Hello from Enrico

[AndrewMawson]

Hi Enrico - I too have only just joined here. You can't be far away as I'm just over the border from Kent as I'm in East Sussex - where abouts are you?

[Enrico]

Hi Andrew, nice to meet you, I am based in Tonbridge. I have seen your welcome-post ... wow! You have quite a shop!

[AndrewMawson]

Hi Andrew, nice to meet you, I am based in Tonbridge. I have seen your welcome-post ... wow! You have quite a shop!

So essentially you're just up the road then ! (My farm's on the A21)

[Enrico]

Uhmm ... yes, quite close I guess! I should pop in at some point to see your CNC machines!!

I have seen you have in mind to work with Fusion 360. It's a great piece of software (you would expect nothing less from Autodesk!). Compared to, say, SketchUp, it requires a little bit more planning when drawing. You can draw parametrically, defining variables to define specific parts of your drawing; this allows you, for example, to resize the drawing properly, not just scaling the entire thing. The CAM module is quite sophisticated (not that I have a huge experience about CAM software, anyway, but it seems to me quite detailed compared to some other programs I have seen). There are plenty of tutorials and video resources about it, and that is one other reason I chose it (apart from the price tag!).

[AndrewMawson]

Enrico, yes it would be good to meet - it's only a few miles down the road.

Fusion360: yes I'm hearing good things about it. Can't download it at the moment as it needs a 64 bit machine and all my current PCs are 32 bit. I've won a suitable base unit on ebay which I expect to be delivered next week, and the 24" monitor and SSD drive came on Friday :) - so shouldn't be too long before I'm up and running.

The CAM side versatility is a big plus to me. I need customisable Fanuc G code for the Wire EDM, Heidenhain conversational for the Partsmaster, and 'sort of' G code for the Traub lathe. The first two I've managed to customise in FeatureCAM sucessfully, but I've not attempted the Traub - mega complex having two spindles, a moving turret AND powered tooling. It has pretty good coding input 'at the machine' but it's all "mandraulic".

[Enrico]

This is part of a screenshot of the huge list of post processors available by default on Fusion. It contains a number of scripts for Fanuc and Heidenhain machines. You should be able to work on those, or even get help from Autodesk (I read somewhere that they were available to provide help on scripting).

Hope this helps!

[AndrewMawson]

Looks good to me - thanks for that. I'm not the most patient of people when it comes to waiting for goodies to arrive