From FanucWorks to RoboGuide – Fanuc Simulation Software

Sim­u­la­tion soft­ware is prob­a­bly one of the biggest time sav­ing inno­va­tions ever devel­oped in the robot­ics indus­try. With sim­u­la­tion soft­ware, an engi­neer can plan a sys­tem with the client in a vir­tu­al space, which allows the design team to work out any bugs or kinks in the design plan pri­or to fab­ri­ca­tion. Fanuc intro­duced one ver­sion of sim­u­la­tion soft­ware, the Fanuc­Works pro­gram, in 2003, and then moved on to the more mod­ern RoboGu­ide in lat­er years.

Fanuc­Works was an inno­v­a­tive pro­gram when it was released a decade ago. This three-dimen­sion­al sim­u­la­tion tool was able to help design­ers cut down on devel­op­ment and pro­gram­ming times for their robot sys­tems, accord­ing to a 2003 Fanuc press release. The Fanuc­Works pro­gram was based on the Solid­Works CAD plat­form that came before it, and was able to move a robot vir­tu­al­ly along a path to find the best tra­jec­to­ry for an appli­ca­tion, which helped to cut cycle times, as well as check­ing for pos­si­ble col­li­sion issues with oth­er machin­ery that exist in the real space.

In 2006, Fanuc intro­duced a new offline sim­u­la­tion soft­ware that seemed to be an expan­sion of the Fanuc­Works pro­gram. That soft­ware was called RoboGu­ide, and it is still in use today. RoboGu­ide has the same advan­tages as Fanuc­Works, with a more up-to-date inter­face for users. Also, RoboGu­ide has sev­er­al dif­fer­ent vari­a­tions – Han­dling­PRO, Paint­PRO, Pal­let­PRO, and Weld­ing­PRO, to name a few. This was just anoth­er step in Fanuc’s jour­ney to build and design bet­ter robot sys­tems for their customers.

These two soft­ware sys­tems are most­ly uti­lized by robot­ic inte­gra­tors like Robots​.com. Robots​.com has been in busi­ness for more than 20 years, build­ing our cus­tomers the best robot­ic sys­tems for the low­est price avail­able. We use soft­ware like Fanuc­Works and RoboGu­ide to plan and design new and used sys­tems for our cus­tomers, a prac­tice that helps to build an even bet­ter sys­tem than was pos­si­ble over a decade ago. Our staff will work with you to design the per­fect sys­tem for your facil­i­ty using all the tools avail­able to us.

For more infor­ma­tion about automat­ing with a sys­tem from Robots​.com, con­tact us online or at 877−762−6881.