Interested to hear the opinions of forum numbers on punchCAD. Seems far less intimidating than fusion 360
Haha, I think anything would be less intimidating to learn then Fusion360.
Never heard of PunchCAD til your post. Quick look, it appears to be a $$ product?
I’ll continue to slog up the hill in F360, at least it doesn’t cost me anything.
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Have you tried it? Is there a way to try it?
About halfway down the page
https://www.punchcad.com/punch-viacad-pro-v11-download-windows
Videos look alright, it seems aimed more at the hobbyists, which suits the general CNC’er. I can see 3D printing capability but not any CAM options, does anyone know if it has that feature?
On face value it looks like Fusion360 offers more traditional CAD features, aswell as the HSMworks CAM which is very powerful. I like that it looks a bit simpler and probably has an easier learning curve than F360, and offers a lot of woodworking type features
The killer for me is no CAM and the $499 pricetag, I will likely try the demo for interests sake though
PunchCAD offers ViaCAD 2D/3D for $149. I was hoping that I might be able to do my 3-D design work in ViaCAD and an open source CAM to create machine paths.
If you want traditional CAD, just get DraftSight: https://wiki.shapeoko.com/index.php/Commercial_Software#2D_CAD
If you’d let us know what sort of work you’d like to do and how you’d like to approach it and your budget and whether or no opensource is import we could possibly advise better.
I’ve got viacad 3d. I’ve even updated several times. I used it to draft a couple clocks. I switched to fusion360. Fusion360’s method of “sketch then extrude” (once you understand) is so much easier to use. Fusion360 also has built in cam, which is a huge differentiator.
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