I purchased one of the original machines 3 years ago and it’s still in the original shipping boxes. Hopefully everything is fine when I finally open them up in the next few weeks. My question is what is the best/easiest software for a newb with zero cad experience except Concrete Aided Design? I would prefer something that is iOS based but able to support windows.
Hold up…you’ve had a onefinity for 3 years, and still aren’t going to open the boxes for a few weeks!!! That is some epic discipline my guy! Something tells me that you’re not going to have a problem learning some new software 
You’ll get all sorts of recommendations, but I would watch a few tutorials and choose one that best suits the type of work that you’ll be doing. Be wary of advise that claims this one or that one is “best” because it’s likely that it’s the only one that person has used. They all have their pros and cons but you really can’t go wrong if you’re doing hobby stuff. You CAN however spend too much money where you don’t need to.
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I think you would find that Vectric is a good option, reasonably priced and very capable. There are a few free ones but I think you lose a lot of functionality with them, I started out with the free ones for basic stuff bet under up going to Vectric.
My 2 cents worth.
Pat
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I’ve had it since August of 2021 back when the demand was higher lol. We sold our house in September and lost my shop. With the research I’ve done xcarve seems to be the best all around from what I’ve read.
Hi Jeff,
I had mine delivered about three years ago, built a bench for it, put it together, scared the hell out of myself (forgot to take the magnet off the router before turning it on, got a striped hand), then life got in the way.
I’ve just gotten back into it though mostly for building useful shop organizing tools but I’m still using Carbide Create (non Pro). I’m absolutely certain vCarve can run circles around it, but I am a Mac guy, and I don’t have an extra $650 laying around just to run it on my PC laptop, so I use a mixture of Carbide Create, Easel, and Sketchup (all free and in order from easiest to hardest to learn)…
I wish Vectric would get off their butts and pull a simple conversion to make it Mac OS friendly, but ever since the PC emulator software went yearly subscription, I think I’m fine with free.
If I progress and get a little better, I’m probably going to try out a year’s subscription to Carbide Create pro ($10/month)
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Hey Jeff,
some buy wine, some buy Picassos, some buy Onefinity CNC machines… welcome to the club (staring at Onefinity shipping boxes we received in 2021 
). Okay I already opened them and tested all components, but still in an apartment… already had found the ideal house with a large barn and then someone snatched it from our noses 
I would rather focus on Computer Aided Design than concrete… 
concrete has such a bad CO2 and environmental footprint…
Before you spend money, I would check these free and open Softwares (Real Free and Open Software, not Freeware) that are presented in the following posts and that are very evolved nowadays and very powerful:
- How to choose your Vector graphics / CAD / CAM Software
- Choosing Vector graphics, CAD, and CAM software
Not iOS but MacOS (OS X):
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I’m a Mac user as well (since the original Mac in 1984)! I have a strong desire to use a Mac based solution. With that said, I started watching Onefinity video projects by Morgan Hopp and noticed his workflow was always drawing it up in Shapr3d (on an iPad with a pencil) and then importing the sketch to Vectric (which only runs on a PC). I had an iPad so I tried the two week tutorial on Shapr3d and liked its ease, capability and speed (compared to my experiences with Sketchup and other CAD programs). I then tried running Vectric on a Mac with PC emulator software. It worked but was clunky. I ended up buying a cheap windows based gaming laptop (the graphics processor in a gaming laptop is exactly what is needed for CAD).
So my workflow for CAD is Shapr3d (iPad) or Vectric (PC) and then Vectric (PC) as the CAM portion. Seems to work well for my purposes.
Wish you all the best.
Kenric
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John, I can top that. I have an original X35 from March of '21 and also a Machinist that I bought off of MP in Feb '03 and neither of them are out of the boxes.
Yes, my wife is ready to divorce me.