TopSolid vs Solidworks for solid wood furniture design
Does anyone have experience with TopSolid'Wood by Missler? I'd like a comparison with Solidworks. We do solid hardwood furniture manufacturing on CNC (not simple sheet goods). Want parametric. parts libraries. easy integration to CAM. What is best for solid wood industry.
We were happy with TS and its integrated CAM. Parametric. easy to make quick changes and go right to the CNC. But not so happy with their fees, and the small user base. I'd post short questions to their forums and often never get a response.
We had TS for years and our dongle burned in a factory fire along with our CNC router. They want about $15-20k USD to update our software to the current version and make a post processor for our new CNC router. $5k of this is for doing the PP. seems excessive.
SW has huge market share of course, easy to find users already familiar, and forums to ask questions. Just wondering though if the benefits of TS over SW is enough to outweigh the negatives. We have quite a few furniture pieces already designed in TS... and CAM files but I think the CAM files may be toast anyway since the new machine's PP will be different.
3 Answers
I have been working on Top solid wood from the last 3 years and we do furniture manufacturing from solid wood as well as sheets. Top solid wood is best in this field due to its integrated cam and all wood joinery operations like tenon-mortise,nesting and all hardware application.
would suggest top solid wood for any wood based manufacturing industry
Download a trial of this https://www.alibre.com/ . Comes at a great price, easy to learn if you have Solid Works, Solid Edge, or Inventor experience. Way cheaper as well. Very usable in a parametric / manufacturing role, CAD / CAM add on option. I have used for awhile in a metal fabrication environment mainly, would be as usable as Solid Works for your purpose, Very good price and the local reseller has always given top service. Also comes with a Keyshot license.
I recommend the IRONCAD Woodlab CAD / CAM package if you are looking for cheap and very functional solutions.
You can get them at woodlab com pl
It doesn't matter if he moves to another program because I always created new projects in my work that were not repetitive to a small extent. When designing 3D, you use CAM tools so the files are ready for production. SolidWorks requires a lot of extra work ...
