Help for a new user

[rlchurch]

I'm a complete newbie to shopbot. I've been making cabinets as a hobby for several years and just recently got access to a Shopbot through Techshop. I'm struggling with what CAD program to learn. I have access to AUTOCAD and Autodesk Inventor through Techshop, but am not sure that there is the library resource out there to make them useful tools. I don't want to learn a CAD program as an end in itself, but to help me produce better cabinets. Right now I'm only making 2-3 cabinets a year so spending $1000 for a piece of software with a difficult learning curve isn't really attractive.

Thanks for any wisdom.

[gc3]

http://www.cabinetpartspro.com/

[paul_z]

You might also look here: http://www.cabinetplanner.com/

Cabinet Planner will output dxf files and you'll have to do the tool pathing yourself; however, it is low cost and provides excellent previews of the cabinets.

Paul Z

[ssflyer]

Something to think about is the new importer feature in VCarve Pro and Aspire for SketchUp models.

You can design a cabinet in SketchUp, and the new importer will explode, flatten and nest the parts for toolpathing.

Pretty slick, and works fine with the free version of SketchUp...

[mikek]

Rob, all CAD programs have a learning curve to get useful service out of them. I have been using 2D AutoCAD for many years and am comfortable with it for most designs. I only paid $49.95 for it to begin with. DraftSight has a free program that is identical to AutoCAD for all practical purposes, but will have the same learning curve. SketchUp is also free and very powerful and is 3D and works with PartWorks/VCarvePro. If I had to choose today it would be SketchUp. The free tutorials are very good. In a few days time you can be productive with it.