This question has been around forever. We faced it when we went to Pro/E in 1995. PTC could make it a mute point by addressing some of the issues with Pro/NC. In 1994, we used separate CAD CAM systems and fought with the data translations. And I will admit that sometimes it was helpful that we were on separate systems.
The most valuable asset of using Pro/NC is the integration (IMHO). We have manufacturing engineers located in our product development groups and we do lots of iterations to a product before the release for production. We never have problems with reading, translation or knowing if we are working on the latest version. There are still people issues with this method. Just because people are located next to each other does not mean that they will communicate with each other.
One overlooked area is training. Using one CAD/CAM tool can reduce cost of training. A Pro/NC user is a Pro/E user with additional skills and can understand how the model was created and assist with the development of the model because they are using the same tool. To some extent this goes both ways our Pro/E designs can often assist with problems in Pro/NC.
That being said we do use some specialized CAM tools. Most of those are for sheetmetal processing such as laser sheetmetal cutting, turret press programming, press brake programming, We have found Pro/Sheetmetal NC is unusable. We use dxf and iges files to transfer the data to our sheetmetal apps. The sheetmetal applications are mostly 2D which you would think would be an easy translation. It works well for simple parts. However not all of our parts are simple. Most of the problems are in area of rips and bend reliefs. Usually most of the problems come from new designers who do not understand sheetmetal manufacturing methods. We do use some outside laser suppliers. It is a constant fight to keep them supplied with the latest version of the process geometry. We use mapkeys and other tools to develop export tools for third party CAM tools.
The worst CAM tools we have are the ones that we are stuck with by the equipment supplier. They never fix bugs, don’t keep the software working with the latest version of OS, support is non-existent, etc. As long as you have the equipment you are stuck with it. That can be for 20 years. I support some of these tools that are still running on DOS.
When we had separate CAD CAM systems I was always fighting for CAM money. The money for CAM came out of the capital equipment budget. Every year or so at the software update I had to fight for money to do the upgrade. Being on one system whenever the Pro/E gets an upgrade the manufacturing gets an upgrade. The improvements on the design side of Pro/E have helped on the manufacturing side.
To sum it up, If your manufacturing engineers are working closely with your designers then the integration that Pro/NC provides can be invaluable. If your manufacturing needs are not address in Pro/NC then other specialized CAM tools are a must. Do not rely on vendors that tell you they can read Pro/E data. Have them prove it to you in a blind live benchmark. In our benchmark we had an assembly that had to modeled and manufactured. Then we had the vendors make changes to the parts and to see how the changes affected all downstream deliverables. A blind live benchmark with all of the users represented can be a real eye opener to problems.
Speaking of MasterCAM, we had a supplier this week who could not use our geometry to create one of our parts on their turning center. The part has a spline that MasterCAM could not deal with in their turning center programming. The supplier even asked us to produce a program for them because MasterCAM would not import the geometry. We said no and are moving the part to another vendor. This really surprised me because it wasn’t that complex of a part. He said he could import it into the milling side of MasterCAM but not the turning side. I do not know what version of MasterCAM he is using.
Because we care
Charlie
