Help?

[Fr33nzy]

Hello everybody,

Im Andrei and in 24
I just started playing around with CNC's(just bought a small engraving cnc), CAD, CAM and all that jazz
I started using TopSolid for CAD and its fairly difficult especially for me, a noob that never touched something like this before.
From what i understood its extremely advanced and highly capable, the problem is that i dont see many people using it, therefore not many video tutorials or anything else, i was wondering if anybody knows why is that? Why very few people use this program that i see as a very good one.

Also please leave suggestions for other programs that would be fine to try out, preferably programs with lots of online tutorials.

Thank you.

[ger21]

From what i understood its extremely advanced and highly capable, the problem is that i dont see many people using it, therefore not many video tutorials or anything else, i was wondering if anybody knows why is that?

It costs $20,000.
I know of another shop near ours that use it, and have over $50,000 invested in it.

[Fr33nzy]

Yeah but why its not used? I mean, most of the time when i hear of CAD i hear Solidworks, AutoCAD etc.
Think price might be a factor?

[ger21]

Yes, price is a very big factor. I wouldn't expect to see it in any woodworking shops making less than 5 million $/year.

[Fr33nzy]

But do you think it would be a valuable thing knowing how to use the program to its full capacity? Id expect that not many people know to use it.
Also what do you think about inventor from Autodesk?

[TDHofstetter]

It's highly unlikely that anyone will ever use any of these topheavy programs "to their full capacity". Each customer will use only the subset of functionality that pertains to their work, leaving the vast majority of that functionality lying dormant. None of us needs every feature in any of our software (unless we're using exceptionally simple software).