Windows Good program for making CAD files?

I need a good program for making CAD files of designs that are (hopefully) gunna get cut out at school. What is a good program to use? Ive tried a freeware program called CadStd and... well its freeware and not very polished.

Does anyone have any suggestions to what program i should use? One with a free trial version is helpful

edit: this prolly shud have gone in software shudnt it

 

AutoCAD, GibbsCAM... there's a lot of stuff... but in truth, if you're going to be outputting the file to a CNC mill machine, you want to write G-Code... and for that you'll want to learn to write G-Code, a very good dimensional drawing and some time (also notepad or anything that will write text)


in any case... not going to find many free things, if you go to a college or university see if they have any available stuff on their network or from their library

 

You need a drawing/CAD package that will create vector graphics. Once in this format they can be saved as dxf files and imported into your CNC machines (or passed through a CNC programe) to plan the cutting path.

What is it that you want to design?

Meblin

 

AutoCAD Mechanical come with its own CAM (computer aided machining) links. But it you want to do good 3D CAD drawing with ease then use Catia (the window version) which come with a CAM package too. Im not sure how you will get a copy though as this is a expensive pro package. As is AutoCAD, although there are a lot of copies of AutoCAD out there because of Uni students!!! not saying I have a copy version.......honestly!!!

AutoCAD is a good package for students but its not a great CAD program for 3D as the UCS set-up is not designed specifically for 3D. 3D is limited to just extruding in autoCAD. Where as in Catia you can draw in any axis your imagination wishes.

Russ

 

ProE is another decent CAD/CAM package

 

Yeah, Pro Engineer is another good CAD/CAM program, but again this will be hard to get hold of unless your rich!!!!!
Also its 3D drawing setup it not as easy as Catia. But if you want ease of use but still getting awsome results, then go with Solidworks, but yep, again, its an expensive specialist package

 

I use autocad 2002 and too transfer files to our cnc machines i save them as pdf and the computer connected to the cnc machine can convert them but also g-code is the other option but i find it v hard. I used to use turbocad which im sure you can get on freeware?? Hope thats some help

 

Just for your information trueSpace3 can output DXF and many other formats of files.
But it take some learning to make it produce exact measurement results. (As it is a 3D modeling/animation program)
But it can be used to make measurement accurate CAD files.

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