Inventor + CAM for woodworking

[mullan_g]

Hi, 

I'm in need of some help with choosing CAM software to use with Inventor as It has become my role to update and make more efficient the way we operate in terms of CAD to CAM.

I work for a small joinery company that manufactures items for the retail / residential and exhibition industries. We have a CAD team of three using inventor and a CNC machine running enroute. Our current workflow from Inventor to CAM is to manually lay out the flat pattern for each part and export as DXF to autocad where our CNC operator will open and import to Enroute to toolpath. This is a hugely laborious task for both the CAD guys and the CNC operator and not to mention the amount of human error it causes when design changes are made late down the process. My Main aim is to be able to automate the CAD to CAM, and reduce the time spent with a better setup.

I've spent a lot of time searching the internet to find advise from fellow woodworkers but not found anything that's helped me so far.

I also researched a little on solidworks and their solution to this, the one that seemed most effective was a plugin called pathfinder3d  - does Inventor have some sort of equivalent to this?..

I've been looking at woodwork for inventor, I wondered if anyone has experience with this software? it seems like a very recent programme and I cant find much views on it other than from Widom Tech website and youtube. Also it has a CAM function, any experience of this too? 

Finally Alphacam has been mentioned a lot, anyone got experience of this with the woodworking trade?

Lots of questions - apologies! Any thoughts / help on this would be much appreciated!

Graham

[-niels-]

Welcome to the forum.

I don't know very much about CAM, let alone CAM for woodworking, but maybe this link is interesting:

http://cam.autodesk.com/

HSM Express is free, so it might be worth giving it a try.

[PaulMunford]

Check this post out:
http://designandmotion.net/autodesk/mfg-pages/inventor/inventor-creating-cnc-cut-file-inventor-model...

[scottmoyse]

Hi Graham

Welcome to the forum!

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@mullan_g wrote:

We have a CAD team of three using inventor and a CNC machine running enroute. 

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Will enroute read 3D solids in any form?

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@mullan_g wrote:

Our current workflow from Inventor to CAM is to manually lay out the flat pattern for each part and export as DXF to autocad where our CNC operator will open and import to Enroute to toolpath. This is a hugely laborious task for both the CAD guys and the CNC operator and not to mention the amount of human error it causes when design changes are made late down the process.

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Are you using Sheet Metal? If not is there a reason why you aren't? I have my own reasons, but I'd like to hear if you have any before I pollute your mind.

I've been there and done that for years with AlphaCAM (On both ends of the stick), so I feel your pain, BIG TIME. I was pretty **** good though, so there were precious few errors, with respect to this repetitive nightmare (Drum & Bass helped)... but I discovered as good as others were, they couldn't follow my workflow with the same degree of accuracy, everyone has different strengths and weaknesses, but some were just also crap at doing it.

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mullan_g wrote:

I've spent a lot of time searching the internet to find advise from fellow woodworkers but not found anything that's helped me so far.

I also researched a little on solidworks and their solution to this, the one that seemed most effective was a plugin called pathfinder3d  - does Inventor have some sort of equivalent to this?..

I've been looking at woodwork for inventor, I wondered if anyone has experience with this software? it seems like a very recent programme and I cant find much views on it other than from Widom Tech website and youtube. Also it has a CAM function, any experience of this too? 

---

I think the closest to this for Inventor is just what you have found. That woodworking for Inventor tool, but I'd be weary of its CAM credentials to be honest... if you can test it and it works for you, then perfect. There have been others which have come and gone. There was one which appeared to be excellent, but they obviously didn't sell enough of it and it hasn't been updated since the 2011 release of Inventor. 😞

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mullan_g wrote:

Finally Alphacam has been mentioned a lot, anyone got experience of this with the woodworking trade?

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We used AlphaCAM and wrote some reasonably simple VBA for it, which used the query manager, feature extraction and auto assignment of layer based tool styles. We were able to batch process hundreds of parts in minutes, reading in native Inventor 3D solids, naming the files to match the Inventor part numbers and handling quantities etc..

There was some customization written for Inventor which was fairly extensive and tied into the drawing environment. But we leveraged iPropwiz V5 to create custom UCS's to define the XY face and alignment between the X axis and grain direction. From there we were able to create assemblies of parts sorted by material and thickness. Which were then used in the AlphaCAM routine I described above.

AlphaCAM has its issues and is poorly supported in ANZ, but from what I understand is well supported in the US & UK. However, once this was setup, there was very little reason to move away from Inventor and AlphaCAM.... we were doing Super Yacht interiors though. If we were doing interiors with square walls all the time, I would honestly look at at integrated CAD/CAM solution geared towards that industry, some of them do a great job. I haven't looked at them for 6 years now, so my opinion in that regard is worth nothing now. But the level of automation they were achieving back then was pretty impressive.

It really does depend how custom your work is.. but if you don't have API programming experience, attaining a very clear understanding of the workflow you would want to automate, then paying someone to do that for you is well worth it. We went from 1 week to program a workpack in mid - 2005 to half a day by the end of 2011.

Luckily for you? As part of my AU class, we supplied some iLogic code which along with iPropwiz 5 will do all the Inventor side of things for you. It's probably about 85% of the automation we had with the full .NET customization.

Thanks for the link through to my post again Paul!

[mcgyvr]

I can't imaging how HSM express (cam.autodesk.com) as already pointed out above couldn't help. And its free.. 

As long as 2.5D is enough (no 3d profiling,etc..) then it should work perfect and it integrates right into Inventor and is supported/created/updated/maintained by Autodesk.

You can easily drop all your parts into 1 assembly file and create the cam paths and voila.. 

[scottmoyse]

Because it doesn't have a nesting engine.

Regards
Scott Moyse
MFG Technical Specialist

CADPRO Systems Ltd
0210557775
>From my Windows Phone

[mcgyvr]

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@scottmoyse wrote:
Because it doesn't have a nesting engine.

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Yes good point. If automatic nesting is a real need then its not the software for you.

But if the manual layout nesting is not a real "time hog" for you then go for it.

It all just depends on what shape of parts you make and how fast you want to be able to lay them out and how tight you need to watch your scrap. 

[mullan_g]

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Hi Guys, Thanks for all the quick responses!

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Will enroute read 3D solids in any form?

We are currently using a very dated version of Enroute so I'm pretty sure it cant. Perhaps recent versions have this ability, something I will look into but there's no need for us to stick with Enroute. It does have a good nesting feature however for 2d.

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Are you using Sheet Metal? If not is there a reason why you aren't? I have my own reasons, but I'd like to hear if you have any before I pollute your mind.

I have only used sheet metal for it's ability to make pan folded metal components and bracketry etc but not for wood components- sounds like I've missed a trick here! thanks for the Link to the D&M tutorial for this, I'll have a play with this - I wonder if there's a way to tie it in with woodwork for inventors 'autoprint' feature where it will automate the laying out of all the parts.

I've been there and done thaht for years with AlphaCAM (On both ends of the stick), so I feel your pain, BIG TIME. I was pretty **** good though, so there were precious few errors, with respect to this repetitive nightmare (Drum & Bass helped)... but I discovered as good as others were, they couldn't follow my workflow with the same degree of accuracy, everyone has different strengths and weaknesses, but some were just also crap at doing it.

Ha! I'm glad I'm not the only one! due to the nature of our industry we have to make design changes very late, often when our CNC operator has finished programming all the parts (this has taken him longer than it should) and it does test his patience when we have to change things and again more errors are a result of this. What's challenging with our outdated methods is after parts are exported to DXF the link is broken from the inventor model and further changes have to be made manually. Perhaps this is where integrated CAM can become an advantage? 

---

I think the closest to this for Inventor is just what you have found. That woodworking for Inventor tool, but I'd be weary of its CAM credentials to be honest... if you can test it and it works for you, then perfect. There have been others which have come and gone. There was one which appeared to be excellent, but they obviously didn't sell enough of it and it hasn't been updated since the 2011 release of Inventor. 😞

My concern with woodwork for inventor would be wether it is just a flash in the pan or would develop and mature over time into a valuable tool. I've got a demonstration pitch booked in tomorrow so hopefully I'll find out more then and I was eager to find out more about the CAM side of it. One feature I have seen and liked was the 'auto print' which will lay out all the components straight from the assembly model. I wonder if I could combine this with your Export DXF method, As the addin works with the multibody modelling method, I'd have to convert the parts to sheet metal once I've created the assembly file. This could be an option.

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It really does depend how custom your work is.. but if you don't have API programming experience, attaining a very clear understanding of the workflow you would want to automate, then paying someone to do that for you is well worth it. We went from 1 week to program a workpack in mid - 2005 to half a day by the end of 2011.

That's a hugely significant reduction in time and I'm sure a lot of hard work went into setting up a workflow like that. For the short term I'd be happy to just cut down some of the manual labour side of it and find better solutions without getting too technical. I don't have any API progamming experience so perhaps getting someone in to help implement a more sophisticated workflow would be beneficial for the long term plan. Out of interest do you know who I could search for who will do this, are there dedicated companies etc.?

Luckily for you? As part of my AU class, we supplied some iLogic code which along with iPropwiz 5 will do all the Inventor side of things for you. It's probably about 85% of the automation we had with the full .NET customization.

I will certainly check this out!

Thanks again for the help!

Graham

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[mullan_g]

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Yes good point. If automatic nesting is a real need then its not the software for you.

But if the manual layout nesting is not a real "time hog" for you then go for it.

It all just depends on what shape of parts you make and how fast you want to be able to lay them out and how tight you need to watch your scrap. 

Nice suggestion but yes nesting components is very important - my boss hates wastage and I suppose he's right, Also we put around 80% of our machining through the CNC machine so get through a lot of sheet materials. 

Graham

[scottmoyse]

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mullan_g wrote:

Perhaps this is where integrated CAM can become an advantage? 

Out of interest do you know who I could search for who will do this, are there dedicated companies etc.?

Yes that is EXACTLY where integrated CAM has an advantage, although EdgeCAM for instance has an associative import with Inventor data... however, each year it seems to take them longer to release support for the next edition of Inventor. I haven't looked to see if it has a nesting engine? It's part of the Vero range, like AlphaCAM is, so I would be surprised if there wasn't.

The trick is not just having programming skills, but also understanding the API for the respective CAD & CAM applications. We could help you with the CAD side of things. But CAM side would depend on the product you need, so if the VAR is decent, they should be able to do it.

Word of warning, DON'T get into bed with any CAM vendors who don't provide editable access to the posts for your machine! If you pay to get a post developed, then you should be able to take it anywhere you want to get more work done on it, or do it yourself.

[houseek]

It's so rare to hear that Inventor using Inventor in woodworking company.

My former company is same as your company, but they use Alphacam as CAM.

I'm a Chinese guy in Shanghai, and my friend is an experienced cnc programmer still working in that American Company.

You can contact me mailing to my Email(bin_imissyou@hotmail.com) .

[JDMather]

https://events.au.autodesk.com/connect/sessionDetail.ww?SESSION_ID=7398

[MantasG_ADN]

Hi,

Current version of Woodwork for Inventor v5 does not have CAM functionality. But the new version 6th is under development (with CAM) and will be availbale in 2-3 month this year.

Woodwork for Inventor

Team