Some of what I’m gonna say may be obvious stuff you already know but you said your new and I don’t know what you know. It’s an attempt to be thorough is all.
From what you have shown and described all of your work is based of 2D like @Chucky_ott said.
While most or all of your CNC work will be 3D when finished there are two ways to get there. One would be to use a 3D format like STL which would work for almost anything but would be slower than 2D based milling. So you’ll only want 3D models if you can’t do it 2D.
If you wanted your tree to be proud of the surface with detail on the Z axis you’d need to go the 3D route.
The tree filled with epoxy and planed later would best be done with a v-bit and a v-carve in my opinion. The only software I’ve used to make a v-carve is Vectric VCarve but other programs can do it. The v-carve method will allow you to have small details without using really tiny bits. The caveat being that smaller, skinny, parts may not be as deep as the other parts. Depending on how translucent your epoxy is that could be an issue.
So I think your requirements are:
- 2D parametric CAD software
- CAM software capable of creating a v-carve from a 2D vector outline
- Software to control the mill
As I’m sure you know this could be all in one program or a separate program for each part of the process. I’m mostly familiar with free programs, with VCarve being a notable exception.
Blender (free): An awesome, massive beast of a program capable of many things. Model by vertices, edges and faces. Use sculpting tools to create a model like it was out of clay. Create animations in 2D or 3D using skeletal rigging and or key frames. Analyze a video to determine where the camera was in 3D space and then use the video editor to put your creation in the existing video. That’s just the things I have played with. It has been used by professionals in movies and television so it’s quite capable but hard to learn. I also think it’s best suited to organic modeling and doesn’t excel at parametric modelling and has no CAM but maybe the BlenderCAM and CADSketcher addons I mentioned in the other thread change that. It does have a node editor and access to Python scripting so parametric modeling could be done that way. If your not familiar with node editing, in this context, it’s a system of visual programming. A node performs some operation like scale, or translate and they are connected with wires so the output of one node can be the input to another and so on.
Fusion 360 (free or paid): I’ve used the CAD part of Fusion (free version) before but never the CAM part. It’s very capable and I didn’t think it was that hard to learn the CAD part. You can do mesh modeling in it but the part I used the most was sketch based modeling. You create a 2D sketch and then you can pull (extrude) the sketch into 3D. Once to have an object you can then create a sketch on any face and pull or push that sketch to add or subtract from the model. The sketches can make use of a constraint system. This line must be tangent to that circle. This angle must be 20 degrees etc. Things like that. It also has a parametric system where you can assign values to variables, using functions or formulas to calculate the values etc. I’ve never used the CAM part of F360. I have a feeling it’s very good, but looked complicated in comparison to VCarve. I didn’t dig into it because you can’t use free Fusion for anything you sell anymore so I stopped using for the most part.
Vectric VCarve (paid): Easy to learn, at least compared to the above. Decent 2D design program, but like @Chucky_ott said there are better dedicated 2D programs. Where I think it excels is ease of use for both design and toolpath creation in one package. Granted, the only two programs I have used to create toolpaths with is VCarve and FreeCAD. Of the two VCarve seemed easier to me. The other problem is, unless I’m missing something, it’s not parametric unless you use gadgets. If you program you can make gadgets in VCarve Pro or Aspire. A gadget is a LUA script.
FreeCAD (free): Kinda like a poor mans Fusion. It has workbenches for 2D and 3D modeling, CAM, sketching with a restraint solver etc. It also can use Python scripting. It can be kinda buggy sometimes in my experience but it gets better all the time and I haven’t used it in a couple years. FreeCAD can do parametric modeling in a way similar to Fusion.
OpenSCAD (free): A programmers CAD application and my personal favorite! Everything is done in code except for viewing and exporting the result which could be 2D or 3D. Since everything is done in code it can all be parametric. It uses it’s own programming language and excels at constructive solid geometry, using boolean operations to add, subtract, intersect objects. So, while you do need to program to use OpenSCAD, you end up creating “an organized library of components with parameters” almost by default and the language is pretty easy to start programming if you never have. OpenSCAD is pretty niche but it can be great if you have the right skill set to make use of it.
Several of the programs I mentioned can make use of scripting. Not knowing if you know anything about programming I’ll mention what that means. Most if not all of the programs I mentioned are written in C++ which is a massive, complex, compiled, hard to master language capable of making just about any program. Programs will sometimes incorporate a scripting language that can use parts of the C++ code from a friendlier interpreted language (doesn’t need compilation). You can use scripting to create new tools and user interface elements etc.
All said I recommend VCarve, with a dedicated 2D CAD for parametric design, or Fusion with gSender to control the mill. Blender could be worth learning if you wanted to use it for more than CNC or wanted to be able to sell things without buying software but I haven’t used the mentioned addons and newish node systems enough to know how capable the CAM and parametric modeling is. All of my recommendations have large communities with forums, and good documentation for learning.
I hope some of this long read is worth your time. It’s hard to be concise as the topic is vast.
Michael
