What software are you running for your designs

[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