Plan to finish building a CNC router table with a 4th axis chuck for manual 4 sided index carving of rifle gunstocks.

Questions:

Would MOI be better or equal than Rhino3d for design of the overall shape of a gunstock?
While the overall shape and design of a rifle stock is more abstract and flowing, "in-letting" where the receiver fits need precise measurements,, is MOI capable of this?
What would be a good cam program to couple MOI with that provides for the 4 sided cnc carving?
This is for hobbyist level, so design and cam need to be in the 100-400 range

Thanks,
Nick

Hi Nick, MOI has enough capabilities for that, you should give the 90 day trial version a try to see if you like it.

For CAM I know some MOI users use BobCAD-CAM or Deskproto you might want to check those ones out.

- Michael

Hi Nick, your budget is tight for this kind of software. Rhino alone would put you over the top.

As far as your questions go I own Rhino but would do the modeling in MOI because it is more intuitive and faster for me. Some cam options would be Deskproto as Michael mentioned, if you really need the 4hth axis. I don't think you would really need it for this kind of a part.

The Vectric products are very nice and Vcarve desktop would be great for this.

Meshcam is another option I would look at if you plan on machining mostly 3d parts.

Cambam is more complicate to use at first but is an excellent program and very affordable.

-Shane

Go for Moi3D.
Its more intuitive and easier to learn.
Both are very similar but i find the new UI in Moi3D 5 superior in every way.

As for the budget the 400 USD would cover the expenses as Moi3D as for now is not very expensive.
The downside for both programs is that Nurbs-modelling takes a way, way long time to master.
But that is the nature of Nurbs.

Moi3D is very exact and precis.
I use it for modelling and injection moulding purposes.

Rhino is definitely out of your budget. It also has a huge amount of bugs that they are constantly fixing. The core nurbs functionality is poor as well. The core nurbs functionality has also not changed much since very early versions. Basically, their dev process is horrible. So I would never recommend it to anyone.

Well, I think that XNURBS for Rhino ist just another playground... ?
https://www.xnurbs.com/product/
Best regards !

the dev for xnurbs quit the rhino forum due to all the backlash he received there. i don't think that many rhino users actually use xnurbs, from what i have read there. there is another plugin under dev that the users are clamoring for. basically, rhino is fine with third parties trying to fix all their geometry kernel deficiencies with plugins. which costs the users even more money. to me, the whole plugin thing is a joke, if they involve fixing core geometry deficiencies. other areas is a different story. like fea or cfd or something. plugins make sense in those cases. if you really want to use xnurbs then plasticity would be the way to go. much much cheaper.

Many thanks for these inside views !
Best regards !
Ken

3 things
-Moi3d
-https://kotur.gumroad.com/l/vavRq
-Deskproto

Dont try to save money when messing with CNC.
Everytime I tried to save money ...I lost time and money.

“The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten”