What software are you running for your designs

[Mattia]

I’m using Fusion 360 because I’m doing this as a hobby and the price can’t be beat, and there is a broad user base. My focus is guitars and associated tools/jigs, for which the parametric modeling is working quite well for me - design it right and just tweak a few numbers in the parameter table for a customized model.


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[Ollie78]

I use Fusion 360 for furniture design type stuff, they have nerfed it a bit for the hobby licence, I am in a constant state of almost buying a licence for a year but can`t bring myself to do it because I dislike its subscription method and I worry they will remove functions and then make you buy them as plugins etc.

I use Vcarve for artistic stuff, engravings and inlays etc, I like the very simple (compared to fusion ) cam setup. It is worth its money after a few projects and the learning curve is pretty quick once you make a few things, you own it once you bought it but can upgrade versions as they improve it very cheaply if you want to, but you don`t have to.
Great for just quickly cutting templates or simple shapes as well.

Tried freecad but just couldn`t get into it, not sure why exactly, not intuitive to me for some reason.

A couple not mentioned are Alibre atom which I tried the demo of and quite liked, I would have liked it more if I wasn`t used to fusion I think.
Its pretty cheap and they do another version called Alibre workshop which comes with Meshcam, a bargain at £390 for a perpetual licence ( same as 1 year of fusion 360 ).

Also Carveco is one I looked at which is basically ArtCam rebranded they do 3 levels of capability I was looking at the maker plus which is the middle one, you can go monthly $50, annual at $600, or perpetual licence at $1200 which is not bad overall. The full fat version of carveco is $8000.

I don`t really dare look at solidworks and stuff like that as there is no way I can afford it and I might like it !

If you are going to do any 3d modelling I would seriously suggest buying a 3d connexions spacemouse, bloody brilliant thing, worth every penny, however it doesn`t work in vectric which is incredibly annoying once you are used to using it in fusion and you switch programmes.

Ollie

[reefy86]

what do people put as their machine in fusion 360 if its a diy made one? getting the hang of it and its nice to play with the simulation to get a feel of it rather then testing on the machine which i don't have yet. ill probably be importing a lot of stuff as a stl file because i make my designs else where but so far fusion 360 seems to be easy enough to use

[Ollie78]

what do people put as their machine in fusion 360 if its a diy made one? getting the hang of it and its nice to play with the simulation to get a feel of it rather then testing on the machine which i don't have yet. ill probably be importing a lot of stuff as a stl file because i make my designs else where but so far fusion 360 seems to be easy enough to use

You should be able to find the correct post processor here.

https://cam.autodesk.com/hsmposts

Search for your machine or control software and download the correct one.

For example I use the CNC Drive post because I have UCCNC on a diy style machine.

Ollie

[reefy86]

You should be able to find the correct post processor here.

https://cam.autodesk.com/hsmposts

Search for your machine or control software and download the correct one.

For example I use the CNC Drive post because I have UCCNC on a diy style machine.

Ollie

Thank you :)

[Neale]

what do people put as their machine in fusion 360 if its a diy made one? getting the hang of it and its nice to play with the simulation to get a feel of it rather then testing on the machine which i don't have yet. ill probably be importing a lot of stuff as a stl file because i make my designs else where but so far fusion 360 seems to be easy enough to use

You can define your own machine anyway. Not that it seems to make a whole lot of difference in most cases. I used to just ignore this setting and did my toolpath generation with no machine specified.

You can also specify the default post-processor, and also the most valuable thing that I have found - the default Z "Home" position. I don't think that that matters too much with Mach3 as you can define the tool-change position as part of the G28-related parameters, but UCCNC does not handle G28 the same way and you need this to be set up. In fact, I think that this was the driver for me actually setting up a machine definition in the first place as I changed motion controllers in my mill and went from Mach3 to UCCNC. Had a lot of problems with tool-change height and similar until I discovered this.