2D software for newbe

[Musht]

Hmmmm i guess its too late for me really but i never tried 2d design...

Rick

Have to have drawn the part originally in something from MS Paint to Autodesk Inventor or within the CAM program , its a design ;-)

It`s whatever gets the job done with minimal hassle is what always matters hobby or professional use, some people will wear running between programs , some want all the workflow in one program. As long as avoid falling into the trap of thinking spending more on software will act as a magic wand...

[dudz]

With all the free versions and demo versions that are listed in the post, Vectric software is by far the easiest to pick up for me. Within 5 mins into Cut2D for the very first time, I could design a simple drawing with everything in the right place. The others I have spent maybe an hour or so on each and still not managed to come up with anything yet.

[martin54]

Have to have drawn the part originally in something from MS Paint to Autodesk Inventor or within the CAM program , its a design ;-)

It`s whatever gets the job done with minimal hassle is what always matters hobby or professional use, some people will wear running between programs , some want all the workflow in one program. As long as avoid falling into the trap of thinking spending more on software will act as a magic wand...

I do some of my design work using a program called Inspire Pro which has not been available to buy for many years & for those that know anything about the sign industry was the predecessor of Flexisign Pro. It cost about £3500 well over 10 years ago so wasn't cheap & at the time free vector programs or programs like corel weren't really geared towards the sign industry or didn't exist. It won't run on anything above a windows 98 platform but it still does everything I need it to so have never seen the need to upgrade it which would obviously cost me money plus over the years the way some things are done has changed soI would also have to learn all the changes.
For photographic type stuff I am still using Adobe CS1 which runs under windows XP pro but like Inspire still does all I need it to.
You can see from that I don't buy software just because it's the latest available lol
I already have a lot of customer artwork that I can easily convert to either a dxf, eps or ai vector file to import into a cam package so yes I could have used something like cambam to create toolpaths for any machining work that came my way. Point is as I have already said is that for me personally cut 2D looked to be the best option in terms of how easy it was to learn & although it is not free it is very reasonably priced for what it does. Doesn't mean that everyone will agree with me or that everyone will find it the easier cam package to learn, some will find cambam just as easy to pickup I'm sure.