Using Obj. and stl. files

[zymon]

There are a variety of CAM programs that work fine with mesh models.

Assume one is MeshCam. Could you mention a few others as I need to decide which will be best for me.

Cheers

Zymon

[Ger21]

DeskProto
Cut3D
V-Carve Pro (limited)
Aspire
CamBam

[zymon]

Thanks for your feedack - Ger21

Deskproto has Student licence with is good.

Found this comparison of the above, which was good for me. https://www.cnczone.com/forums/uncat...mastercam.html


Cheers,

Zymon

[Ger21]

I've always been a big fan of MeshCAM since the first beta.
However, a few years ago, the developer formed Carbide 3D, and since then, development of MeshCAM has slowed to a crawl.

But it is still being developed. The current version of MeshCAM 7 was released about 4 months ago. But in it's current state, I prefer version 6.

If I ever get a machine running with a rotary axis, I'll probably invest in a copy of DeskProto.

[zymon]

If I ever get a machine running with a rotary axis, I'll probably invest in a copy of DeskProto.

Is Deskproto mainly for rotary axis. I am only using a flat bed CNC.

Simon

[Ger21]

No, but it has a lot more rotary axis features than anything else.

[Neale]

I'm not quite sure if you want to convert your STL files to a 3D CAD format, so that your machine operator can then run it through his favourite CAM package, or whether you want to do the CAM yourself. I have used Fusion 360 to do the latter (and it's free if you are a student). Converting to a standard 3D file format is always going to be a little more difficult as it's not really a logical thing to do in most cases as straight to CAM/gcode makes more sense - but you need to know machine parameters like cutting speeds, cutter sizes, etc, to do it properly.

[zymon]

How would MesCAM/Deskproto compare with BobCAD? Especially the new version.

I had a look at the previous version of BobCAD and found it looked rather complicated. Can it do more than the other 2?

Zymon

[Ger21]

Run away from BobCAD as fast as you can, and don't look back.