I need to learn Polyworks. I have a company that contacted me for some side work (not a competitor of my full time job, they are ok with it) but all they have is Polyworks. I had a chance to sit down with it for a few hours but they didn't have a manual so it was purely experimental. Seems WAY different from the Demon. Trying it for the few hours I did really made me appreciate DMIS. The job they need done could have been checked in 10 minutes on DMIS but I was there for 2 hours trying it to register a hit. They are using an arm and I have used an arm on DMIS before.
I agree with you, NB !
I think I'm lucky.
I work sometimes with Polyworks, I don't like the alignments, nor the creation of progs, but it's really a nice software for COPs (and here, it's better than PC-dmis)
I work also with Cyclone, alignments are terrifying, but COP are very nice and fluid, even if there are some millions of hits.
I worked with Flexylearn, which was very nice, and a little UMess, which wasa good soft, but not easy nor friendly...
We've got Polyworks here at my shop, along with Verisurf and DMIS. I honestly really like it. Takes everything I like about both programs and throws them into one. Sadly haven't been able to use it much due to other constraints.
MCOSMOS is the worst. I feel like it was created in 2000 and never once updated. I have never taken a class, but I have spent a lot of time trying to learn the the program. There are HUGE FLAWS with the software. I could not for the life of me figure out how to skip over a manual alignment. I did what support said and it just kept giving me a machine volume error. Editing programs is a nightmare. You have to be really good at programming flawlessly the first time. The ONLY thing good I can say about the software is maybe the construction features. They are easier to understand than PC-DMIS (show little pictures). That's the one thing about PCDMIS that I feel could be a little bit more user-friendly. Also, the phone technical support is good. It's free forever if you own a machine, so definitely take advantage of that. However, the guys aren't nearly as good as the Hexagon guys at programming. And they aren't familiar with PC-DMIS so it's hard to speak the same language as them.
The last company I worked for had a huge Mitutoyo CMM with MCOSMOS and another company I worked for had a MANUAL (not DCC) Mitutoyo CMM running MCOSMOS. Both machines were in perfect condition, because they got no use! I feel bad for whoever made the purchases (I'm not sure how hard it would be to get PCDMIS running on those machines). I would trade them in for a used Hexagon machine running PCDMIS in a heartbeat, even if that would mean I would take a big financial loss. My college has them too. It might be good for teaching students "basic CMM" theory, but that's just about all it's good for.
Anyway, good luck to all that are trying to use it! I did enjoyed my time using it, but at the end of the day it's huge waste of time compared to PC-DMIS.
