First thing I need to mention:

These are the ISSUES we are experiencing in 3Dx.  I can see may good things ahead.  Once I get a better understanding of the software and the bugs worked out I can give you a better pros and con's of 3dx.

 We have installed an On-Premise installation of 3Dx R2017x Hotfix2.  We decided to start our investigation in 3Dx with NC / Manufacturing.  Everything is up and running a few issues with getting the database to work correctly but not too bad.  Inceptra fixed fairly quickly.

Number One thing to remember is that the database takes a few minutes to update.  When I was working on tooling, each time I would check my work, the information I added was not there so I thought I was doing it wrong.  It was that the database was not up to date, very frustrating.  We switch ours to update every 3 minutes, that still seems to be a life time.

Licensing is very tricky…enough said.

Importing tools from V5 is really easy BUT…  So many thing to consider when importing tools.

Import as an assembly

Import tool only and then add holders

How to import tool with other material type into existing 3dx tools

Naming, so you can search the tool easily

If you build a tool in 3Dx is a NCT: if you import a tool it’s a PRD:

The major issue, we are having problems importing V5 part data into 3dx.  If you try and import a single CATPart, it will try and import every part in the entire assembly and then it fails.  We found that we had some linking problems that we resolved with VB

Other Issues:

Defining/Adding Part operations

Adding tool numbers.  Tool number can only be added to the assembly not tools (odd) they should call them assembly number not tool number…

Extra steps getting APT files out of database

You can only compute surface roughing in the milling app can't in the prismatic app.

Have to reselect catalog in process manager every time after restarting 3Dx

No information on how to define tool queries because the ones that get imported from V5 does not work.

Reordering Catalogs.

Performance:

Database queries seems OK

Compute surface tool paths is as fast as V5 if not better. 

Prismatic computing…Drilling, pocketing, profiles is not quick at all.

Selecting a catalog in machining process manager is agonizingly slow

Searching for anything in the database is still a little bit of a mystery.  Knowing the "predefined queries" helps.  But it seems that when I search for things I don’t always get the same results but I'm sure that has to do with the lag in database updating.   You need to think of it as searching in google...  

The 6Wtag filter do not stick

 Another thing I have noticed is any of the new product enhancements in 3dx that are not in V5 don’t work correctly.  I haven't tried them all and some do not pertain to me but the several I have tried are really buggy… Maybe just me

We have machine a couple things on the mill that was toolpathed in 3Dx and that went pretty smooth.  No real issues there.  We did run through Vericut but still no major problems

Disclaimer:

Again, some of these problems may be because of my understanding of the software and the database.  The more I work in it the easier its gets…another "but"…but some things are still a little wacky.

Inceptra has been working very hard for us so no issues there!  Good group of guys…

We have a long road ahead….