Just found solidwork us available for $38 a year. Is that good software for beginner?
Thatās an incredible price. I havenāt used it in years, but itās great software.
I was certainly surprised to see that price as well, but seems they did add a āMakerā license option:
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Just a little concerned. It is online which I am OK with. But others warning they my drop support for on-line. Has a discount Tull Feb 23rd
Martha
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onshape was created by former solidworks folks and is free (with the requirement
that your work be usable by others)
$38/year is iunbelievably good, read the fine print carefully
David Lang
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If you look at getting a job doing CAD, or take a class, Solidworks is very
common. In the hobbiest space, not so much due to itās cost.
David Lang
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I downloaded fusion 360 for hobbies and trial of aalibre. My problem is tutorials do not match the versions and cannot make sense of instructions. Even with instructions and program side by side. I also have onshape but same proble. Downloaded a converter today that might help called filestar. It can convert lots of file types. Do ot looks like 3d printer software can be converted to .gcode
Martha
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I read someone whom stated soludworks is very hard to learn.
Martha
SolidWorks is a very good professionnal CAD & CAM software (I used for CAD at work).
But the āmakerā is a cheap version, seems not so good (I didnāt try myself). And it doesnāt includes CAM, only CADā¦
Onshape is good, but only CAD I think.
Fusion 360 is good and CAD + CAM, but you have to redo a āmakerā register each year to keep the free version (you lose all your cloud projets in this process, so you need to make an extraction).
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Well for a $42 after taxes i ordered solidworks. Actually got further with solidworks than i did with fusion 360. A spacer for a micro lathe i bought some time ago. Actually giving it a linger base as well using 4040. extrusion. Not a big pro lathe but if i need something quick and dirty. All cheap. One of the programs is their
professional version. Have lots to learn i have not even been able to get a bloks to work on in fusion 360. . Dis even better with alibre but 42 vs several hundred makes the effort worth it to me. Have some time since i am in group 2.
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My thoughts. Use solid works for design. Use filestar to convret file type and separate program for toolpaths. Like perhaps bobs cnc. But right now need my mind to function. Try to learn solidworks
Martha
Ops there does seem to be a problem. Youtube video says any export will have watermstk.
Martha
Iāve just paid for a licence for Alibre Atom. I found the tutorial reasonably close to the current version for me to walk through it all.
Iāve also tried OnShape and worked through several of the tutorials. No big issues with those. However, I did find the workflow for OnShape just a little clunky in a way that Alibre Atom was not.
PS. YMMV - Iāve been a professional software developer for almost 40 years, so Iām used to documentation and product not lining up and Iāve usually got a good idea of what may have moved between versions to work around any problems. So perhaps Iām not the best example for stating that some training/documentation is āuser-friendlyā
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Thank you. My mind is not what it used to be. Some days I am worthless in my mind. I have minor projects I need to do that most people would just grab a saw and cut. My arms and legs shake from tremors. Which makes cutting straight mearly impossible. Thought if I could program a cut and let machine do it for me. Almost thinking just program gcode would be easiest as mostly straight cuts. What will you use for cam software. Alibre suggested Meacham at $250 in a z edition to ALibre.
Martha
I built out a workflow using Alibre and MeshCAM in my first CNC foray with a little gantry machine back a ways (maybe 10 years?). That worked pretty well for me and I still have those licenses.
Iām tempted to look at FreeCAD this time around though. It wasnāt an option for me in the last go around. It does have 2.5D CAM built-in and seems like a viable alternative to the commercial products based on the video tutorials and documentation. I do see folks in the forums have used it for the original Maslows so it might be interesting to see what their experience has been.
Iām using ESTLCam, which is ā¬49 (or something in USD)
Iāve tried FreeCAD several times, and never got myself into the flow of it, of course YMMV
I have used LibreCAD many times, but it is classic old school CAD. Moving forward I want parametric CAD the whole way. I still have LibreCAD installed, but Iām only using it to look up old files now.
I know thereās a few workflow options that use Inkscape for doing 2D cut-outs. Including in this forum from @Orob : Generating GCODE with Inkscape instead of CAM software
That might be a good option that doesnāt have quite the lift/learning curve of CAD software.
I wrote that one before learning estlcam. Doing coreldraw (old inexpensive version) and estlcam now. Iām still on the want to learn FreeCAD though.
Iām using inkscape to Carbide Create v6 (the free version)