Hi All
I am a Macbook user and I already have a CAD program on it, TurboCad Pro for Mac, so I am not interested in getting another CAD program. Being a newb to CNC, as I understand it I’ll need a CAM program for setting tool paths and then some other app to push G code. With all that said, do you all have any recommendations for Mac? I will initially be doing 2D work but I will also want to be able to do 3D work as well. Thank you all for you time and advice.
Hi Jim - welcome to the forums! You have a couple free choices and a couple paid. Easel, Carbide Create, and Fusion 360 all work on a Mac and are free. CamBam, Carveco and Aspire are pay, and work on a Mac if you have Wine or some Windows emulator. I personally use Fusion and Easel - I am not a fan of Carbide Create, but many people here use it. Recommend searching the forums for more options.
-Tom
I’ve been doing a lot of research on this and boy is it hard to get simple, definitive answers, especially for MAC. Anyways, MeshCAM looks like a good option as well. One thing I read was that there was no need for CAM as it’s in the OF controller. I can’t imagine that that’s true but if it is I’m sure there’s no reasonable GUI for it.
The 1F has a hardware controller so you don’t need a dedicated PC to run a controller. However you need a CAM to generate the G-code from your model.
Your options on macOS are:
The first two only do 2D which is good to start but very quickly limiting. Fusion 360 is both CAD and CAM. I recommend you download trials and see what works best for you.
I initially thought that I would use FormZ —CAD— and MeshCAM but eventually I settled on Fusion for both CAD and CAM. So I’m glad I did not pay until I was confident!
MeshCAM is both impressively simple to use (it generates good G-code with absolutely minimal understand of CAM) and depressingly non-intuitive (the use of menu, for example, is very weird).
The killer for me though is that you have to change your decimal separator to a “.” in the system preference for all applications. Like all French speakers, I use coma so MeshCAM effectively breaks every other applications on my Mac.
As others have pointed you can run Windows software in a VM but it means you’re constantly reminded on why you did not choose a Windows PC 
I was not willing to go down that path.
If you really want a Windows CAM, an alternative could be to get a Windows VM at AWS.
I recently downloaded the Fusion personal use version and a couple of days later I received an email to some good learning material that is actually pretty well updated to the latest version.