By Ann Mazakas

Steve Sivitter is the chief executive officer of Pathtrace Systems Inc., developer of EdgeCAM software. He was first exposed to CAD and CAM back in the early ‘80s, working as a production engineer for a manufacturing company in the U.K. Attracted by the diversity of the applications for the technology and a potential for travel, he moved into the industry as an applications engineer, providing demonstrations and product training. This led to various sales and sales management roles, and in 1996 he relocated to Canada to establish Delcam’s North American headquarters, becoming vice president.

In 2000, Steve was approached by Pathtrace to head up its North American operation in Southfield, MI. “I had a fantastic time at Delcam,” says Sivitter, “but the opportunity at Pathtrace was too good to pass up. EdgeCAM is such a great product, but really didn’t have much of a presence in the Americas. Our team at Pathtrace Systems Inc. has certainly changed that.”

 

With all the automation capabilities in EdgeCAM, are you seeing more interest in automation from your customers?

Sivitter: We always encourage people to automate. Many companies immediately dismiss automation because they don’t think they can automate the programming of every part. I’m amazed at the number of people who still stand at the machine tool programming holes from a chart with hole center locations when it only takes a CAM system a few seconds to produce a drilling operation. It may be entirely correct that you can’t automate the machining of every part. But could you automate 50 percent of the machining of your parts? Absolutely. There is always some percentage that makes it worthwhile and saves a significant amount of time.

We clearly focus our attention on automation, but other big areas that contribute to our capabilities in this area are solids integration, feature recognition, and knowledge-based machining. We are also developing closer relationships with providers of machine tools and cutting tools.

How do relationships with cutting tool providers and machine tool manufacturers help your customers?

Sivitter: We have a very good relationship with Sandvik. Today we’re the only CAM company that supports Sandvik’s “wiper” insert, which has a very unique geometry that maintains the same surface finish at twice the feed rate. Because of the offset and the compensation required by this cutting tool, most people can only cut straight shafts with them. They can’t leverage the wiper technology when the turned part has any kind of curve. Working closely with Sandvik, we can now better leverage the tools that they’re developing.

   

Steve Sivitter, Chief Executive Officier, Pathtrace Systems, Inc.

In addition, we just announced a strategic alliance with Daewoo Heavy Industries in Korea, the third largest manufacturer of machine tools in the world. Just as we’re leveraging the capabilities of cutting tools, we also want to leverage the capabilities of machine tools. We pride ourselves on our postprocessors. Our goal is to have factory-approved postprocessors so that if you buy a particular machine tool you get the postprocessor that works great for that machine. That’s very much why we have a relationship with Daewoo, in particular on mill/turn machines. Expect to hear more from Pathtrace on machine tool relationships in the not-too-distant future.

When Sandvik or Daewoo develop new technology, do customers have to wait to get support for that technology?

Sivitter: The good news is that EdgeCAM has three releases a year to make sure we’re up to date with the latest technology and compatible with the latest releases of the solid modelers we support. EdgeCAM directly loads CAD models from CATIA V5, Parasolid-based models from SolidWorks and Solid Edge, Pro/Engineer through the Granite kernel, and anything ACIS-based. Pathtrace is also the Global Preferred CAM Partner for Autodesk. EdgeCAM’s integration with Inventor is the best in our industry today.

Another problem with annual releases is that they deal with an awful lot of functionality, which could mean a complete retraining exercise. We’re taking a year and breaking it into three smaller, bite-size chunks that are easier to consume. We’ve also found that it’s a very productive way for us to develop and test software.

Our customers are confident in the quality of our delivery and install each new version of EdgeCAM when they get it. That convinces me that having more releases is worth our while. We feel that we’re delivering fantastic value to our customers with our maintenance program, with the quality of the releases and the functionality of the releases. We’re currently on EdgeCAM 9.75 and EdgeCAM 10 will be released in September.

How do you track three releases a year?

Sivitter: We have a product roadmap that we share with our resellers and our customers so they know what’s coming, making them more empowered to make business decisions. The roadmap is very well-defined for the next three releases and a little looser for the next three after that because technology and requirements can change. We base the roadmap on conversations with resellers and customers and also the feedback we get from our support team. Everyone is fully encouraged to contribute to the roadmap and tell us what they’re looking for. These requirements define our product roadmap for the next two years. This works exceedingly well for us. We have a good track record of meeting our planned dates.

What are some of the things you’re developing in EdgeCAM right now?

Sivitter: Furthering CAD integration is a key area. We know that if we start getting surface finish information we can leverage that to create even more automation. If you know what a particular feature is going to be used for, you can make intelligent decisions on how you’re going to machine it.

Another big area we’re working on is enhancing our 5-axis capabilities because on many mill/turn machines the B-axis is actually capable of 5-axis. What you have in the mill/turn area is actually a 9-axis machine that essentially has two spindles and two turrets. These machines will become increasingly more complex with more turrets and spindles, etcetera, so we’re doing a great deal of work to better define these complex machine configurations. We will also continue to improve machine simulation. You have to be able to define each axis and how it moves and rotates and how the axes can potentially collide. We can already program these machines, but there are always enhancements we can make.

Is all of your software development based here in the US?

Sivitter: Our development is split into three locations. The lion’s share of development is done in the U.K. with a fair amount done in Russia and then some in the US. Russia has some incredibly talented people. The interesting thing that we find is that, developing away from headquarters, we have to be significantly better at defining the specification of the project than if everyone is in the same room. Obviously, working with Russia, the spec has to be perfect to know that what we get back is what we asked for and what we expected. We’re an ISO-compliant company so everything we do has to be to ISO standards.

How does your global development strategy affect your software release schedule?

Sivitter: Developing globally helps us a great deal. The time difference is actually an advantage for us because we’ll run a software testing event here in the US with our own people, customers, and resellers. At the beginning of the day we’ll have a conference call with our development director in the U.K. and then we’ll test all day. In the evening we’ll write a report and e-mail it to the U.K. With the time difference, the developers look at the comments and have updates ready by the time the guys get in the next day.

I noticed that education is prominent on the Pathtrace website.

Sivitter: We do a lot of work in education. Clearly, from a business point of view, CAM companies have benefited greatly from being in education. But, if you go somewhere like Latin America you see just how poor some of these kids are and the conditions in the classroom. Their enthusiasm is incredible and it becomes more than just business. The educators are working to get the kids off the street, teach them a trade, and build their lives.

I met with a school director in Sao Paolo, Brazil, who’s a real visionary in education. He got a 9-axis MacTurn machine from Okuma by explaining how beneficial it would be to have one of their latest machine tools in his facility. This showed great vision also from the folks at Okuma. Then he went to Sandvik requesting tools for his beautiful new machine. And of course we ended up as part of this venture. The students start at one end of the facility with a 2-axis lathe and then move along, adding an axis every step of the way, until they’re programming the 9-axis machine. It completely demystifies the complexity of the 9-axis machine.

In Costa Rica we work with a school for underprivileged kids called Cedes Dom Bosco. Many of the kids out of that school now have good jobs with our customers there and I know for a fact that 30 to 40 percent of the students are girls. What’s particularly rewarding is that these kids are probably supporting their families with their work. And here in the US we work with Project Lead the Way, which makes fantastic progress in their pre-engineering program using Autodesk Inventor and EdgeCAM.

What are your future plans for EdgeCAM?

Sivitter: Until recently, CAM has been used somewhat in isolation. We’ve begun to break that isolation through better interoperability with CAD systems. Now that we’ve changed CAM to work more closely with CAD, it’s important to manage the CAM data just like the CAD data. We’re looking more broadly at PDM so that EdgeCAM data can be managed with a PDM solution. In EdgeCAM today we have an HTML-based module called Job Manager that’s basically PDM for CAM. It runs across the intranet and anyone can use it. Any of our customers can take an EdgeCAM CD, install it wherever they want without a license and view or simulate tool paths. But we know that our larger customers want to do so much more and wrap it all into their PDM system.

We’re also looking at tool database management. EdgeCAM has a very capable tool database, but if you go into a large manufacturing facility they’ve typically got a tool data management product running. They’ve got tool cribs and track tools with bar codes, so why not tie all that into EdgeCAM? That’s part of our current roadmap for version 10 and beyond.

We can provide the tools to increase communication throughout the manufacturing environment, but getting people to change and to break down the walls, and to not simply throw the part design over the wall to manufacturing is what needs to happen. Every one of us in manufacturing today needs to rethink how our jobs affect the overall competitiveness of our company.

Ann Mazakas is the owner and president of Intelligent Creations LLC, and a expert in CAM software and the manufacturing industry. You can send her an e-mail about this Q&A c/o DE’s Editors.

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Company Highlights

Company:    Pathtrace Systems Inc.
Headquarters:    Southfield, MI
Founded:    1984
Product:    EdgeCAM