Upvote 1 Upvoted 2 Downvote 3 Downvoted 4 Comments 5 eFalegname Answered on 21 Aug, 2014 08:02 PM 1) For 'lowcost' CAD SpaceClaim () or IronCAD () not Inventor, SolidWork and company,2) For Artistic CAM Vectric Aspire () not ArtCam and company 2.1) For Technical CAD CAM TopSolid (or TopSolid Wood ) or ZW3D () not MasterCam and company 3) For free take LinuxCNC () never Mach3.This list will spare you so many headaches, trust me.For more info: Upvote 6 Upvoted 7 Downvote 0 Downvoted 1 Comments 0 Michael Mezalick Answered on 31 May, 2013 09:03 AM If you're going to purchase a program, try Aspire from Vectric.It's a CAD / CAM program ,all in one.The trial version is here. Personnally I had good experiences with mastercam but i'm sure there is some other good software around. Upvote 35 Upvoted 36 Downvote 4 Downvoted 5 Comments 2 Martin Camirand Answered on 5 Jan, 2012 12:27 PM There is no magical program to generate a cnc program, for each one I've try you have to know your way around and what you are doing to get a good results. EMC2 is great, it's free and runs under Linux. Mach3 is very good it costs USD150 and is widely used / pirated. MasterCAM is just too expensive SprutCAM is a good program and costs just USD1500, but only runs under Windows. You can try P圜AM to generate your tool path if you need a free product. Unfortunately this step is the weakest in open source programs. If you want to pay, you can use Inventor, or SolidWorks or many of the other commercial programs.
For generating your 3D model, I recommend FreeCAD as an open source product. Remember that you will need to generate a model in a CAD program (if you are working in 3D), then transform the model to G-Code using a CAM program, then use the G-Code to operate your CNC mill or lathe. Bro Answered on 10 Apr, 2013 06:46 PM The question is a bit vague. Sudhir Gill 5 Jan, 2012 08:50 AM for learning purpose.