Hi everyone. I am trying to find the best software for designing on onefinity machines. i have had one several years and have been using Easel from inventables. it is ok, but I dont like how finicky it can be. I have heard that v carve and carveco are much better and I am wanting to get something that is more suited to the machine.
Hey David,
many people in this forum use Vcarve Pro or Fusion360. The first runs only under windoze and costs more than €600 and there is a hobbyist version of the second that is accessible at no cost which people constantly complain of Autodesk permanently removing functions.
Before you spend money, you should know that there are powerful free and open source software packages that are very evolved nowadays. See here for examples:
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I have been happy using Fusion (they recently dropped the “360” from the name) for engineering type modeling and designs that benefit from the parametric variables and timeline. It’s not the best at easily manipulating and arranging text if your main goal is signs or awards, although if you use another art program like Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape or Canva or Lightburn and export as .svg or .dxf to import into Fusion that can be useful.
For laser work on the Onefinity i’ve been really impressed with the ease of use of Lightburn. I think it is well worth the $60 price for laser work. I just realized it can export .svg files too, so it might be great to pair as a design tool to import into Fusion for CAM.
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You have asked the CNC equivalent of “Which is the best football team?”
The answer is whichever one you like, can use, afford, and does the job. Try them all. Most have free trials available. I use Licensed Solidworks, VCarve Pro with the laser module, Lightburn, and Fusion 360 Free Hobbyist (I guess Fusion now with no 360?). Each has its own strength and weakness and can do different things better/faster/stronger. I just added DraftSight to the mix thanks to a great suggestion from a fellow 1F user, it also has it’s place.
That is my pot of chili. A $50 bill says every single forum member has a different recipe. You just gotta mix your own until you find what you like. Write down the names and grab the demos.
There are a bunch of free ones also, some of which are incredibly powerful for design but suck for GCODE and vice versa. Some just suck at everything or you need a PHD to use it. FreeCad, InkScape, LaserGRBL, Librecad for example and there are others.
RhinoCad/CAM has a great reputation but is far from free and I have not used it but have seen things from others that are awesome and make me feel bad about myself and my work.
Good Luck! I would love to know what you decide in the end and why.
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Hey, I feel you. When I was looking at getting a CNC my first concern was software. I am a long way from computer literate but saw a long list of free,open source software, most billed as easy to use. I tried to make sense of the first few but could not make heads or tails of any of them. YMMV. I wound up just biting the bullet, got Vectric Pro and Lightburn. The earning curve is pretty steep but there’s all kinds of instructions online if you get stuck. My 2¢ Cdn.
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Oops, that’s ’ learning curve’ although the earning curve is pretty steep too.
As a long time Fusion360 user, I wanted to share that I recently tried Aspire for a sign project with my OF.
And honestly, I will not go back to Fusion360 for CNC machining now.
Although great for parametric CAD design, Fusion is an absolute pain for some of the most basic CNC operations. Often taking forever to compute and requiring a lot of UI clicks and property tweaks.
Aspire is way more user friendly and I was able to put together a sign project way faster and with much more predictable and repeatable experience.
Aspire is not perfect either, obviously, but give it (or VCarve) a shot if you have the opportunity!
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I agree. I use F360 and VcarvePro.
For my use-cases
F360: complex cases/ containers/ boxes/ housings. Milling metals where adaptive milling is beneficial. Index milling using rotary. Parametric modelling (e.g. design/CAM for mancala).
VCarve: 2D design (signs, simple cutouts, drag bit engraving, pen plotting), inlays (never got it to work in F360), lathe-like-rotary.
Either for milling 3D terrains, although I have a slight preference for VCarvePro.
Houdini or Blender3D for modelling 3D shapes and designing Lidar derived terrains.
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I’m a Mac guy. I started using Rhino, and I’m impressed.
I was using Fusion. I like it, but it is expensive, a little buggy on the Mac, and Autodesk doesn’t strike me as hobbyist-friendly.
I use Vcarve in a virtual machine for paths and recently started playing with Deskproto. I hope to figure out a toolchain that runs natively on a Mac. Vcarve is better, but the Windows VM is a pain.
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I like Rhino, but don’t bother with RhinoCAM. I bought the Pro version thinking it’d be more capable than DeskProto for rotary jobs. I still use DeskProto for everything that I can’t do with Aspire/VCarve.
Good to know about RhinoCAM And it is also PC only so it doesn’t solve my mac “problem”.
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That best software really depends on what type of work you are wanting to do on your CNC. Doing 2D or 2 1/2D are a totaly different ballgame from doing 3D.
I do largely 3D work (guitars) with a lot of curved surfaces and wouldn’t be able to do it in VCarve or similar programs. I tried Fusion but moved to Rhino fairly quickly. Fusion isn’t very good at creating freeform shapes.
A drawback to Rhino is you need another program to create the CNC toolpaths. I bit the bullet and went with RhinoCAM. I explored the alternatives available at the time and chose RhinoCAM because it works as a plugin to Rhino, so the whole process of going from design to CNC is seamless and smooth. Depending on what type of work you’re doing, RhinoCAM can get expensive. It’s available in severall different versions, some of which they don’t seem to advertise. I don’t think RhinCAM is available for Mac though.
I know some people here like to badmouth RhinoCAM but I’ve never had any problems with it or with the company.
Fusion free version can be a very attractive way to go but, depending on the type of work you do, there is a chance you’ll run into it’s limits and find yourself ugrading to the commercial version. I see alot of people doing this. At that point you’ll find its yearly fees will quickly outpace what you would spend on Rhino/RhinoCAM, which have no yearly fees, unless you want to receive updates.
It’s great that there are so many options to pick from and they all work just fine with OneFinity machines. Knowing what kind of work you’ll want to be doing in the forseeable future will help you narrow down your decision.
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My problem with RhinoCAM is related to its 4-axis toolpaths. Spending $4k on CAM plugin software that can’t be returned, only to find out it’s less capable than a program I purchased years ago for 200 Euros is a bit annoying to me.
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Yeah, there are lots of options. All have their strong points and downsides. And we all have different priorities.
There is no right or wrong, and I LOVE hearing people’s opinions!!