CAD / CAM software?

[russisloud]

i picked up a small cnc mill last week and i'm new to running anything cnc. i'm looking for some CAD / CAM software to use and i'm not sure whats good to use. the computer has Deskcnc on it, but nothing else.

any help would be great :confused:

[Heavy Metal]

Russ - I do all my work w/ RhinoCAD and VisualMill. I got a great deal on these a couple years back , (I DO NOT have $1600 sunk in to my software). Rhino was a "student" edition for $200 when I was working on finishing my B.S. and VM was a sale they were running but was still like $499. It's working out pretty good but haven't seen VM that low since.

I work with just VisualMill a lot of times since it is both CAD and CAM. Rhino is best for the tricky 3D solid modeling stuff.

Lot of guys use BobCad. Strange company...once they get your contact info they hound you like used car salesman which scared me off...but again...seems like a LOT of guys using it so must be OK and is CAD & CAM and can be had cheap.

Good luck and let us know what you go with and how it works out.

Joe

[russisloud]

ended up picking up a copy of turbo cad with the cam plugin. hoping everything works out with it. it looked like a good program.

[Car5858]

Missed this thread, http://www.cambam.info/ this had a good price going for it but I decided on Camsoft 3000, this way I can upgrade to a controler pretty easy.

How is that turbocad working out?

[russisloud]

its working out, there is alot you can do with it. i'd be doing alot better if i started reading the book with it.... i have a trial copy of cambam too, its very easy to use

[Car5858]

Cool, I am still workong with the toturials AS 3000.