Delcam's Brazilian reseller, SEACAM, will hold a series of free user meetings in August with demonstrations of the 2015 versions of Delcam's PowerSHAPE Pro CAD system for modelling for manufacture and reverse engineering and the PowerMILL CAM system for high-speed and five-axis machining.
The meetings will take place in Joinville on 4th and 5th August, in Sao Paulo on 6th August and in Caxias do Sul on 7th and 8th August. For full details, please email Alexandre Magdalon at SEACAM on am@seacam.com.br
The 2015 release of PowerSHAPE Pro will include improvements in direct modelling, surface modelling and reverse engineering, plus support for data from Creaform HandySCAN hand-held scanners.
The improvements in direct modelling build on the introduction of the Smart Feature Manager and the Smart Feature Selector in recent releases. The Smart Feature Manager allows users to identify all the features, such as fillets, slots, bosses etc, within a solid in a single operation and so makes the analysis of the imported data easier and faster. The Smart Feature Selector then allows multiple similar features to be found and selected using either a specific value or a range of values.
Once the particular group has been selected, all the features within it can be edited simultaneously. For example, all holes having a diameter of 5mm can have their diameter increased to 10mm in one operation.
One of PowerSHAPE Pro's great strengths has always been its surface modelling capabilities, giving the user the ability to create any shape they can imagine. These capabilities have been further improved with new dynamic point editing. Multiple points, either along a single curve or picked from multiple curves, can now be selected and moved, with real-time updating of the model. This makes styling of free-form shapes easier and quicker, and also speeds up modelling for manufacture tasks like removing undercuts from tooling designs.
The main enhancement to PowerSHAPE Pro's reverse engineering functionality is a more automated method for capturing cross-sections through a mesh. The software now fits lines and fillets to the cross-section where it can, with the user able to control the tolerance used. This method uses the mesh as a guide instead of treating it as exact geometry with the priority of capturing the design intent rather than ensuring a precise fit to the scan data.
PowerMILL 2015 will include improvements to the Vortex high-efficiency area-clearance strategy, improved collision checking to also cover near misses, and more efficient raster finishing.
The Vortex area-clearance strategy produces safe toolpaths with a much deeper cut by using a controlled engagement angle that maintains the optimum cutting conditions for the whole toolpath. Two enhancements in PowerMILL 2015 will give even greater reductions in machining time compared to conventional roughing. The first change allows toolpaths to approach the part from outside the stock at the cutting height for open pockets or in areas where earlier cuts have made this possible.
The second change allows an increased feed rate to be set for non-cutting moves. The extra time that can be saved depends on the shape of the part but an additional saving of around 20% should be expected above the earlier releases of Vortex.
Companies using PowerMILL for either positional or continuous five-axis machining will benefit from improvements to the collision checking within the software. Firstly, collision checking has been changed so that warnings can also be flagged for near misses. The user can now specify a clearance value and when the machine tool comes within this value it will turn yellow in colour to highlight a near miss.
Secondly, the display showing the list of collisions, and now near misses as well, has been updated to be easier to read, making it simpler to extrapolate the coordinates at these points. For near misses, the clearance distance is also shown in the display.
25 July 2014
DELCAM PLC 
