Not knowing ahead of time which one you would prefer, we organized the following feature list for both types of readers (this is our typical approach to most design problems). This list is long — PractiCAM has a lot of features.

This is why every feature description below consists of two components — formal and informal (called Speaking simply).

You can choose whichever one you like — or read both.

The working environment of PractiCAM, based on a new interface concept and our proprietary advanced technology, was designed and implemented without any concessions to the past, featuring not only current practices and workflows, but also expected and possible changes in the manufacturing technology of the future.

PractiCAM offers you a wide range of modern methods and techniques, and at the same time, fully conforms to industry-wide trade practices, workflows and ergonomic requirements. This advantage is achieved through a built-in limitless customization, aimed at accomodating an enterprise of any size and facilitating the transition to the new streamlined manufacturing process of the 21st century.

PractiCAM is designed using C++-based object-oriented technology, implemented under Windows XP and Windows.NET. Both modularity and portability of our design guarantee the success of the inevitable future migration to new platforms.

In today's business environment, any software must be able to adapt and re-deploy itself to quickly follow rapid and often unpredictable changes. This strategy requires continuous non-stop development, and PractiCAM is the fastest developing system on the market.

PractiCAM is capable of complete, accurate and fast data import directly from our PractiCAD and from other CAD systems, facilitating and streamlining the entire production process. The data import eliminates the duplication of effort and the error-prone double data entry, and is available both for 3D and for flat products.

For every product and every fitting, PractiCAM uses custom-built proprietary templates, grounded in our patent-pending approach. These templates can replicate the exact data data set of any fitting model from any library or a catalog — including those of any product and equipment manufacturers, and, of course, any of our competitors.

For every fitting made or offered by someone, we have a fitting with an exactly identical set of parameters — while migrating from a previous CAM system, our clients can begin to enjoy the benefits of PractiCAM right away without having to re-learn the details and variations of a new system.

In addition to 2000+ product and fitting templates, PractiCAM libraries include:

• 1500+ fully parametric, multilayered, reusable flat and 3D parts and pattern templates;
• A built-in fully featured 2D CAD with a robust set of drawing and advanced design tools, including automated placement of allowances, part segmentation, part bending and rolling, part marking and others;
• An ability to create any sign or lettering, flat or 3D, from any font or any set of symbols;
• An ability to convert any raster image, drawn or scanned, into a ready-to-cut vector file

In addition to products, fittings, parts, and patterns described above, PractiCAM libraries include:

• Flexible and fully parametric templates for manufacturing any architectural and kitchen elements: moldings, trims, cornices, pedestals, roof segments, and any other profile-driven items;
• Flexible and fully parametric templates for manufacturing metal buildings, including universal construction panels, corner elements, walls, door opening and window opening assemblies;

In addition to thousandsof items in PractiCAM libraries, our hierarchical and user-transparent system of default values allows you to save and re-use most commonly produced items and most commonly used values within special libraries, custom built for the purpose.

This ability includes any items with custom cutouts and other modifications. It also allows you to automate a majority of typical operations, with a minimum or no additional effort.

If you require any product or any template not already present in PractiCAM libraries, we will add it for you free of charge. This free service includes new fittings, products, parts, patterns, allowances, labels, reports and other items.

Our patent-pending product construction technology makes it possible for us to create extensive and unlimited libraries at a speed exceeding our competition's speed by several orders of magnitude.

For repeatedly manufactured items (i.e. for certain standard products you make often), PractiCAM has a user-selectable Quick Input feature: a lightning-fast, keyboard-only, item-name-only takeoff.

PractiCAM’s error checking procedure is script-based (as opposed to a commonly used instance-checking mode), allowing for more sophisticated, flexible, and precise error identification and prevention. It also allows us to build for you your own custom product templates with your own set of construction rules.

Dynamic, freely rotatable, zoomable, fully dimensioned, photorealistic views are the core of our data presentation.

To create your products “on-the-fly”, you can use interactive (and highly economized) line input, or enter the same data directly on 3D view, while the 3D model can be rotated, repositioned, zoomed into or away from by simple and intuitively clear mouse movements (without any pre-set views or mind-boggling relative coordinate system setups) — you can even look inside of the item you are making and make a cutout of any shape directly on the 3D view.

Simultaneous 3-D and flat pattern (exploded) views reflect all technological modifications (access holes, custom cuts, accessories, connectors etc.), enhancing and enriching the presentation, raising operator’s efficiency and reducing the error rate.

All PractiCAM tool sets are completely custom in their function and appearance, creating a new metaphor of the working screen layout and allowing you to modify their arrangement to suit your taste preferences and working habits.



In PractiCAM, we have found a unique solution to a serious interface limitation: tools and data are always forced to share the same, very limited space. Our tools possess two new qualities — temporal and spatial transparency.

Our specifications envelop a complete range of possible relationships between virtually any and all parameters of specified products.

Any two parameters (out of thousands available), can be made related to each other through a simple sequence of logical conditions in plain English (which are pre-set in a variety of most usable scenarios, but are easily modifiable or designed by you).

As a specific limited case, those specifications include the full range of SMACNA tables, accepted within the industry.

We can directly import or replicate any specifications currently used within the entire industry.

Speaking simply, our specifications describe and determine as little or as much as you want them to — you can define and specify anything from a level of a given job to the level of an individual allowance.

Our specifications are capable of describing and determining every condition you could possibly want (even some you may not be thinking about at the moment). Without reservations.

PractiCAM includes a full-featured CAD system for fittings, flat patterns and allowances editing.

Speaking simply, if it is drawn or constructed, you can change it easily. On the fly.

PractiCAM is the first cost-estimating system integrated with the manufacturing and not requiring data import/export for implementation.

Speaking simply, you know exactly how much would it cost to make a fitting — at every moment of its creation process. Of course, you will know the same thing about your whole project. Instantly.

Our estimation process offers two estimating alternatives: an industry-wide accepted approximation of the manufacturing costs based on published SMACNA data, and an exact estimate provided by a sophisticated mathematical model, taking into account specific aspects of your production process.

Speaking simply, you will know how much does it costs to make something in this industry — and how much does it cost you. On the spot.

Our specifications are only one part of the extensive collection of standard libraries, setting forth shop manufacturing standards. We provide our users with the most sophisticated system of limitless (and easily expandable) libraries containing and describing in detail all shop allowances, notches, materials, connectors, locks, joints, seams, stiffeners, and all other related data, in the easiest to comprehend and the easiest to use fashion. Every aspect of those libraries — starting with a complete absence of limitations on the number or complexity of shop standards, and ending with a visually rich and intuitively clear interactive presentation — serves the ultimate purpose: shop’s effectiveness and efficiency.

Speaking simply, our libraries can take any number of any type of any connectors, locks, materials etc. You can design your allowances using any number of completely custom notches or cuts you may require. You can see it all instantly in a clear, concise, and visually controlled setting, all done and ready in a few seconds — accommodating even those metal-processing and metal-joining techniques which have not been invented yet.

In the past, the time required by each workflow stage — input, nesting, labeling, reporting etc. — created a step-by-step, hurry-up-and-wait, working routine, requiring, at every stage, an operator’s intervention and an operator’s active leading role determined the sequence — you had to wait until one stage was finished, to start another one. While the sequence and shop requirements for it were always known (and in most shops they tend to vary relatively slightly from job to job), fulfilling these requirements on-the-fly was always beyond the capability of a typical shop computer.

Our product, designed for the modern hardware and using now available alternatives, changed the concept of the work process. Truly intelligent multitasking mechanisms split the process and work without a delay. The job gets finished — fittings nested, labels and reports prepared for printing, cutter sequence determined and set, all in accordance with your shop requirements — and without any operator’s intervention. By the time you are ready to review the ready-to-cut job, it is truly ready to cut. You can, if you wish, go back to any stage of the process, and adjust any of your settings — to see those changes reflected in your results at the same extraordinary speed.

Speaking simply, as soon as you finished your input (be it an imported or an interactively entered data), you are ready to cut, because the software took care of all related aspects the best way it knew how — and exactly as you told it the last time.

Our ability to set and maintain a distributed and/or a centralized access to all of PractiCAM libraries (and, actually, to all of your work, including takeoffs and everything else within your shop), utilizing a custom defined combination of a local data storage with a direct access across the network, virtually guarantees a shop-wide adherence to set standards.

Speaking simply, you can have all of your libraries in one place. Or in as many places as you want — and as you decide.

Within PractiCAM, you can set user privileges, allowing the shop foreman or your production manager to determine the extent of responsibility and levels of access for each of his craftsmen, apprentices and even occasional system guests. Coupled with a history log, tracking (and timing) every operation within the software, the system makes it easier for you to reach your production goals.

In the beginning of this feature list we said that PractiCAM was born within a sheet metal shop, and it was born to make the shop better and easier to run by the same staff. Today, PractiCAM continues to grow from the same roots — almost every improvement in PractiCAM still comes directly from sheet metal shops just like yours.

We follow your suggestions and implement them as fast as possible — after all, our clients were, and still are, the most valuable source of our growth.