Shapeoko / SolidWorks?

CNC Machines Shapeoko
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Or see:

http://www.restrictedayerspace.net/cnc/grbl-postprocessor-for-solidworks/

EDIT:

or:

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@WillAdams I’ll do you one better:

1 Like
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For a couple of years I actually paid for the commercial license of Fusion 360 just for the free HSM Works CAM that it bizarrely comes with for some reason. It’s genuinely decent!

If you can still find it, the 2019 version of HSMExpress actually comes with an Autodesk-branded version of CIMCO Edit that doesn’t need to be initialized to run. So it’s perfect for a beater shop laptop that you dripfeed or load programs into the control with, and it doesn’t need Solidworks loaded too.

Obviously that doesn’t apply to Carbide Motion.

Either way, Solidworks CAM has come a long way recently and it might be worth using, especially since Solidworks for Makers is coming any day now.

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I gave SolidWorks a healthy try. My thoughts:

  • Don’t bother with the Maker version. It looks like it’s going to cost about $100/year. You can get an EAA yearly membership for $40 and it comes with the full educational version of SolidWorks.
  • HSMWorks is ok for CAM but it’s missing tons of little things compared to Fusion or Inventor, such as tabs.
  • Of all the CAM solutions available for SolidWorks, I found the stock one to work best, with a bit of finagling.
2 Likes
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@Moded1952 I agree with just about everything you said. EAA is a no-brainer, but I reserve judgment on Solidworks for Makers until its official release. I have been testing 3DExperience Solidworks (AKA Solidworks Connected) for just under a year and it definitely has some issues. For now, I prefer old-fashioned offline Solidworks and thankfully the VAR provided me a seat because of some technical problems my workstation had with the license.

I am not sure that Solidworks for Makers will come with CAM, since Solidworks Connected doesn’t seem to. That’s probably a good reason not to give up on HSMWorks just yet.

In terms of modeling features, there is no contest - especially if you use configurations.

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I tried this and a couple of other post processors for SolidWorks CAM and kept getting issues - like not being able to run correctly (generating the G2 P2 command that the C3D couldn’t run) or crashing (one of them did a g0 z-2 into the bed at the beginning of the gcode). I eventually just wrote one and rebuilt it.

Here is the link to it on GitHub

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Right on! Just curious - does 3DESfM come with Camworks, or do you have a separate commercial license for it? I thought 3DESfM’s CAM solution was stripped down Delmia in a browser, like this but less-featured: 3DEXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS Tutorial Part 12: CAM Programmer

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