# Cad Cam



## 98rangerll (Apr 15, 2015)

what's a good cad cam software that's not going to make me take out a loan that's reasonable priced and works decently any ideas mare appreciated was looking at bobcad but not sure what I think and it seams real pricey until you look at mastercam


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## dracozny (Apr 16, 2015)

Besides a budget what are you designing for, router, mill, lathe? Do you need 3, 4, 5, 6 axis? I am assuming windows OS since you mentioned BOBcad. this question has been asked before of course. I use Librecad for a number of things. if I need 3d functionality I often will go to either Freecad or Blender. Most of my cam operations I can do with heekscad/cam and I can also delve into blendercam for other things.  If the part is real simple I just write the gcode by hand forgetting all the cad/cam mess.


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## RVJimD (Apr 16, 2015)

I don't mean to go off topic here, but I am interested in the topic and dracozny's reply makes me wonder if there is a good video showing the complete process from initial design, use of the cad software, generating g code and running g the code on a mill?  I don't have a CNC mill, I may eventually conver mine.  I also do NOT use any sort of CAD software, but if I could find something as described by the original post.  I should be sure to learn a CAD package that could be used by my mill if it were converted to CNC.

Jim


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## Boswell (Apr 16, 2015)

First there are many choices all with pro's and con's. You will also find that people can get fairly passionate about the software they use. I am sure that you will get many replies by people telling you what they use. I strongly suggest that you spend some meaningful time with the forum search engine as this question comes up about once a month and so there are many threads with many more answers.

Also be sure to read the "Sticky Thread"  by Jumps4 called "CNC from sketch to part the way I do it". It, of course, is not the only way to do it but is a great introduction to the process flow needed


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## jumps4 (Apr 16, 2015)

I use Emachineshop  for cad and d2nc for cam on most of what I do on the mill
total investment including mach3 is about $250
I have 39 videos showing how I do it in a section here. the quality of the first videos are poor
but I purchased screen capture software and they get better.
http://www.hobby-machinist.com/threads/cnc-from-sketch-to-part-the-way-i-do-it.19633/

Steve

Lol , me and Boswell were typing at the same time


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## RVJimD (Apr 16, 2015)

Steve,

Thanks for the videos!  I have just started watching them!  I am going to try and get a bit more educated on the entire topic before I do anything about the "itch".  

Jim


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## Bill C. (Apr 16, 2015)

Check out YouTube for videos.  Most of the ones I have seen are demos of new CNC machines.  Don't get me wrong they are interesting and amazing but beyond me.   Just be sure the CAD program will talk to the CAM program. I use stand alone CAD ware.


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## davidh (Apr 16, 2015)

as an old fart here on the forum, i never in a million years would have dreamed i could do the cad thing.  for the past couple months i have been spending a lot of time looking at a lot of youtubes and jumps4 steve and his videos looks as simple as it could get.  thank you steve for your fine teaching.  
another interesting one was aspire by metric, if i remember right it was a tad more $$ thann i wanted to spend this go around.
yesterday afternoon i actually made a scaled drawing with various holes in it, and i was able to delete extra lines and stuff, using "emachineshop" program.   took about 3 hours of screwing around but i was right proud.  then i proceeded to draw the same thing again, using different approaches,  that took about 45 minutes.  today i will try to marry it to the cam and then to mach3.  there really is lot of things to remember, but, it seems that most of the easy programs operate about the same.  i have inkscape because it was free and have watched the english lady's tutorials on you tube until I'm starting to talk like them.  that program is very powerful in my opinion.   another tube to watch is bt mr. caleb peters.  he has a few very good ones.  and his recommendation is cut2d & easy cam so thats another one i may purchase.  my goal is to make a drawing, and get mach3 to simulate it.  then, off to the build / modification / installation of all the things i have purchased.


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## brav65 (Apr 16, 2015)

Very timely post. I am in the middle of designing a CNC router that I will build with my son this summer. He is taking some engineering classes this summer and a they will be covering robotics and prototyping as a couple of the sections. 

I am just starting to look at CAD/CAM software. I want to get something that will be useful for my son and translate into usable skill for him to use in school. I don't mind spending some money I just don't want to throw it away. My son is planning to go to Cal Tech or MIT (he is 12 but highly motivated) so this is an investment in his future.


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## Boswell (Apr 16, 2015)

Brav65, look into the education versions of Autocad and Solidworks for the CAD component. These are normally very expensive but both offer significant discounts for students and are widely used in schools. As for CAM there might be EDU discounts for the major players here as well.


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## 98rangerll (Apr 16, 2015)

I am working on a table top mill conversion 3 axis and yes windows os jumps4  videos are awesome just watched the first 2 and am working on the next already loaded up the emachine cam not as complex as master cam or auto cad but I like it so far it's simple and easy to use learning a lot from jumps4 videos strong recommend.
Side note the master cam and auto cad do have student versions but they don't give all the options you can draw they limit thru the license what you can do and can't


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## brav65 (Apr 16, 2015)

"Brav65, look into the education versions of Autocad and Solidworks for the CAD component. These are normally very expensive but both offer significant discounts for students and are widely used in schools. As for CAM there might be EDU discounts for the major players here as well."

I will reach out to the teacher who is running the summer program my son is going to attend.  Thanks for the heads up!


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## Boswell (Apr 16, 2015)

My son uses the education version of Autocad 2012 and the only thing that I can find that it does is every drawing has a watermark that is was produced by the education version.


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## 98rangerll (Apr 16, 2015)

Pennsylvania college of technology has the 2015 version there are some work around but there is no way unless you use a college PC to get the g code but that only gets me a few more weeks then no more pc to copy from and the student versions are only good while your in school you might fudge the dates a little but they check them and if the school drops you off the current list they suspend your access


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## srbh (Apr 21, 2015)

There is a new CAD program being produced by the writers of Solidworks - starting again from scratch. It is FREE, works in a browser so can be run on almost any Mac PC tablet or phone.  It is in limited beta release so is very early days. In 3 weeks I have taught myself parametric CAD and produced models of the  front wheels and axles of the 2"/foot traction engine I am building. Full version free for five or less models, pay money if you are going to design a new airliner.
Look up "OnShape".


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## Charcole (Apr 21, 2015)

Is cad/cam software absolutely needed?  A calculator, machinist handbook and some trig will allow you to do just about everything.  G-codes, well that's easy enough. Most of them are not used regularly anyways.


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## Boswell (Apr 21, 2015)

Both CAD and CAM are not absolutely needed.  They are both a way of reducing the time it takes and the mistakes made in manual work. For that mater, why use CNC at all. There is nothing that can be done on a CNC that can not be done on a manual machine. As I once saw posted here, we sent people to moon without using CNC.  However, if you want to spend your time being creative and making parts instead of doing trig and writing lines of code, then you might find that CAD (for drawing) and CAM for G-CODE development are worth the trouble to learn.

Edit: I should also add that is has a lot to do with the complexity of what you want to accomplish. I have hand coded a number of things, like drilling  a of holes or facing  a part to a specific z height. Much faster than using my CAM system to do this. But for times where there are multiple operations and complex geometry, I would rather spend my time learning how to make BobCAD generate the GCode than writing the Gcode directly.


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## Billh50 (Apr 21, 2015)

I haven't used the CAM part of my CAD/CAM software in a very long time because I don't have CNC here at home. But I use the CAD part to draw assemblies to make sure everything will fit together properly. Then I can just print each part with dimensions so I don't have to keep trying to fit things. I think if I had to generate a program for CNC it would take me a while because I forgot most of the stuff for that. I have a sketch saved of both my lathe and mill so that if I want to add or change something I don't have to keep going back and measuring everything.


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## T Bredehoft (Apr 21, 2015)

I must be old fashioned. (doesn't surprise me) 

I learned G codes back in the early 90s, I  could stand at my machine, with a print in one hand and punch in a 3D program to make the part on the print. I had a number of tools set up and had taught the machine the dimensions, speeds and feeds for each tool.  If I had a CNC machine now, that's how I'd do it. 
T1   G 0 X 0 Y 0 Z.5
G0 Z.o1 
G81 Z-.25 (center drill)
G80 
G0 z5
T2

Etc.


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## Boswell (Apr 21, 2015)

Bredenhoft, I have great respect for you and others with the skill and attention to detail to do what you describe. For me an example was when I needed to mill a circular pocket in the softjaws of my vice to hold a part for a future operation. It took me less than 5 min to draw a circle and define the parameters needed for Bobcad to generate the Gcode. I know that if I tried to do that manually, I would get my tool offsets backwards or my arc dimensions wrong and mess up the part. The other advantage is that I could use the simulator to be sure that I did not do something stupid before I actually ran the code on the mill.   

Know that I am not trying to say that doing it manualy is bad or wrong. If you can do it, go for it and save a few hundred $. The rest of us use CAM.


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## Charcole (Apr 21, 2015)

Boswell, both sides require some creativity depending on the part and experience of the user in machining. That is not a cad/cam exclusive. I do have experience with cad/cam starting in the early 90's with ez-mill and shop floor programming. My opinion is you either waste time with calculator or waste time drawing the part. It's very generalized I know but that is how I feel when I talk about it. Neither is really exciting now days.  

I do like the moon reference.  My old man started me out on a manual mill when I was young.  So much for child labor laws


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## L98fiero (Apr 21, 2015)

Boswell, you commented that 'we sent people to moon without using CNC', I honestly don't think that's the case, in the aircraft industry in particular, NC, the predecessor of CNC was widely used particularly for 'skin mills' and other complex surfaces starting in the mid 50's. Other than that, I agree, CADCAM takes a lot of the manual calculations out of programming and for complex surfaces, just simply makes them possible.


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## John Hasler (Apr 21, 2015)

L98fiero said:


> Boswell, you commented that 'we sent people to moon without using CNC', I honestly don't think that's the case, in the aircraft industry in particular, NC, the predecessor of CNC was widely used particularly for 'skin mills' and other complex surfaces starting in the mid 50's. Other than that, I agree, CADCAM takes a lot of the manual calculations out of programming and for complex surfaces, just simply makes them possible.


I recall reading about some guy who did NC the hard way when making airfoil templates for NACA in the forties.  He did all the calculations, tabulated the numbers, put a machinist on each axis of the mill, and then read off numbers to them.


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## T Bredehoft (Apr 21, 2015)

I had subroutines built for that. Spiraling in to depth, pulling out and doing it again with .003 more on the OD. That and many other routines. Ten years of running two different machines, one a vertical with a 30 by 40 in table, and a horizontal. I had a 12 by 12 angle plate mounted on the table for the horizontal, used it like a vertical.


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## Boswell (Apr 21, 2015)

Thanks for the correction on NASA and CNC. I personally did not know and only was repeating what someone else has posted once that had the "ring of truth" After all, if you read it on the internet, it must be true 

Ok, I did some research and learned a bunch about the early days of NC and then CNC. 
Wikipedia credits John T. Parsons with developing the concept of NC control using the system that John mentions above with multiple operators. He did this for Sikorsky to make rotor blades sometime around 1946. it was called "By-the-numbers method" and later used some punched cards.
In 1950 MIT took a  Cincinnati "Hydro-Tel"  mill and fitted it thre refrigerator sizzed cabinests  to control X, Y and Z.
Parsons recieved a patent for "Motor Controlled apparatus for positioning machine tool in May of 1952 and then MIT filed a patent for Numerical Control Servo-System in August of 1952

So it seems clear that NASA would have had access to CNC type machines for the Apollo program but it is not clear how much they were used.
The Wikipedia article is quite interesting
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_numerical_control


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## dracozny (Apr 22, 2015)

Manually running a CNC machine can be very exciting when you forget a decimal place, a negative(dash), or forget to g80 that drilling or boring cycle.....


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