cnc 3D drawings

[Dominique Meuris]

Dear

we are a custom furniture shop in Belgium
Designing and producing solid oak furniture on demand of our customers.

we are looking to invest in a cnc router, so we would like to get a new drawing program aswell.
currently we are drawing everything in sketchup.

But we would like to have a program which is easy to learn, fast to draw a furniture piece.
+ convert to 3D "to show to our customers"
and we would need to be able to specifie all the joints of the furniture pieces.
dowells, mortise and tenon, screws, ...

what is the easiest and fastest program to use for drawing this? and to convert it easily to cnc?
what is your opinion on artcam software for a cnc? we would need to be able to convert the drawings to artcam ofcourse then.

thank you!

[Bob Lang]

You should be able to export from SketchUp Pro to CNC. Or at least to a plug-in or program that will translate the geometry in the SketchUp model to the code the CNC reads.

Bob Lang

[Dominique Meuris]

You should be able to export from SketchUp Pro to CNC. Or at least to a plug-in or program that will translate the geometry in the SketchUp model to the code the CNC reads.

Bob Lang

Yes, but on sketchup i Cannot mention All the joints i wan't. + it's very time consuming to draw something in detail.

[Mike Heidrick]

Have you read about Inventor or Solidworks at all?

[Dominique Meuris]

I have been checking solidworks on the internet lately. And I think this is the way to go for our company.

I'm just wondering if it's possible to upload from solidworks to cadcam?

[Leo Voisine]

It depends on the CAM. Many of the upper level cam systems will import a solidworks file directly.

You can save a solidworks as an STL and import STL into mose CAM systems.

You can also save a Solidworks file as a DXF and import the DXF.

[Mike Heidrick]

I have been checking solidworks on the internet lately. And I think this is the way to go for our company.

I'm just wondering if it's possible to upload from solidworks to cadcam?

HSMWorks is an integrated 3D CAM for Solidworks.

[Gerry Grzadzinski]

Take a look at Top Solid.

None of these programs are going to be fast or easy, until you learn them. Training should be considered mandatory if you want to get your money's worth from them.