A few weeks ago I blasted 3D Systems saying 3D lightyear was vaporware. It
was of course just ancious anticipation on my part. 3D Lightyear is now
shipping (according to sources at 3D). I have been using the beta3 version of
lightyear for about a week now. I am truly humbled because this software is
even better than I could have imagined. What used to take us 5 or 6 hours to
slice on our old SGI Indigo II now slices in 15 minutes on my much lower cost
SGI NT workstation. They have automatic verify and automatic part placement
which is really nice for when your building bunches of parts. The new copy
feature to make multiples of parts is really handy.
All the resin and recoater parameters are included and seem to work very
well right out of the box.
The software is all windows based and very easy to operate with online
help that is very well written.
The buildstation 5 software is also very solid. The line drawing is now
done differently so I'm told. We were able to increase our drawing speed from
75 on borders and 125 on hatching up to 125 borders and 200 hatching with no
apparent degredation in quality. This in combination with the good SL5510
resin parameters has decreased our buildtimes by as much as 50% from before.
Tony the 3D field service technician in the Chicago area had everything
running in about a day. He really knows his stuff.
I just want to commend the 3D Systems development team for the best
software product I have seen in a long while. I hope this gets me back in
good graces with 3D now.
with egg on my face
Bob Morton
Fusion Engineering
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