SolidWorks part file here.
The VisualMill demo program will not allow saving, so the file above is just the part.
VisualMill does an acceptable job with 3D toolpaths. I had a problem when I went into the SolidWorks tree to suppress some counterbores, so I could machine the surfaces that contained the counter-bores. When going back into the VisualMill tree, all the existing operations had a red asterisk, showing they were invalid. Worse yet, all the operations had lost the geometry selections they were based on. This means that there is no way to have the VisualMill tree not have at least one asterisk on an operation. I find that very problematical. |
Of an even greater concern was the crashes I get when doing a modestly complicated part. This video is the second take, the first crashed as I was recording it. The stability of the program is much better since I eliminated the "hybrid graphics" in the BIOS of my HP zBook15 workstation laptop. This means the included Intel HD 4600 graphics system does not get used at all. Instead, all four of my monitors are run by the nVidia Quadro graphics card in the laptop.
The other improvement came when I upgraded to Windows 10, which is still free even in April of 2020. I sent my purchased copy back to Amazon. Windows 10 has many small improvement you pay for with a different UI.
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