I use rhino/visual mill. It works very well for me. but you need to try a few and decide what works best for you. Some manufacturers like Rhino will give you a free limited download to experiment with and see if it suits your needs.
You may want to look into cambam too. It's a completely free integrated cad/cam and is a good place to start and learn the software. Do a search for it here, it's written by 10bulls who is a regular contributor here.
The big thing though is figuring out what you want to do with it and then finding something that will fill those needs. For example, if your doing exclusively 2.5D then you don't need the full blown 3D power of something like solidworks. There is also some free linux stuff available to experiment with too.
You will ultimately also need something like Mach3 or EMC2 to run your machine (a program that interprets the g-code and translates it into step/direction signale to run your motors..
__________________
If you cut it to small you can always nail another piece on the end, but if you cut it to big... then what the hell you gonna do?
Steven |