Products»SolidCAM

Why do CAM customers need Inventor?

In the modern manufacturing world, where different ISO requirements are involved in the manufacturing process, the CAM department/manufacturer needs robust design tools in order to complete the whole manufacturing process.

It does not matter whether the manufacturing organization is an in-house production department/sub-contractor or whether the manufacturing organization deals with prototype/mass production/molds design and production, they all need to design parts and assemblies (design jigs & fixtures, adapt the part to manufacturing standards and processes, design mold components such as core & cavity, electrodes, ejectors etc...). Drawings are required as well for detailing and for inspection purposes. Most of these design tasks are best accomplished by using the assembly top-down approach; the core of all components is the part to be manufactured and all other components should reference it. This is the classic case for using top-down design.

Inventor, as a mainstream solid CAD solution, has all the appropriate tools for doing all the above-mentioned design tasks necessary during the manufacturing process.

If Inventor is not used for that purpose, the stand-alone CAM (which is actually a CAD/CAM application) is used with its own CAD module and CAD tools.

CAM departments/manufacturers prefer to use the same software for CAD and CAM tasks. It is obvious that most of the CAD tools of any stand-alone CAM are not going to offer the same level of consistency or provide as many of the easy to use tools unique to Inventor.

 

  • Why should the CAM user use an alternate and usually inferior CAD application?
  • Why shouldn't the CAM user use Inventor for all his production plan design tasks?
  • Why shouldn't the CAM user use the same CAD application in manufacturing as in the design department?
  • What considerations can lead the user to the poor decision of preferring a stand-alone CAM application over Inventor and an integrated CAM product that has the needed CAM functionality?

 

 

Key Links