What software do you use?

[gava]

Hi,

Starting a CNC build just wanting to know what the best software people use? from design to cut.

Will be using a TinyG board..

Cheers
Gavin

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[LEARN]

Hi,

Starting a CNC build just wanting to know what the best software people use? from design to cut.

Will be using a TinyG board..

Cheers
Gavin

I use Mastercam to design and powermill for cutting

[RonnyM82]

Hey Gavin,

Autodesk Fusion 360 is free for makers to use, it includes full CAD / CAM capabilities, 3-axis & 3+2 toolpathing is supported. Turning will be available in a few months as well. Plus it will work on a Mac if that tickles you fancy. Oh & loads of posts... as well as free post development for all but the weirdest and most complicated machines.

[FFord66]

Bobcad is the one I chose and do not regret the purchase. Very well priced specially as it is cad and cam. No the cad is not the best but once learnt is adequate. Being self taught in both cad/cam and not having tried more expensive programmes I find it out performs my ability. I have a Rong Fu cnc mill with a Syntec controller not a hobby machine.
Bobcad does from time to time receive what I think is unfair criticism.

[KOC62]

Hey Gavin,

Autodesk Fusion 360 is free for makers to use, it includes full CAD / CAM capabilities, 3-axis & 3+2 toolpathing is supported....

Will this product only work while on-line?

[RonnyM82]

It's a hybrid desktop / cloud product. So it needs to connect to sync files to the cloud & check licensing etc every 30 days I believe.. You need an internet connection to get it up & running, but then there is an offline mode, so you don't have to be connected to the internet to model parts, toolpath them & generate code. All the posts are open, so you can get in there and hack away at the javascript to your hearts content.

Oh btw Gavin, there is a TinyG post processor available already. & KOC62 what control do you want to drive? I can look to see if there is a generic post for you to use already.

[RonnyM82]

Bobcad is the one I chose and do not regret the purchase. Very well priced specially as it is cad and cam. No the cad is not the best but once learnt is adequate. Being self taught in both cad/cam and not having tried more expensive programmes I find it out performs my ability. I have a Rong Fu cnc mill with a Syntec controller not a hobby machine.
Bobcad does from time to time receive what I think is unfair criticism.

Just curious if you have tried CAM for Fusion 360 yet?

[KOC62]

.... & KOC62 what control do you want to drive? I can look to see if there is a generic post for you to use already.

I'm looking for a stand-alone product to do the CAD side as I have MeshCAM 4 to do the g-code output.
Contemplating FreeCAD.

[daniellyall]

fusion 360 is a very powerful cad/cam product it has all the fancy new cutting stuff in it

[RonnyM82]

Well you can still use Fusion 360 as Standalone CAD. I'm not sure what you want to model, but T-Splines in Fusion 360 are epic. Check out the Fusion 360 Gallery for some of the stuff people are modelling with it. It's well supported, has a great community and active forums.

[pippin88]

I've tried Fusion 360 over the past few days. Seems like a good product, and it's amazing that a fully featured CAD/CAM system is available free to hobbyists.

The easy to use parameters are a nice feature (I've always found Solidworks equations a bit buried and fiddly.)
However, there are two things that I struggled with and have turned me off for the present.
1) I couldn't for the life of me work out how to break / remove some coincident constraints. This is a deal breaker for decent CAD. I could remove horizontal, perpendicular etc, but could not find a way to break a coincident constraint when I'd sketched a rectangle up to a line.
2) There doesn't seem to be a nice way of making a sketch in to a component. I'm used to the solidworks way with parts that contain features and sketches.

[RonnyM82]

1) I couldn't for the life of me work out how to break / remove some coincident constraints. This is a deal breaker for decent CAD. I could remove horizontal, perpendicular etc, but could not find a way to break a coincident constraint when I'd sketched a rectangle up to a line.

You can delete coincident constraints as per the workflow shown in this video:

2) There doesn't seem to be a nice way of making a sketch in to a component. I'm used to the solidworks way with parts that contain features and sketches.

I'm not quite sure what you mean here. As soon as I extrude from a sketch, it creates a feature and a body, in the same way it does in Inventor & Solidworks. Did you notice the timeline at the bottom? That's where all your features are when you are modelling with History turned on.

Refer to attachment 2015-05-17_9-45-05.jpg

I would have added images into my reply, but when I select a file from 'My Computer' there is no OK button on the dialog. The URL option kept telling me its an invalid image.

[Stewey]

Enroute suits me.
I do do a fair bit of editing and file creation in Corel Draw though, then export as AI and import that into Enroute.

[peaceandcalm]

I use Gibbscam for machining and light editing of models, and mainly solidworks for complicated 3d solid creation.

[RonnyM82]

I use Gibbscam for machining and light editing of models, and mainly solidworks for complicated 3d solid creation.

Have you tried HSMXpress for Solidworks? It's free.

[peaceandcalm]

Have you tried HSMXpress for Solidworks? It's free.

from my experiance all free product are very light and will not do a very high and complicated 4-5 axis machining..
but no i havent tried HSM products.

[RonnyM82]

from my experiance all free product are very light and will not do a very high and complicated 4-5 axis machining..
but no i havent tried HSM products.

HSMXpress is 2.5 axis, with some 3 axis strategies. You will be surprised what you can achieve with the high quality 2.5 axis toolpaths. Adaptive Clearing is a massive money maker for any shop removing material. It's remarkable how many shops only need 2.5-axis CAM, especially if they are just getting started with CAM.

Of course, with 4-5 axis machining free products your expectations are low, that's logical. However, the licensing model for Fusion 360 changes that. Free CAD / CAM, with positional multi-axis already in the product & simultaneous multi-axis, as well as turning on the way. All that is free for Students, Teachers, Schools, Colleges, Universities and hobbyists. As well as startups with sub US$100k in revenue per year. Outside of that commercial licensing applies. F360 uses the same CAM kernel as Inventor HSM & HSMWorks for Solidworks.

[EXLASer]

We use ArtCAM,JD for 3 axis CNC mainly, if 4-5 axis,we use UG/powermill.

Mary