How important is it to keep cam software up to date?

Affinity

Affinity

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Just an update, called americana, and just like most every other vendor I deal with, havent heard back from them in over a week.
 
doug

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Do you have Jason's phone #?
 
brayks

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OK, I just saw this thread and boy am I sorry I missed it.

We are a hyperDENT reseller. A Follow-Me! reseller of the decade actually.

So, there is a different price for software maintenance on Classic and Compact. Recently their product line went through a re-org.

You (or anyone in the USA) can contact us and I promise you will get through to someone or will get called back quickly by someone who can help you and answer your questions. Toll Free: (855) 687 7941.

Failing that, you can always contact me and I will make sure you get sorted out.

I've been in the CAD/CAM software business for 35 years involved in every aspect from tech-support, to sofware develoment, sales, sales management to marketing and executive managment for a CAD/CAM software company and as a distributor. I can say truthfully and with confidence, that there are many very good reasons to keep your CAD and CAM software up to date that goes beyond keeping distributors like us in business. Believe it or not it costs a GOOD distributor, one that has sufficient staff to provide timely and quality support to their customers a shyte-ton of money and we do rely on that revenue to keep and grow our staff. There is also, (again believe it or not),not a significant amount of money to be made in software maintenance, but every little bit helps.

The thing is, believe it or not, software like most everything else in life needs to be maintained. It must be kept up to date in order to run on new operating systems, and take advantage of new performance and security features. Your software must also be continually enhanced to accommodate changing business requirements and new government regulations, as well as evolving users’ needs. Without on-going maintenance the system your business relies on would soon become obsolete which could force a large investment in another system.

Of course only you can determine the relative value of the cost vs return on software maintenance and many choose not to maintain their initial investment in software. I can tell you our renewal rate for our dental business is lower than the renewal of our industrial business which is over 90%. I believe there are many reasons for that but I will spare you the pain of reading any more of my typically long posts.

I will say that I do believe the biggest reason for that is historically, there are many distributors that are not in a position to maintain any significant high end, experience support staff (in fact many of their users know more about the software than they do). Heck, if I had purchased software from many of them, I would most likely not renew software maintenance myself (if I hadn't already "biz-bagged" them and found another distributor to go to).

For example, we have five dedicated, very experienced and capable engineers dedicated to support in our dental business (Axsys Dental Solutions) and 6 even more experienced engineers dedicated to support in our industrial business (Axsys Inc.),some of which have been with us for 25 years or in industry for that long. I have to tell you this size of quality-level staffing does not come cheap.

This distribution business is not much different than any other business, including yours. We (and the developers) have costs that continue to increase, which also includes software, maintenance and unfortunatley event raining and support. Our margin on the business is not much different that what you are experiencing and many much less (like I mentioned, I've been around the block a few times).

So you couple that with the fact that this industry is flooded with resellers of the same product and consumers are keen to save a buck or two a go with the cheapest solution—even though the cheapest initial investment typically ends up costing them much more very quickly.

OK, I've said my piece. Sorry to ramble (crap, I really did ramble).

I'm out...
 
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Jack_the_dentureman

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We had a branded version of hyperdent on our system to run a VHF mill. We had it updated by another vendor and the mill started doing things that we didn't kow were possible. You may be surprised to find that another version will be better than what you have with not too much of a $$$ outlay.
but what things has the milling machine started to do now? I am also using vhf and maybe I should change cam software please tell me what's going on
 
tehnik

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For example I am using 2017 version of roland millbox and it is not working properly with exocad 2.4 and as I was told exocad and/or sum3d knows the problem but have done nothing about it. Newest version of millbox is working as needed and the update costs 1000 for every year but not over 3000.
 
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erykd1

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For example I am using 2017 version of roland millbox and it is not working properly with exocad 2.4 and as I was told exocad and/or sum3d knows the problem but have done nothing about it. Newest version of millbox is working as needed and the update costs 1000 for every year but not over 3000.
Wow, literally just submitted 2 support tickets this morning- 1 to exocad and 1 to CIM systems. Just recently purchased a new Exocad 2.4 license, milling with Sum3d 2016 and I can't mill anything on our Roland without re-saving every crown in our old version of Exocad.
 
tehnik

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Well in my case it does not help to use resaving in 2.3, it has to be designed from the beginning in older version. I have problems with screw retained crowns that are not done with scan bodies. Also the same problem with 3shape files.
 
tehnik

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Wow, literally just submitted 2 support tickets this morning- 1 to exocad and 1 to CIM systems. Just recently purchased a new Exocad 2.4 license, milling with Sum3d 2016 and I can't mill anything on our Roland without re-saving every crown in our old version of Exocad.
If you get any information from either of the side, please let me know.
 
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erykd1

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If you get any information from either of the side, please let me know.
Answer from CIM Systems - Upgrade to the new millbox. Didn't even look at the cam files I sent. :rolleyes: The workaround for me is to either resave in Exo 2016 or load the the STLs into SUM3d without constructioninfo files and it has been working ok. Still waiting to hear back from Exo.
 
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