best software

Hi guys just wondering if anyone can put me in the right diretion, ive just set up my router and i am in the furniture business need a little help tryin to pick a cad cam package any sugestions.

thanks Kev.

Kev,

What can i say, try as many demo's as you can then make your choice from what works for you. Some Cad/Cams considered easy i found hard.

If your only interested in routing then you should have more choice available to you.

Phil

Hi Phil,

Thanks there is just so many to pick from and so far they are not what you would call giving them away. They are pricy and i want to get the one that will fit the job for some time to come.

At a guess I think cambam would do what you want:

http://www.cambam.info/

I use it quite a lot.

ok no prob ill give a look into that.

I have been using Rhino 3d for cad and then enroute for the cam, we have been running this setup on a Multicam 3mx2m router for some
years with no problems.

Hi Kev,

Try taking a look at Delcam's Artcam program, it's designed for people just like yourself, its easy to learn and its modular so you will only ever pay for the parts of the program you actually use.

Their practically giving it away at the moment at £99! pretty amazing when you consider that its a high quality program from the worlds largest CAM developer!

http://www.artcamexpress.com/

Have a look at the vectric "vcarve" offerings, vcarve pro is an excellent CAD/CAM package, very easy to use, well designed and powerful. They do a free demo you can try with the machine and while you can only cut their supplied projects, you can use the demo to do a bit of design and see how easy (or difficult) it is to do what you want. It is quite expensive (and aspire for full 3d is even more so) but I'm a tight Scottish git and I've never regretted buying it.

Personally I do not think it's worth buying any of these when there's CNC-Toolkit which is free and does (at least) 5 axis. Granted it's not as easy to use, but surely the ability to control exactly what it does, and the financial saving, is worth the extra time it takes to learn how to use it.

Has anyone else on the forum tried CNC-Toolkit out of interest?

Hi Jonathan

I have the CNC-Toolkit, played around with it a bit but lost interest because of the time needed to get to grips with it.

But as you say if you have the time to spend getting your head round it, then it can do most of the stuff the above mentioned packages can do.

Andy

If you are interested there is a CAM extension to Inkscape which works nicely but does have a learning curve much like that of CNC-Toolkit. Personally I am looking to migrate to Aspire or their Vcarve/3D carve package as the system i am currently using costs me about 3hrs edit time for any serious g-code set up (that gets very expensive fast when this makes products I sell). I understand the cost issue very very well and will say that saving the money and getting a good system is worth it. If you want to start with CNC-Toolkit or Inkscape with the CAM extension that might tide you over till you can afford a better system.

Best of Luck.

Michael