Hey guys - can someone tell me if the software is the same with both cnc machines, as I have no cnc experience. I’m coming from an animation background and use adobe AI a lot. Can this be used with either one of them? Thank you for your time.
The Shapeoko series (3, XL, and XXL) allow one to use Carbide Create and Carbide Motion.
The Nomad allows CC and CM and further bundles a license for MeshCAM, a 3D CAM program intended for use with the Nomad — one can purchase a license for it and use it with the Shapeoko if desired.
Carbide Create (and I believe MeshCAM as well) will open/import SVG or DXF images — you can easily do a design in Adobe Illustrator, save as a .svg, then assign path operations using Carbide Create.
Please note that Carbide Create is a very simplistic app in terms of drawing (you’re far better off drawing in AI) — but it also wants an optimized vector representation:
- path directions must be correct (left-hand fill rule)
- no stacking paths
- if possible, avoid overlapping / intersecting paths — join / union / difference them before import
Basically, view the file in outline mode before saving as a .svg and ensure that what you see there reflects the paths which you would want the machine to take.
You can play around w/ Carbide Create w/o a machine, please see: http://www.shapeoko.com/wiki/index.php/Carbide_Create and http://carbide3d.com/carbidecreate/userguide — be sure to sign up for the beta at http://carbide3d.com/carbidecreate/download before downloading at http://carbide3d.com/downloads/
Thank you will I just wanted to make sure I’d be able to use shapeoko 3 xl with my designs from AI .
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