Hi all,
New to the community, considering a Carbide 3D machine.
Is there a CAM software product that is most familiar to the customer support team or most frequently used by owners? Or maybe most commonly found to work without glitches with the Carbide 3D machines? Is CAM software included with the machine?
Figured I’d ask before I go out and try to sort through all of the options from scratch.
Thanks,
Bart
In case it matters, I’m currently using Autocad with an iMac for 2D drafting but would likely run a machine from a Win10 laptop.
I’ve found this wiki page and am starting to go through it now.
https://wiki.shapeoko.com/index.php/CAM
Carbide 3D provides Carbide Create software for CAM, for free, and this is what many people here use (at least initially). Check it out:
We pretty much want folks to at least start with Carbide Create (MeshCAM is of course used for Nomads as well).
Which CAD/CAM tool you use depends on what sort of projects you wish to do and how you wish to approach them — but pretty much anything can be made to work (witness my first project on my SO3, I used Macromedia Freehand to draw it up, Inkscape to convert it to SVG, FontForge to make the V carving elements into a font, F-Engrave to make V carving toolpaths, and MakerCAM to make the outline and hole toolpaths) — if you could let us know the specifics we’ll gladly try to help you.
Can Carbide Create also convert an Acad generated DXF into g-code?
I’ll initially be doing 2D cutting of aircraft grade 1/16" to 1/4" plywood and balsa for different aircraft related projects.
Thanks for the quick replies!
Bart
it’s a little picky about the exact version of DXF format…
(and make sure the scaling is right)
Yes, AutoCAD DXFs should work (there was a request for files using that program a while back).
As @fenrus noted, scale is usually the biggest issue — I like to put a rectangle of known dimension around the project when exporting, then check the dimensions on import.
If you have any difficulties with files, please send them in to us at support@carbide3d.com and we’ll do our best to work through them with you.
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