlier version containing a solid for example) BobCAD will just crash and close with no warning message except that it stopped.

Once a toolpath has been created, there is a simulator that shows what the finished part should look like, which is a nice feature. Unfortunately the real toolpath may have an extra entity in it when you run it on your machine (Mach 3 in my case), which can ruin a part. I usually make at least one dry run of any new part to check for stupid mistakes, usually my fault, but not always. Frequently the simulator will crash part way through the program displaying an error message in Chinese characters. Closing the program and re-starting will usually allow the simulator to complete.

On the positive side, I did create a printed circuit board that I cut on my Bridgeport mill, and it was far easier to create the G-code with BobCAD than trying to manually write G-code for all the moves needed. I guess I would say I have a love-hate relationship with the software.
 
EmilioG said:
I found this Cnc program that looks like it can be easier to learn than G-Code.
Has anyone here ever used this?

http://bobcad.com/
Click to expand...
I,m still using ver. 23 and have been using BobCad for over 12 years
I used it when using 3 axis Prototrac every thing I ran on Prototracwent thru BobCad
I.ve model my machines in it and use it for every thing I make solid models and programming
On g0740 conversion. my experience with cnc started in 1985 been machining since 1960.
in spite of many complaints about BobCad I love it and was a dealer for a time.
 
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