BobCAD-CAM, Inc. develops CAD/CAM CNC machining software for manufacturing businesses. They have just released the new v27 series of CAD CAM software ranging from 2.5 Axis to 3, 4 & full 5 Axis simultaneous CNC machining. Their CAD CAM products improve workflow efficiency by streamlining the process of selecting tools, materials and cutting strategies which can be very time consuming and produces the numeric code that the machine requires to actually machine the part fast and error free. In addition to CAM machining enhancements, the v27 software has received a major overhaul on the CAD design side making the overall performance improvements of the product significant.
“I am just really excited for the users to get their hands on this software as this is our largest and most robust CAD CAM upgrade that we have developed to date,” said Greg Myers, who oversees Software Development at BobCAD-CAM.
The new v27 CAD CAM release is significant in terms of the major design functionality that has been added to the software more so than any other release they have had in years since their first solid modeling releases over 10 years ago. The v27 provides a new CAD Solid Action Tree that allows users to modify any step of their solid creation. The solid creation tree is fully associative to designed solid model, making editing steps to a drawn model faster and easier than ever before in BobCAD. Dynamic Drawing has been added making simultaneous sketching and editing of values available to users.
“Users now truly have the freedom to really design with this system. Updating and changing your model is so easy, no longer will you dread that new revision sent from engineering!”, added Myers. New surface and solid creation tools have been added giving users on the fly extruding and modifications of solid shapes. A new CAD shape library with 40 shapes to pick from gives users many common shapes to speed up the design process, something the BobCAD software has never offered before. Other CAD enhancements include new 2D Boolean features for faster editing of intersecting 2D geometry. A Project to Z feature allows the user to extract edges from a 3D model and flatten the geometry along the Z plane or a defined axis. Geometry scaling features have also been added. The new Extrude Boss and Extrude Cut features provide added flexibility to designing models along with a new Shelling feature that allows users to hollow out a solid model leaving a thin walled solid on the remaining surfaces. These and other CAD features enhance the design experience form users and offer a faster and easy tool for design innovation.
In addition to the major CAD design upgrades, the v27 software provides new CAM machining benefits. The Mill 3 Axis Pro module enhancements include adding finishing styles to the Advanced Planar option including “up” and “down” cutting which provides the ability to control the cut direction by forcing the tool to cut only in the up direction or down direction on the model. Further control of the toolpath is provided by an Overlap Distance and a Minimum Height Change to handle shallow areas of the model. Another important machining enhancement that was added is the new Adaptive Step-over for Planar surface machining which automatically adds more passes to eliminate steep jumps in the toolpath.
The software now automatically adds additional cuts when the depth between the current pass and previous pass exceeds the step-over value. In addition, the new Trim to Operation Stock option allows you to pick an STL to define the stock for the current operation. The software then trims out all air cutting, so more time is spent making chips. This can also be utilized as a 3D boundary to give you even more control of the toolpath creation. New boundary options have been added as well as a new Planar REST finishing feature.
The Pro module Z-Level Finish operation has been enhanced and now includes Zig, Zig Zag and Spiral cutting options that can be controlled by the user. The Adaptive Depth of Cut option that has been added to the Standard and Pro modules again automatically detects shallow areas on the part and adds extra passes to get a more consistent finish with this strategy. The advanced Z-Level Finishing operation also includes a REST finishing option now. All of these new enhancements allow users to create more efficient programs for 3 Axis part programming.
Other features include the new Project Curves operation added to the Mill 3 Axis Pro module allows you to select one or more chains to project onto a 3D Model with the ability to compensate for the tool. This toolpath has many uses from engraving text, to manually creating your own 3D toolpath from standard 2D geometry. The software also provides the ability to offset the 2D shape automatically on both sides, to the right, or to the left of the chain direction. The v27 series is packed with time saving functionality not available in any of their earlier releases. For example, the Boundary Options provide a significant improvement to user-defined operation boundaries. Previously, the tool center always went to the defined boundary. You can now select whether the tool stays inside the boundary, goes outside the boundary, or cuts with the center of the tool on the boundary. The additional Offset parameter provides even further control of the tool at the boundary when using inside or outside. This results in much less time spent creating CAD geometry to use at the boundary.
A variety of enhancements have been made to the 4 and 5 Axis modules such as the SWARF operation, MultiAxis roughing enhancements and improvements in gouge checking. The Tool Axis control has been improved with several new tilt strategies. The BobCAD development team was also able to make significant improvements to their WireEDM product such as adding automatic setup sheets, the ability to edit wire cutting condition tables, create toolpath patterns and more.
BobCAD-CAM is also proud to announce that their software now supports the 3DConnexion 3D Mouse products.
For more information on the new v27 CAD/CAM software release, contact BobCAD-CAM directly at 877-262-2231 or 727-442-3554.
You can also download a free trial HERE