One good reason to look at a system that uses NURBS data, is it will be analyzing a true NURBS surface and generating off of that.. If your package requires STL data, then everything will be linear cuts.. Although with MoI, you can dice up your model well and simulate curvature well enough that you dont need to run out and buy something different.. You would look for something different if the "toolpath strategy" in the package was somethinhg you needed.. Like an equaldistance offset or a Z level finish, or a 4th axis or something..

Then as you progress into cnc, your needs will change, like the abilities to control the tools entry and exit from the material more...Or to control different types of machines and various other aspects.. This is where you start to move up in the price range. You dont want to run your $400,000.00 Haas with a $200.00 software :o

You could also take a look at CamBam for your CAM program. It has both 2D and 3D machining strategies and these can be freely combined within the same operation. File imports are dxf, stl, raw, 3ds and gcode itself for backplotting, so it should work well 'straight out of the box' with MoI for 3D work, but I'm sure MoI also has a utility program somewhere that will allow dxf files to be produced from its drawing data and that means you could use just the two programs for all your CAD/CAM work.

Some example work here:-
http://www.cambam.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=897.msg4755#msg4755 and here http://www.cambam.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=751.0

Martin.

Thanks BobK,

I tried the demo of Cut3D and it worked quite well, although it seems a little on the bare bones side.

I have also left a message on their Cut3D forum related to how anyone uses Cut3d as far as bringing files in for processing - file types and file types used specifically from Moi3d. No response as yet. Thanks for your advice! I'm not sure about which cam package to use yet. I had better learn Moi3d first.

How do you like your machine? I see on some of the other forums that there are quite a few of them out there.

I was interested in the Mechmate machine as it looked pretty serious, but I'm not a hands on mechanical type so if I get another machine it will have to be a prebuilt, probably from Axyz with servos.

I find that Moi3D is extremely powerful and in most ways simple to use. I have yet to work through all of the manuals commands and the scripts that are available. I'm not very intuitive when it comes to learning new things. It was a real struggle to learn low level programming in my youth, but once learned it was easy to handle!

Anyway, I digress. Thanks for the responses.

Thanks Burrman for your advise. I looked at Visual Mill years ago. I found that for 2d and some vcarve work that Vectric's VcarvePro satisfied all of my needs and was very intuitive

Gary.

Hi Martin,

Thanks for the link. That stuff looks amazing!

It sure looks powerful and easier for saving templates for later use, in similar jobs, which seems easier than most. I will certainly give it a look when I get to the point with Moi3d that I am comfortable creating one offs from hardwoods and exotic woods (from managed forests, of course) for sale as unique pieces.

What type of work do you do with Cambam?

Gary

Hi Gary.
I use it for all sorts of 2D/3D cnc work.
I've made quite a few moulds from stl files and one of the nice things about CamBam that I find very convenient, is that it's able to cut one from the actual solid model itself. So no messing about, by having to subtract the positive to get a negative.
In case you didn't you know, it has 40 trial sessions (over any length of time), so you could grab a copy and have a play at your leasure.
Like MoI, it's also got a friendly, well behaved forum.

Martin.

Gary,

I like my Hybrid. It took about a month to build but at the end of the project I knew exactly what each part did and where to source a spare. It also gave me the confidence to do some modifications of my own. I drew up a new Z in MOI and cut it using my original Hybrid. It was my first project in aluminum and thanks to MOI everything fit perfectly. Re: downloading files into Cut 3D, it's a snap. When in MOI use the file save as command and select either stl or obj then import the file into Cut 3D. Unfortunately I seem to remember that the demo wasn't fully functional. I think you can only run files included in the demo.






Bob

BobK,

Thanks for the info on Cut3D. I really appreciate hearing from someone that is actually using a package.

I think that Vectric's VcarvePro is the best package that I came across. I had tried or bought and abandoned several packages before theirs and it is amazing how easy to use it is and how powerful it is for a 2 and a 2 1/2 dimension package. Their photo carving package does amazing things in wood as well!

I do find that the Cut3D package seems a little bare. I will probably buy it though as I know for a fact that it will work because it's from Vectric.

Thanks again,

Gary