PC-DMIS vs. NX for programming offline

- I came from a company that used Valysis for many years. Extremely powerful software. The current offering in NX is NOT Valysis. It is a completely new product that is built on the NX manufacturing module core.
- One of the biggest advantages to NX Inspect is that it is a platform neutral option. You develop your program inside NX and then post out the code using a customizable post-processor just like all CAM software on the market. Of course, this means that you need to write the post-processor, or have someone do it for you. NX inspect comes with a post that will post out pure DMIS code exactly to the standard. PC-DMIS does not use pure DMIS code. I have been told that it is quite possible to write a post that will work perfectly fine with PC-DMIS. I haven't seen it done myself.
- When I previewed this software it was very young and had very few features integrated. If you were measuring anything other than circles and planes you were in for a lot of customization (you can write your own user defined features but its a lot of work if you haven't done it a lot before). I'm sure it has come a long way since then.
- I'm sure it will read the PMI just fine but the PMI has to be right. If there are any mistakes at that level you've got a screwed CMM program. PC-DMIS will also read the PMI and generate the program for you. I think nearly all CMM software packages available today will do this. The trick here is that you must set up a database of strategies that get applied to each type of feature that is detected. If you are making the exact same thing all the time and that thing has very easily definable features that will always use the same strategy then this should work great. If you are working in a job shop environment forget about it. You would spend more time trying to update the database than it would take to write the program.
- Working inside NX and having access to all of the geometry creation tools is very nice.

To compare apples to apples you would need to look at PC-DMIS with the planner module and the NX direct CAD interface. This will allow you to work inside NX and will allow you to generate the code from the PMI. I think you will find that going with PC-DMIS with these two modules will be a better solution. The situation where the scales tip the other way is when you have a mixed CMM environment and you need to program in PC-DMIS, MODUS, and Metrolog (for example). In this type of situation the platform neutral approach makes a ton of sense. You write one program in NX and post it out to run in 3 different software packages.

- I came from a company that used Valysis for many years. Extremely powerful software. The current offering in NX is NOT Valysis. It is a completely new product that is built on the NX manufacturing module core.
- One of the biggest advantages to NX Inspect is that it is a platform neutral option. You develop your program inside NX and then post out the code using a customizable post-processor just like all CAM software on the market. Of course, this means that you need to write the post-processor, or have someone do it for you. NX inspect comes with a post that will post out pure DMIS code exactly to the standard. PC-DMIS does not use pure DMIS code. I have been told that it is quite possible to write a post that will work perfectly fine with PC-DMIS. I haven't seen it done myself.
- When I previewed this software it was very young and had very few features integrated. If you were measuring anything other than circles and planes you were in for a lot of customization (you can write your own user defined features but its a lot of work if you haven't done it a lot before). I'm sure it has come a long way since then.
- I'm sure it will read the PMI just fine but the PMI has to be right. If there are any mistakes at that level you've got a screwed CMM program. PC-DMIS will also read the PMI and generate the program for you. I think nearly all CMM software packages available today will do this. The trick here is that you must set up a database of strategies that get applied to each type of feature that is detected. If you are making the exact same thing all the time and that thing has very easily definable features that will always use the same strategy then this should work great. If you are working in a job shop environment forget about it. You would spend more time trying to update the database than it would take to write the program.
- Working inside NX and having access to all of the geometry creation tools is very nice.

To compare apples to apples you would need to look at PC-DMIS with the planner module and the NX direct CAD interface. This will allow you to work inside NX and will allow you to generate the code from the PMI. I think you will find that going with PC-DMIS with these two modules will be a better solution. The situation where the scales tip the other way is when you have a mixed CMM environment and you need to program in PC-DMIS, MODUS, and Metrolog (for example). In this type of situation the platform neutral approach makes a ton of sense. You write one program in NX and post it out to run in 3 different software packages.