AutoDesks Fusion360 is an awesome package with built in CAM. And it's FREE is you are a start up or have a turnover under $100K/year. And even if you don't qualify for that (every luthier I know most likely would) there yearly fee is only a very small fraction of what Solidworks and any of the other CAM venders are charging just to pick up the phone.

Very easy to do, and they really are working on making this a better product. There is a very good user support forum run by AutoDesk. I've never waited more than an hour for a response to a question I should have asked right away instead of banging my head against the desk. Most often it was just me not doing the obvious.

And best of all it is cross platform. So if you work on a Mac (as I do) this is the software to use.

As you are familiar with Solidworks or Inventor, this will be very easy to catch on to.

Downloaded last night, already very pleased with this. Love how they let you set the controls up solid works style, going between solid works and inventor made me a little crazy.

Can't believe the functionality they're giving you for free here, there's really no comparison to anything else I've seen.

Thanks again!


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Would this software replace MACH 3, or be used in conjunction with it?

What package did you download? Aspire?

So you need aotodesk to creat the shape, which creates a program that gets fed into Mach 3 which tells the CNC how to make the cuts?

In conjunction with. This allows you to model and then generate the G-code to define tool paths, while the Mach 3 translates the g-code into motion on the CNC.


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You could run your CNC from your Mac using BootCamp or Parallels, but it wouldn't be the best way. I looked at this extensively as I have several Macs around the house. I ended up getting a NUC computer to install Win7 on and run the CNC from that. Still pains me to use Windows though.

Once you get on to how Fusion operates, there is no way you would use Illustrator to generate files. In fact, I go the other way around and export DXF from Fusion to use in Illustrator for use on my Laser.

I'm liking Fusion but have only played with it for a day. One thing I'm not getting is turning model to mesh. In other programs like Rhino, Maya, Cinema 4D etc there is an interface that lets you convert from Polygons to nurbs (mesh). I don't see anything like that in Fusion that I can find. I've modeled my bridge in sketch mode for precision. Now I'm trying to turn it into a model to export to Aspire/Mach3 and it doesn't seem possible. What am I missing?

It's pretty hard to recommend anything else now that Fusion 360 is available. It's really a killer app, and they're going to take over in this space. I used to have a list of CAD and CAM software I recommended, but Fusion 360 an Onshape have whittled that down to two. I can only recommend my other options (Visual Mill, Rhino, Moi3D, etc) if you're going pro now, and even then...



I think you've got some terminology mixed up here. NURBS (surfaces/solids) and meshes are not the same thing, they're more or less opposites. I'm pretty sure you're asking one of two things, though:

If you're asking if you can make a solid model from multiple 2D sketches (Top, Side, Front view) which does translate polygons to NURBS, then you'd do it in feature-based software like Fusion by using those curves to trim a solid block of material from multiple angles. You'd be using a feature called Extrude Cut to cut off all the material outside your sketches from multiple views.

To get stuff into Aspire, which only deals with mesh files, you can save them as meshes in Fusion. You can convert NURBS (smooth mathematical geometry) to meshes (triangulated approximate geometry) by saving as an STL or OBJ file. In Fusion it's under an 'Export' menu.

Nearly all CAM software converts the NURBS to meshes when it makes toolpaths (that's why you get interesting polygonal patterns on your machined 3D surfaces) but they usually hide that step from the user.

It's pretty hard to recommend anything else now that Fusion 360 is available. It's really a killer app, and they're going to take over in this space. I used to have a list of CAD and CAM software I recommended, but Fusion 360 an Onshape have whittled that down to two. I can only recommend my other options (Visual Mill, Rhino, Moi3D, etc) if you're going pro now, and even then...



I think you've got some terminology mixed up here. NURBS (surfaces/solids) and meshes are not the same thing, they're more or less opposites. I'm pretty sure you're asking one of two things, though:

If you're asking if you can make a solid model from multiple 2D sketches (Top, Side, Front view) which does translate polygons to NURBS, then you'd do it in feature-based software like Fusion by using those curves to trim a solid block of material from multiple angles. You'd be using a feature called Extrude Cut to cut off all the material outside your sketches from multiple views.

To get stuff into Aspire, which only deals with mesh files, you can save them as meshes in Fusion. You can convert NURBS (smooth mathematical geometry) to meshes (triangulated approximate geometry) by saving as an STL or OBJ file. In Fusion it's under an 'Export' menu.

Nearly all CAM software converts the NURBS to meshes when it makes toolpaths (that's why you get interesting polygonal patterns on your machined 3D surfaces) but they usually hide that step from the user.