What other website do you know is like this! – Someone is just not thinking !

Still struggling but I should be used to this by now….

Let go to download the latest version of Edgecam from the portal.

Looks good so far – lets click on the link to download the file…

Hmm – that’s odd – the whole background has just gone grey? – No dialogue box – no pop up message – Nada – Cant see any activity or waiting messages in bottom left of browser? I roll the mouse wheel up and down and the page moves up thinking that that the browser might have frozen. Hmm Lets hit the back button and start again….

So we are back to the down load page 🙂 – lets click on the link again and look carefully to see if I am doing anything wrong.

Arghh – the dreaded grey background again…..Hmm  – what on earth is going on? – Lets just scroll again – oh hang on what’s that I  have just seen at the top of the page?…

Good grief -rather than the dialogue box opening up at the part of the page I was on, it had opened up at the top of the page completely out of view – that why the screen was turning grey!!!!..

There you have it and this sums up my experience so far – “It’s easy once you know how” Quite sadly its this kind of trait that runs through the whole of EdgeCam software.

I get very frustrated when I see a very fancy highly polished front end to this company but yet there are some truly shocking bad practices/features that need sorting out for existing customers. “Worldclass Customer Support” it states on their front page of their website. Does my first few post give a true representation of a company that offers World Class Support? I think not… 😦

If I was the MD or CEO of this company I would be mortified knowing that these simple type of problems exist. Unfortunately Edgecam’s support operate on a “only if enough people complain about an issue will they do something about it”  – Ask me how I know… 😦

A moment to reflect…..

A little about myself (all will become clear further on…)

An engineer of nearly 30 years with 25 years of CNC experience. Vast experience of machining techniques on Conventional & CNC – Manual Programming & CAM, problem solving, machine tool optimisation, Tooling & Fixturing design, comprehensive metallurgical understanding, designer of individual parts and complex assembles. Solidworks complacent with coming onto nearly a thousand various designs under my belt. 95% of all of these designs are still in production today and continually being improved.

I felt compelled to write the above as I had to remind myself that I am not stupid. That may sound strange but the honest truth is that trying to learn Edgecam has seriously doubted my own technical abilities which is completely unfair as its quite obvious that the software is very user “unfriendly” and a huge amount of “Once you know how – its easy” This is the biggest hurdle you ill have with this software. Most software these days is deigned with multi-navigational design where the user has several ways of getting to where he wants to. The easiest way of explaining this is that your web browser will have several ways of printing the page you are looking at  File-Print / Right click-print / Page setup- Print etc etc. This is something that Edgecam have not even touched on yet. Something as simple as editing the CPL – Hover over the CPL – Right click and press edit?? – In an ideal world maybe but for now you need to know exactly where to look to edit the CPL. With a help file that is very patchy to say the least and a training manual that skips over some very important day to day issues its no wonder I was starting to doubt my own ability.

This Blog was purely born out of frustration after spending nearly 2 years in trying to get issues resolved with Edgecam. The gauntlet was laid down to me when I recently sent a very highly skilled engineer of mine onto an Edgecam training course and upon his return he was not able to even able to do some very simple tasks within the software. I was asked by Edgecam to make a list of problems and issues and only then would they agree for an engineer to come out on a days visit to touch on the subjects that were not covered on in training!

Rather than making a list I thought I would make this blog instead as I can almost treat it like a diary of events and maybe even help others who are feeling the same frustration ( I know from the CNC forums there are a lot of you out there!)

Wish me luck !

Having another go trying to create a tool list.

Brushing myself off once again and getting up after being deflated by the sheer frustration of using Edgecam I thought I would have a go in “Live Job Reports” as this outputs various details of Jobs. I look through eh training manual and one page is dedicated to the “Live Job Reports” Dont get too excited as the one page just shows you where the “live Job Reports” button is!! – Not a bean about how to navigate,understand, set up, trouble shoot etc etc…

Lets look in the help file and type in “Live Job Reports”

So giving up on any instructions available I click on the “Live Job REports” button…a HTML based file is generated and you can see various information about the job. Not exactly laid out very well but we should be used to that by now! The tooling tab displays all the tools – not the ones for the job. I can click on the job and a another screen comes up (eventually) with the job details but still no tool details for the job in question.

😦 😦 😦

After another hour tring to find my way round this software I am giving up for the evening andd will have another go in the Morning.

Lets try some help from others…

The Edgecam Portal even shows a link for Community Forum, Wiki’s & blogs (Might get mine listed here if I’m lucky!)

Lets click and have a look at the contents

Lets give up on that idea…. looks like its going to be another long and frustrating day….. 😦

Training Material !

OK so after hours of desperation lets look on the portal for some guidance….

Seriously – June 2012 was the last time this was updated?

Once again I fell as though we have mad a very bad mistake in choosing this software 😦

Another half hour wasted on trying to name a CPL !

Good grief…!

We just want to rename a CPL

Search Help file  – nothing.

Search Training manual – nothing.

Open up yet another support case for something that should be so easy….. 😦

 

Open up the “Edit CPL” Dialogue box and there is a dropdown box with two entries in there that dont mean a lot to me!

You select the CPL in the “CPL” box – then ignore the dropdown and click in the field to give the CPL a new name! ( Even though the field is blank  and not showing what the existing CPL name is!!!

Dreadful GUI programming….and with no help on the subject no wonder people struggle 😦

Lets measure … or not !!

So I am trying to set up a job and want to check the distance from the centreline of the 4th axis.

I keep getting an error message as shown so I put a support request into Edgecam and here is the response.

“There is no way you can measure to a MEG file or Post graphic. The way to get the measurement you are after would be to calculate it. You will know the distance from the centre of rotation to the base plate of the trunion and as such you can measure the height from the base of the vise to the jaw and calculate out the two figures.

I hope this helps ”

It certainly does help – It helps me understand that I should have bought another CAM package…:(

Thank the lord I have a calculator to hand and all the time in the world – lets hope I don’t make a mistake in my calculations…..

Let’s try to create a tool list

OK  – So when setting up a machine it’s fairly important to have an idea of what tools to use. So lets try to create a tool list

List topics on “Tool List” – No Joy

Search on “Tool List”- No joy

Lets give up on that idea….. 😦

Translate and Rotate

This should be easy as pie working with solids. The training manual has one page of sparse information on each subject. No explanation given to any of the drop down box fields and what they do – no information on “Dynamic”. It turns out that you have to calculate how much to move an item from an individual face to centralise a part. Very painful and time consuming and also the possibility of introducing errors if you make a wrong calculation.

Double Vice?

Lets use the new Fixture manager for our double vices. Unfortunately not  – only works with single vices!