Ok, I have just about gave up on Fusion and I’m sure its tired of me.
I don’t have a very good memory (and I am old I will say it) and its probably me but it seems like there are to many layers for some one that just needs 2D.
I have been paying with it for a few months and have asked Tin enough questions that if he charged a buck a piece he would be retired by now. Even with all the help I still struggle.
There are things I do like cad/cam smae program. Same program for artsy stuff and non artsy stuff.
Questions I have
Is sheet cam pretty easy to learn for most?
I know there are few different programs for CAD, and from what I have read most guys use different ones depends on what there drawing?
Not sure I want to or can learn 3 new programs especially if there nothing like fusion.
Give me your 2 cents I would love to hear what you have to say.
Thanks
if you are not creating the designs youre cutting? sheet cam is very easy. fusion is made to make stuff with but you could use something like Inkscape that might be easy to learn.
Affinity Designer is a good cross between Inkscape and 2D CAD packages. It’s inexpensive, one time charge. Their latest version, 2.0 can be had in a suite that includes Designer, Photo, and Publisher. If you just get Designer, it’s probably ~$60 USD, but the suite is $99 USD for the three packages, I use Designer and Photo - a very good photo editor and got the suite as Publisher ends up being free to me…
Serif, the Affinity creator has very good tutorials. LOTS of them and very clear. Robin Whatley, Landscape Photographer, has an EXCELLENT series on Photo.
I will add, I do use Fusion 360, but for true 3D projects. To me, it’s strongest feature is the ability to create animated assemblies, especially multipart assemblies, and tightly coupled drawing files. I sometimes use it for 2D projects (mainly 2D Projections of a single plane view of a 3D object), but, having SheetCam, LightBurn, and VCarve Pro, I have other CAM options for the various tools I have in the shop.
Download FreeCad and give it a try. You’ll probably need to watch some Youtube videos to get started. It’s very powerful design software, but it was designed by CAD experts who already know all of the terminology and didn’t think of making it easy for beginners.
I started using it for 3d designs, so it was a little more difficult to learn. 2d sketches should be easy to pick up by watching a couple of Youtube videos. It’s not very good with any type of art and adding text to your design is very clunky, so I bring the file into Inkscape to add those details.
Try Inkscape then. Use it to create the SVG file you use in Sheetcam for the CAM part.
Inkscape is free. But if you’re concerned about precision, make sure you change the preferences for bounding box to Geometric so it doesn’t include the line thickness in the measurements of things.
You can take those files you download and open them in Inkscape. It handles most file types including SVG and DXF which are the most common you’ll find online.
For what it’s worth. I do all of my 2d design work in a program called Lightburn. It costs around $40. It’s mainly written for use with a laser. But I only export a drawing I’ve done as an .SVG file. The SVG file will load to sheetcam with no issues. Process the file and go straight to your table and cut.
I agree, I use Lightburn for my laser and will sometimes use it to massage an artwork and export the SVG. It does a GREAT job welding Text elements together and creating Text on line objects.
Most artsy stuff we use the program for one of our vinyl plotters (silhouette). Then for general cad work we use QCAD. very easy to use. then cam in sheetcam.
fusion is a very powerful program what little i used it. my main problems is it is cloud based and the price for the paid version is just unbearable.