Welcome to the SeeMeCNC Community

If anyone has any SW questions hit me up. I would go out of my way to assist you. I teach those classes for designengine ... well I teach the more surfacing intensive parts of those classes but I suppose I could help on other more solids questions.

Thanks for offering to help. I'm sure some of our users could take advantage of your knowledge and your offer.

Do you have much experience with the free and opensource software that exists? Say, Google Scatsup?

I had formal training on Inventor about a decade ago (oh crap, longer than that), but haven't used it since then. I feel like I know the basics, but I just get lost in the free programs that I try at home. The tools seem foreign and illogical, and I can't figure out how to do the things that I remember being able to do before. I also relied heavily on Inventor's parametric abilities (where you can draw just about anything and shape it up later with dimensions and constraints), and I haven't figured that one out either. The ability to edit individual sketches in the history log of a part instead of having to delete sections and start over was nice too...

Am I using the wrong software? I've been considering FreeCAD, but just haven't taken the plunge.

Any advice would be very appreciated. I'm grateful for your willingness to advise us muggles!

Jimustanguitar wrote:Do you have much experience with the free and opensource software that exists? Say, Google Scatsup?

I had formal training on Inventor about a decade ago (oh crap, longer than that), but haven't used it since then. I feel like I know the basics, but I just get lost in the free programs that I try at home. The tools seem foreign and illogical, .........

Any advice would be very appreciated. I'm grateful for your willingness to advise us muggles!

Have you tried Inventor Fusion or Inventor 360? Fusion isn't as powerful, but it is free. 360 was free, not sure if it still is.

From this web site: http://www.cadtutor.net/forum/showthrea ... tor-Fusion

Inventor Fusion no longer exists.

It has been replaced by Fusion 360 ($25/month).

DesignSpark Mechanical is a good, free, choice.

g.

In addition to the built in tutorials, what other training materials do folk suggest/recommend ?
Is the Lynda subscription worth the co$t ?
Is there more or better content than in the built in tutorials ?