EdgeCAM solid machinist

Citation

(2000), "EdgeCAM solid machinist", Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology, Vol. 72 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/aeat.2000.12772eab.011

EdgeCAM solid machinist

EdgeCAM solid machinist

Keywords Pathtrace, CAM, Software

The software development team at Pathtrace has created EdgeCAM Solid Machinist^TM for Inventor, considered to be the first computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) off-line programming package which is seamlessly integrated and associative with Autodesk Inventor software, Autodesk's newest 3D feature-based solid modelling system.

"We are excited about the release of EdgeCAM Solid Machinist for Inventor", said Robert Kross, vice-president of the Mechanical Market Group at Autodesk. "The modern architecture of Inventor and EdgeCAM has paid-off and Pathtrace is the first partner to release an integrated NC application for Autodesk Inventor. The EdgeCAM software is a key component in providing our customers worldwide with a complete design through manufacturing solution."

Pathtrace reports that, with EdgeCAM Solid Machinist for Inventor, users can directly machine an ACIS-based solid model created within Autodesk's Inventor which prevents intelligence being stripped out or geometry lost as a direct result of filtering CAD files through a translator such as IGES or DXF.

Jackie Groves, Sales Director of Pathtrace, says: "Being the first CAM company to produce a programming package to integrate with Autodesk Inventor demonstrates the effectiveness of our development team and the flexibility of EdgeCAM. For the EdgeCAM Solid Machinist for Inventor user, it provides a chance to improve productivity, reduce risk and chance of error. The result is a significant reduction in the time between design and manufacture".

Other very significant features claimed of EdgeCAM Solid Machinist for Inventor are incorporate tool path to model associativity, automatic feature recognition (AFR), the automatic extraction of manufacturing information from the model and automation of machining operations.

It is thought that the seamless combination of EdgeCAM Solid Machinist for Inventor and Autodesk Inventor will considerably increase design-to-manufacture efficiency and is ideal in support of concurrent engineering projects. With standard toolpaths dynamically simulated over the Inventor solid model, any dimensional changes in features being machined will reportedly be automatically recognised when the solid model is updated and all relevant toolpaths are subsequently regenerated to accommodate the design change. This associativity is believed to dramatically reduce the likelihood of error and prevents duplication of effort by the programmer.

With 2.5 and three-axis milling, all operations are recorded separately making editing easier while it is claimed that intellipocket automatic pocket clearance cycles can reduce machining times by a third. It is thought that the mould and die sector will find EdgeCAM Inventor a major advance through its optimised pencil milling cycles, "Z" level male and female roughing and automated combination finishing cycles to minimise machining time.

With the graphically driven Toolstore, tool selection is said to be simple and all relevant cutting data are immediately available. The innovative EdgeCAM Technology Assistant provides optimised speeds and feeds that are automatically generated for the tool and material combination based on data derived from leading tooling suppliers.

Details available from Pathtrace. Tel: +44 (0)118 975 6084; E-mail: enquiry@pathtrace.com; Web site: www.edgecam.com