Thanls guys, at the moment I'm going to work with Mach and the machine, and continue to check out the programs that have been suggested.  I have found a couple of freebies and am looking at them to.  By the the time I am ready to buy something I hope to know better what I really need. I had watched a tutorial on Gcode before and will study it more, like anything else I do I like to know why and how it works, its not good enough to just know it works.
         Jay



 

 Hi Jay,
 Sorry to hear you got laid off from work.
 Iam not sure if it has already been asked,but what type of machine is it that you have set up and what is it that you want to make with your machine?
 I have set my little Proxxon MF70 up for making really small R/C helicopter parts and now I have been making and selling the parts to people around the world from a helicopter forum.
 Don't get me wrong,Iam not making a fortune,but after about 2 months now. I have made enough money to cover the price of Mach3 and Cut2d.
 It has taken a lot of time and patience,but if you intend on making something where you can sell for a few dollars,It might be another way to help with the costs involved.
 I see every hour at the machine is an investment in experience too.
All the best.
Regards Jason

I have been checking out Synergy and it seems to be working quite well for Turn. It is certainly not the easiest or most intuitive to learn and the tutorial runthoughs are not great as there is no sound but after a while you start to pick things up.
 The price of it is reportedly $89 and it covers milling and turning plus CAD, certainly worth a look.
Hood

The Hobbiest price for Weber's "Synergy" is $89.95 and the trial period is 30 days. The 3D cam jumps to $1250.
Like all software there is a learning curve and i didn't find it too intuitive.The software is not restrictive in the sense that it's automated and and you can't do something. Talking to Weber, they made it just the opposite in that it's configurable and meant to be used however you want to use it. Lots of buttons, pulldowns which would be expected, because you got CAD, Mill, and lathe all wrapped up into one package. I just fooled with it for the lathe
and it actualy allows you choice, but, trying to figure out the logic will take some time. If you never fooled with other
software before and have no feel for what to look for you may be at a total loss.  If you try it, watch "carefully" the few tutorial videos  and try to get the logic of how the program works paying particular attention to screen prompts etc. I need to play with it more, but for the price and what you get, it may be worth some time to see if it's right for you.
To make software easy to use, restrictions and decisions are made for you, and you live them......on the other hand, if it's not restrictive, then you need to take care of all the details in order to use it.
Just my first impression of Synergy,
RICH
 

Where can we download the trial version and the tutorial videos of synergy?

Thanks,
Dave

http://www.webersys.com/

there are pdf there as well but only looked at the lathe one and as far as changing the default tools the description is not accurate.
The tutorials are in the programme itself.
Hood

Thank you, sir-

Dave

Ok, well I've never had an issue with unzipping a file before in my 10 years of using a PC and I've tried Windows, WINZIP, and PKZIP unzippers and none of these are opening the synergy zip file.

May I ask what you are all using?

Thanks,
Dave

its self extracting, just doubleclick it
Hood

Also once installed reboot, I had a lot of crashing issues at first and was about to give it up as a bad joke, decided to uninstall and reinstall then reboot and its been fine since. One thing though is dont try any of  the other options from the Start, All Programmes, weber systems. They dont seem to work for me anyway.
Hood