# CAD CAM Recommendations



## freeidaho (Jan 21, 2014)

Howdy,
First I apologize if this has already been beat to death.  I'm new here, and I searched for CAD and CAD/CAM and got no hits at all.  I started jumps4 sticky thread, and I love it as far as I have gotten so far.  Thank you.  

What do y'all recommend for CAD system, and then to convert drawings to G-Code?

What does 2.5D mean?  Why not 3D?

Thank you for your replies!

kr


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## Ray C (Jan 21, 2014)

Everyone has their preferences about CAD programs but, I happen to like a product made by Geomagic (formerly Alibre).  It is strikingly similar to SolidWorks and is a fraction of the cost.  There is a very good and useful hobbyist version which cost about $200.  I have the professional version which is about 6x the cost but, it allows BOM creation, sheet metal, 2D drawings and import/export capability with most of the common CAD formats.  If you don't need those things, the hobbyist version is great.  Once you learn this package, it's fairly easy to learn SolidWorks -and that is one of the "big name" CAD packages out there worth mentioning on your resume.

2.5 D...  In a nutshell, it means milling only in the X and Y directions with very limited ability to any cutting in the Z direction.  Basically, all you can do in the Z direction is plunge to a particular depth then, make cuts in the X and Y directions.  Full 3D will allow making contours with ramped slopes etc.  4D means you're adding a rotational axis and 5D means you have two axis of rotation in addition to x, y and z.

As far as converting to G-code...  That would be a CAM package -which typically cost as much (usually more) than a good CAD program.  The best one out there is the one you can afford and does what you need it to do.  Please look for the posts by "Jumps4" who has done a fantastic job of showing a lot of instructional materials about CAD/CAM work using programs that are very, very inexpensive.

Ray




freeidaho said:


> Howdy,
> First I apologize if this has already been beat to death.  I'm new here, and I searched for CAD and CAD/CAM and got no hits at all.  I started jump's sticky thread, and I love it as far as I have gotten so far.  Thank you.
> 
> What do y'all recommend for CAD system, and then to convert drawings to G-Code?
> ...


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## freeidaho (Jan 21, 2014)

Ray,
Thank you.  Just found Geomagic Pro download for $900 and academia price of $170.  I will look into it further.

kr


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## awander (Jan 22, 2014)

Depends on what you want to do. I use AutoCAD(I have it on my work machine) for CAD and SheetCAM for 2.5D CAM.

You can get a free AutoCAD clone called DraftSight, which works well. SheetCAM costs about $180.


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## freeidaho (Jan 22, 2014)

Andy,
Thank you.  We have AutoCad at work, but more work is done in NX.  I am good with neither.

Thanks again,

kr


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## awander (Jan 22, 2014)

Hi kr:

Are you good at any CAD software? If not, you will have to learn it, no matter which software you eventually choose.


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## freeidaho (Jan 24, 2014)

Andy,
I have been doing CAD since early AutoCad that came on a dozen floppies.  So I don't have too big a learning curve to overcome, but some.

Another question pops to mind.  Does anyone use SketchUp for 3D CAD, and can one get G-codes from drawings there?

Thanks all,

kr


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## CNC Dude (Jan 24, 2014)

I use Autodesk Inventor and before buying all I knew is that I knew nothing. I had never done CAD in my life, so I had to buy one of those Bible sized books and read it chapter by chapter for weeks. I used to get up at 2:00 AM and do ALL the exercises for two to three hours before heading to work. Today I can do most of what I can envision.

On any CAD program, what you are making is a 3D model. This 3D model is kind of useless for the great majority of CAM software packages out there. What you need is to export it as a CAD Format file which the CAM SW can use. I use IGES file(IGS extension) because that is what I heard most people were using. I think you can also use STEP (STP extension) files, although I think those are mostly used on 3D printers. Or is that STL? Your CAM SW will tell you which CAD format files it accept. I have found the "cheapo" CAD SW's will not handle some of the formats the CAM SW needs. For example, to get IGS output you will need to invest a little bit more than free or $100. Now, that was the case a few years ago, so I could be mistaken today.

Forget about which CAM SW is good. They are all BAD (or at least nasty!) and super hard to understand! What you can buy is less-bad (i.e. more expensive).

The problem is this notion that a CNC machine can magically cut whatever profile you feed it, by pressing a START button. ERR! Far from it! You will actually have to choose which process to use when making your part. Some processes are fairly easy, and the SW's do a good job at extracting information from the mode. Still, you will need to choose cutters, all sorts of speeds and rates, depth of cuts, algorithms, etc. This is yet another learning curve you will not be able to escape from.

With my Tormach Mill I purchased Sprutcam which is pretty powerful, but I need to have hair surgically inserted every now and then, whenever I use it, so that I have something to pull! No such thing as counterintuitive...

For my plasma cutter I use sheetcam. This is only 2D and a plasma, so the level of complexity is way, WAAAAAAAAAAAY, lower. Actually Sheetcam was SuperDuper easy to learn!

There are some simpler CAM SW's out there that let you take a picture and generate a 3D path to cut it in a router. These are simpler pieces of SW, but there is no way you can think of this suite as the tool to use when building convoluted parts. This is mostly for artsy stuff.

BTW, CAM SW can be subdivided into machining CAM and artsy CAM. You would use the machining CAM to make an actual part that needs to mesh in a sub assembly, whereas the Artsy CAM is for cool stuff you may want to build which is not necessarily meant to be part of an assembly generated by a mechanical engineer. And there are SW's which may be able to dabble on both fields, but for the most part they are really good for one or the other.

Products you can check out:

http://www.vectric.com/products/compare.html
http://bobcad.com/
http://www.sheetcam.com/
http://www.alibre.com/
http://rhinocam.com/index.shtml
http://www.rhino3d.com/
http://www.artcam.com/
http://www.sprutcam.com/
http://www.mastercam.com/

BTW, some of those are preposterously expensive and only plausible if you have a real machine shop or an engineering firm.

CNC is upper exciting and the stuff you can make with it is not only fascinating, but also mind blowing! However, we haven't gotten to the point where you can load a file and press START with an intelligent computer doing all the stuff in between.


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## freeidaho (Jan 25, 2014)

Does anyone use SketchUp for 3D CAD, and is their CAM support to generate g-codes?

Thank you,

Ken Reed


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## David Kirtley (Jan 25, 2014)

I use sketchup.  I like it a lot.  First of all, it is "kind of like CAD" but not really. Without getting into the details, it is missing some of the features of a high quality 3D CAD systems. NURBS and such. Makes it hard to do some types of surfaces directly.  It is also a bit funky on having leaks where some points get off in really high precision intersections due to rounding errors. You also have to do some odd things to get fillets and radius on parts.

Don't let that scare you off though. It is an awesome program. As far as CAM, there is Phlatscript that the guys over at Phlatboyz.com developed to do their foam airplanes. It is a bit odd but apparently works pretty well for 2D and some 2.5D stuff.

The real meat is that with the latest version, they have included a native STL export that most CAM programs handle well. If you get the pro version, it will export DXF. There are some DXF exporters for the older versions from third parties.

The only times I have used it for creating 3D stuff for CAM was for a 3D printer and it worked quite well.


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## freeidaho (Jan 26, 2014)

Thank you David.

kr


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## Ray C (Feb 16, 2014)

Hi folks...

I was just chatting with a fellow member and we got on the topic of Geomagic/Alibre CAD.  We discovered they have all their tutorials on YouTube.  In case you're interested, here they are:   http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvpFHPSB33Eegf8Rm4sHMA26ujGeBewv-

There's about 170 tutorials...

If anyone wants to get a taste of CAD, here's a good way to check it out...


Ray


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## 09kevin (Feb 27, 2014)

If you are planning on buying the 4[SUP]th[/SUP] axis with the Tormach or if you think you might upgrade at a later date you will need CAM software that supports 4-axis. I use SprutCAM for programing my PCNC770 with the 4[SUP]th[/SUP] axis.

Kevin


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