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Microvellum, CV, or What ELSE?
6/21
I'm probably opening up a giant can of worms but what's the best CAD to saw dust program for the money? We are a small shop with a 2 person design team, and are looking to move into the future with better presentation to our customers that result in quicker turn around into production. We have CNC's to manufacture our parts.
At this point we use Autocad to produce 2D line drawings for detail, and AlphaCam to produce the parts on the CNC. With cutlists produced thru Excel.
6/21 #3: Microvellum, CV, or What ELSE? ...
Website: http://www.pathfinder3d.com
Mike,
What kind of work do you do? Kitchen? Doors? Residential? Store Fixtures? Yachts? etc. etc. The pros and cons of the different software packages depend on how complex you're products are, how much one of a kind work you do, etc. etc.
-Tim
6/21 #4: Microvellum, CV, or What ELSE? ...
Some custom kitchens, mostly commerical millwork. Each job usually is different and made to completely custom details.
6/21 #5: Microvellum, CV, or What ELSE? ...
Since you do a mix of both custom work and kitchen cabs you may find it useful to read this thread discussing how to unlock the power of SolidWorks for the woodworking industry.
Thread
6/21 #6: Microvellum, CV, or What ELSE? ...
Yes. Thanks. I have read thru that. You use Solidworks and like it?
6/21 #7: Microvellum, CV, or What ELSE? ...
Yes, I use SolidWorks and like it. It's definitely a powerful too. I've got to admit, though, that it takes a lot to really master and I'm not there yet. Doing simple stuff is pretty easy but whenever you want to design anything for the real world there are always 100 ways to do it and it takes experience to learn "best practices".
6/21 #8: Microvellum, CV, or What ELSE? ...
I'm just lookintg at the Solidworks website right now and it reminds me a lot of MV. Does it start out with a library? Or how does it work? I saw a 3rd party addon called PasCam? Is that what you started with?
6/21 #9: Microvellum, CV, or What ELSE? ...
Mike,
I haven't used MV so I'm not sure how SolidWorks compares. SW doesn't come with any libraries. There are some libraries out there, especially for stuff like hardware, but you will most likely be creating you're own as well. That's what we have done. SW is traditionally a mechanical design tool but more recently, especially in Europe, is being used in the wood working industry. When we started using it there wasn't a lot out there as far as add-ins that were targeted to the wood working industry. We saw that with a few extra tools we could harness the power of SolidWorks for the wood working industry so we worked with a software company to make an add-in for us and are now selling it as PathFinder3D: www.pathfinder3d.com. Since that time there are a bunch more add-ins that have come out specifically for the woodworking industry:
3D Analyzer,
Althima
PASCAM,
EFICAD
We could start a whole other thread asking for input on the pros and cons of each of these but I just wanted to make the point that there are now a lot more "power tools" available for those who want to use SW for the woodworking industry.
-Tim
6/21 #10: Microvellum, CV, or What ELSE? ...
Website: http://www.silverstarcabinets.com
Mike,
SolidWorks is extremely cutting edge for pure 3D design - meaning the ability to draw any 3D shape imaginable quickly and accurately. It doesn't currently come with hardware library or pre-drawn cabinets, but we created our own pretty quickly, and are able to draw them using our own specific construction methods. Also there is a lot of hardware pre-drawn available to download and use. I think it is a very good option if you are doing a lot of custom work, with some parametric standard cabinets mixed in.
I have noticed that a lot of MV users tend to do their custom parts in 2d AutoCAD, and just use MV for the more standard cabinets. However, I have not used it personally.
The rendering capabilities are very good with SolidWorks as well. You can pretty much go with the default settings and get a good render.
You can also quickly assign textures and material and machine to your parts using the free Pathfinder3D add in. It will give you a cutlist sorted by machine and material.
To get from SW to a CAM system like AlphaCam, you will need the Pathfinder3D Feature Recognition add in. There will be a Webinar coming up soon demonstrating PathFinder3D.
Check out our photo gallery to get an idea of the type of work that we do. http://silverstarcabinets.com/photo%20gallery.html For us, moving from AutoCAD to SolidWorks has really helped us out. We do about $6-7 million per year, using 3 CNC machines. Most of our work is high end custom display fixtures and commercial cabinets.
http://www.pathfinder3d.com/feature%20re
6/21 #11: Microvellum, CV, or What ELSE? ...
just my 2 cents
we have a small shop me and my boys but we've invested in equipment ptp and cnc router microvellum has worked for us for years we have no formal education for this but the team at mv has held our hand thru all the learning curve we feel we can compete with the big boys whenever we want to. i feel like the mv program is like adding a printer to a computer all of a sudden your producing whatever you can draw or what architects send us on autocad. the library that comes with does 90 percent of what we need if your working with excell and autocad you have the experience you need to be productive. i can't comment on cv but cabinetware was quite helpful in its day. our work is mostly store fixtures now but whenever someone throws a kitchen at us it feels like a piece of cake the library is very complete for those. happy hunting
btw my son has been using the new version for renderings now thats impressive.
6/23 #13: Microvellum, CV, or What ELSE? ...
I would suggest you seriously look in SolidEdge to AlphaCAM or a program like TopSolid from Missler which is the only integrated 3D design engineering software with CAM.
SolidEdge is around the same price as SolidWorks but way more powerful, Siemens would rather sell their UGS NX for $40,000 a seat to the big boys so they don't put a lot of effort to promote SolidEdge, but it is a power program with some of the expensive NX features. Our company currently uses SolidEdge to AlphaCAM, since you are already using AlphaCAM your already half way there. SolidEdge is the design engineering platform for a lot of the large furniture manufacturer like Ethan Allen.
TopSolid is another program to look at, it is starting to be used by a lot of high end cabinet and furniture manufacturers, and is a program that is being adopted by Universities like Virginia Tech for their furniture design courses.
Good luck on your search.
Think thoughtfully, plan carefully, act boldly.
6/23 #14: Microvellum, CV, or What ELSE? ...
I miss spoke when I TopSolid "is the only integrated 3D design engineering software with CAM" I meant to says it is the only 3D woodworking engineering software with an integrated CAM.
6/25 #15: Microvellum, CV, or What ELSE? ...
Autodesk Inventor with iLogic will handle all of your standard cabinets with super configurable base models, and easily handle any custom work thrown at you. Inventor ports directly to RouterCIM which auto detects grain direction, and has grain overrides that can be built directly into Inventor models.
It has by far the best automation with its built in iLogic programming language, and comes with AutoCAD and numerous other world-class programs such as 3Ds Max.
I am currently running a long tutorial that will run into the Fall on automated cabinet design using Autodesk Inventor, but there are also numerous other tutorials that can be followed from beginning to end. The links to the long Blogtorials are on drop-downs on the right, and the completed tutorials are listed in the menu on the left:
http://opendesignproject.org/
The link at the bottom of the page to my YouTube page will get you to some videos of Inventor in action, or you can take a peek at the video I created for some folks here on WoodWeb last week…
http://opendesignproject.org/switching-microvellum-autodesk-inventor/
Check out the tutorials, they are specifically for the wood trades, and I answer every question in the comments. Good luck to you!
View larger image
ERP Enabled Vanity (YouTube)
8/10 #16: Microvellum, CV, or What ELSE? ...
also you can check out woodCAD|CAM from homag.
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