This must be covered someplace, so feel free just to drop links.
I was reading around here a few nights ago, and I found a post of Will’s in response to someone. In the response, he laid out a list of videos, perhaps reading too, that a newbie really ought to read. Implicit in that list was a kind of sequence to approach the material. Naturally, I did not save the list. I do have Edward Ford’s intro book, and I am reading that, and I surf this site, the Wiki, and youTube, but, a plan of learning might be in order, considering the volume of info available.
If anyone knows where that list is, or where a similar one is, I am interested. Or, just some good material for a new guy to scale the learning curve.
The problem with a plan is that folks pretty quickly diverge after the basics — ideally everyone would work through http://docs.carbide3d.com/tutorials/ but folks want to jump into the deep end.
If you’d let us know what sort of work you want to do we might be better able to help.
Hi Will, thank you for the reply and information. I will check those resources out.
Short term, I would like to learn fundamental terms and concepts, tune my XL, decide and implement work holding, and install some limit switches for the X, Y, and Z. After that, I hope to learn about work flow better. I would like to decide on a decent 3D CAD program; right now I am leaning towards Fusion360, but, I have not decided. I want 3D because I hope to someday do 3D stuff, so, I I figure’d I’d focus on learning one program well. But, I may stick with Carbide Create.
Midterm, I hope to do 2.5D projects. Nothing too big. I have a decent woodworking setup, so, I would try to integrate old-school and CNC.
Long term, I would like to do some 3D pieces.
Thank you for the content of this site. I find it very useful.
Ideally everything would be there, but that’s not possible.
For 2.5D, Carbide Create with Inkscape as a front-end is surprisingly capable. Now that CC has offset features, there’s not much it can’t do w/ a little patience. I just wish we could expand the start depth feature into allowing one to cut pockets with angled or rounded or arched bottoms. A fair number of folks get Vectric Vcarve — I broke down and got it for one project which it worked well on, but haven’t used it since.
For 3D CAD, I just whack at things in OpenSCAD — I’m sure folks who actually are successful at it will be better able to advise you. Some notable things I’ve been meaning to try:
Shapr3D — assuming I finally break w/ Microsoft over their crippling of styluses since Fall Creators Update and get an iPad Pro and an Apple Pencil — this is supposed to be quite easy to use
Moment of Inspiration — originally designed for use with graphics tablets, this too is supposed to be easy to use
Solvespace — free and opensource, this is a parametric 3D CAD app which I really should take time to learn — I just wish it had compatibility with OpenSCAD — arguably I should be interested in FreeCAD, but can’t bring myself to adapt the traditional CAD interface, though I do use LibreCAD to open DXFs and save them out as MakerCAM SVGs.
Autodesk Fusion 360 is of course the 800-pound gorilla on the block — some folks are very successful with it, and there’s even some integration with it in cutrocket.com and we have a basic article on using it: http://docs.carbide3d.com/software-faq/fusion360/