Best program for Manufacturing

[droseman_amicus]

Hi,

This is a general question, not specific to AC, but what would be the best program to produce 3D designs which can be fed directly to a CNC program ?

Before anyone says Solidworks, my company does not have that sort of money, looking for a solution for around £1-1.5K

Thanks
Dave

[hendie]

ha ! you won't even get AutoCAD for that sort of money. I think your company needs to rethink their budget. ~ add a factor of 10 to what you have suggested then start looking around

[droseman_amicus]

I somehow suspected that, so assuming I managed to get 10-15K, then what would I be looking at?

Dave

[CromCruithne]

Either Solid Works or Inventor. Inventor would be my choice, as it's significantly easier to learn, but you pay for that ease of use. A single seat of Inventor is about $5,000.
With the right software you don't even need a 3D program. We have a company close to here that uses simple Front, Top, Right side views fed through what's called Nesting software that converts the different views to 3D co-ordinates for the CNC machine.

-Crom

[Mr T]

Aye, Inventor is the way to go.

We, the school I teach in that is, pay £125 per seat of IV and MDT. Education price.

Nick

[mdbdesign]

I don't want to be wrong (I love AutoCAD)but Mastercam

[Cad64]

Right, Mastercam is what I used, back when I worked in the machining industry. You can still use Autocad to create the drawings, save as dxf and then import that into Mastercam to create your toolpaths. It does have a pretty hefty price tag though, I believe it's something like $3,500 for the milling software and $2,500 for the turning software.