December 2005 - At Last, PLM for Small Manufacturers

By Anthony J. Lockwood

Bill Gibbs was a manufacturing engineer doing contract programming in the early 1980s. When the Apple Macintosh was first introduced in 1984, it inspired Gibbs to create the first native graphical CAM system. This initial effort has since grown into GibbsCAM, which is developed by Gibbs’s company, Gibbs and Associates of Moorpark, California. Gibbs is president and CEO of the company, continuing his role as an industry leader and innovator. Ever a friend to the machinist, in this interview Gibbs discusses current trends in the CAM industry, an upcoming software release, and a huge new opportunity in the realm of interoperability.

GibbsCAM software is certified to work with current CAD systems like Autodesk Inventor, SolidWorks, and Solid Edge, each with a partnering program. What’s new on that front?

Gibbs: When we talk about the partnering programs that Autodesk, Solid Edge, and SolidWorks offer, I’d also put PTC on the list. PTC is actively supporting interoperability by offering a core library called Granite that’s available for license. Granite is PTC’s own product for reading Pro/Engineer files. This is great because we’re not using reverse engineering to get information from Pro/E; we’re using software produced directly by PTC. By selling the Granite library as an option to our customers, they can read Pro/E files and map them directly into the Parasolid solid modeler we use internally. We see a big demand for stand-alone read capabilities for typical CAD files without buying the actual software. The biggest advance in quality is when the core technology comes from the parent CAD company. For our users, the ability to directly read CATIA, Pro/E, and all the Parasolid derivatives like SolidWorks, Solid Edge, and Unigraphics not only improves quality, it improves utility. Direct read is a big step up in convenience.

In addition to interoperability, people purchasing CAM software place a lot of value
on ease of use. How does GibbsCAM respond to that?

Gibbs: There are different types of ease of use. There is the whole interface ease-of-use aspect that most people focus on: Do I understand what this button does? Does the software do what I expect it to do? Does it follow the Windows guidelines that I’m used to? But there’s a completely different aspect of ease of use: Software is generally easier to use if it has adequate power for the task. When someone buys a system based on superficial qualities like its interface or low cost, they end up wasting hours every day using a tool that’s not designed for the task. At the end of the day they look back and say, “that wasn’t very easy.” What we come back to is a basic question: Can your people program your parts for your machines? If you can solve those issues you’re going to be happy.

If you get sucked into the marketing hype, you end up with products you are not happy with. We know this because replacing other people’s products is a significant part of our business.

Are There Any Hot New Trends in the CAM Industry?

Gibbs: To be honest, the CAM industry is a mature market. There aren’t a lot of frontiers, but there are a lot of opportunities for quality improvements, opportunity to expand the breadth of products and to go beyond standard capability, improving the product based on the quality of the solution provided. Rather than inventing a new mousetrap, we’re focused on improving our capabilities. From my experience, successful companies with very successful products do not stake their fame on a whiz-bang aspect, but base their success on good solid quality, good solid customer service, good solid value, and good solid functionality. That’s more important to our future success as a company than chasing after the latest technology craze.