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Author Topic: Educational Sources???  (Read 11785 times)

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Offline mc

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Re: Educational Sources???
« Reply #10 on: February 14, 2016, 11:23:11 AM »
I forgot about Fusion 360. It's pretty good, however I'm not risking my commercial drawings floating around in their cloud tied up in their proprietary format. I'll stick to having my own DXF/STL files floating around in my own cloud.

Gerry, any particular reason to avoid BobCAD?
It seems to tick all the boxes I'm looking for, mainly HSM toolpaths with a reasonable work flow.
Re: Educational Sources???
« Reply #11 on: February 14, 2016, 11:30:03 AM »
you cad/cam packages should be geared to what you want/hope to achieve.  
Want to do wood engravings then dont look at Visualmill, ect.

With a router and vectric products, you really cant go wrong.  I have aspire and really love the software.  powerful, lots of tutorials ect.
HSM express and fusion 360 are amazingly powerful software packages.  but they can overwhelming for somebody new that just wants get the ball rolling.  But also do not dismiss the wizards in mach3.  They can help make a part by using multiply operations.

Speeds/feeds Depth of cut ect is going to be your biggest hurdle.  G WIZARD.  Its a speeds and feeds calculator that will get you in the ballpark 90% of the time.

Welcome to the wonderful world of CNC.  Wear a hat at all times so you cannot pull your hair out.  This crap aint easy!

Offline Davek0974

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Re: Educational Sources???
« Reply #12 on: February 14, 2016, 11:30:54 AM »
Just installed Fusion360, might need a college course to fathom it out but it looks good, I do have a very serious dislike for anything to do with cloud though, can't find anything to do with CAM in it though??

Will keep looking.
Re: Educational Sources???
« Reply #13 on: February 14, 2016, 11:31:52 AM »
DO NOT GET ON BABCADS LIST!!!!!

bobcad can be talked down alot on price, but god man, they will never leave you alone!!!!!  Sales holes will call, email ect to get you to spend more money.  A friend of mine has purchased it years ago, and they still call him every week.

Offline ger21

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Re: Educational Sources???
« Reply #14 on: February 14, 2016, 11:37:23 AM »
You can export your Fusion models in a variety of formats if your paranoid.

As for BobCAD, there are 10 years of posts on various forums that are enough to scare anyone away.
To be fair, I've heard from serious users that it does offer more bang for the buck than most other CAM packages.

Their sales tactics are questionable at best. They'll sell the same package to one person for $500 and sell it to the next one for $1500. The longer you want, and can tolerate their sales calls, the cheaper you'll get it for.
I've read many posts from people that find out after their purchase that they didn't get modules that they thought were included in the price.

It's probably the least intuitive CAD/CAM package out there.

Their policy is to only provide bug fixes to customers paying for annual support. I read a lot about some serious bugs that often don't get fixed until the next version.

Just spend some time reading the forums about BobCAD complaints. You rarely see post like this about other packages, but there are hundreds of unhappy BobCAD users out there.
Gerry

2010 Screenset
http://www.thecncwoodworker.com/2010.html

JointCAM Dovetail and Box Joint software
http://www.g-forcecnc.com/jointcam.html

Offline Davek0974

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Re: Educational Sources???
« Reply #15 on: February 14, 2016, 11:54:50 AM »
Oh bum, looks like i've gone and run into another minefield :(

I think I need 2.5D, I'm ok with basic 2D and can generate 3D .stl files with an app called OpenScad which i use for the 3D printer. In reality I'm probably not too far off in terms of stuff in the brain, it just feels like I've been taken from the paddling pool and thrown into the olympic pool but I've still got my armbands on ;)

3D printing is pretty easy by comparison, it only has one tool - a fixed diameter nozzle, fixed layer height and once you get it to work, it works fine. No offsets etc - its additive so all jobs start in the centre of the bed - no workpiece :)

I guess building a multi-purpose machine means I have multiple headaches now - carving, routing, milling, etc :(

Offline mc

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Re: Educational Sources???
« Reply #16 on: February 14, 2016, 12:03:35 PM »
Thanks Gerry. I've seen the various posts, but BobCAD does seem to offer good bang for buck, and ticks the boxes I'd like.

I might have another play with Fusion 360, but last time I tried it, the export capabilities were very poor. Some parts I make have quite a bit of design time tied up in them, and I really don't want to be locked into any specific software.


Dave, everything CNC is a minefield. You've just got to pick how expensive a minefield you like to play in :-)

Offline rcaffin

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Re: Educational Sources???
« Reply #17 on: February 15, 2016, 05:23:17 AM »
It all depends on what you want to do with your machine. Really!

I use Autosketch for 2D drawings, and taught myself to write g-code. My programs are more complex and far powerful, and yet MUCH smaller, as a result. That's for semi-production machining too.

Cheers
Roger

Offline Davek0974

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Re: Educational Sources???
« Reply #18 on: February 15, 2016, 07:29:36 AM »
Well i guess I want to take a 2D cad drawing, convert to 3D then throw at the router/mill to have it hacked out of whatever.

Now I know i need a CAM stage in there somewhere to create the code.

I am way behind writing any code myself, very minor experience only and that is 2D stuff on the plasma.

I managed to find the CAM stuff in Fusion 360 so thats a start i guess :)

Offline ger21

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Re: Educational Sources???
« Reply #19 on: February 15, 2016, 07:34:21 AM »
In most cases, you don't need to convert the 2D drawing to 3D.
In 20 years of programming and running an industrial CNC router, I've only needed a 3D model about 4 times. Everything else is done with 2D drawings.
Since I just started using Fusion 360, and haven't learned the CAM part yet, I've been exporting 2D drawings from Fusion and creating my g-code from them.
Gerry

2010 Screenset
http://www.thecncwoodworker.com/2010.html

JointCAM Dovetail and Box Joint software
http://www.g-forcecnc.com/jointcam.html