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Hey everyone!

I'm just starting to "tool up" for my first build, but I know that I will want to incorporate some sort of CAD in the future, as well as CNC for certain things. Between AutoCAD and SolidWorks, which seems to be more intuitive for guitar building (especially if you are a total CAD beginner)?

Also, a machine shop I worked at (deburring) used Mastercam to write programs for their machines. Is this pretty much the standard for CNC?

Thanks for reading, and thank you for all the knowledge you have on this forum!

Josh

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Finally escaped The Peoples' Republik of Massachusetts; I can smell the freedom in the air!

Solidworks is more intuitive....by miles, imo. I know some guys that create high volume food processing equipment. These files are highly complex and massive. They all use Solidworks and make snide comments about AutoCad. I only mentioned that because I was talking to one of them last night about this very thing....the intuitive nature of cad software. Geeks!

Once the basics are understood in Solidworks, learning occurs pretty quickly. I spent quite a bit of time years ago with Rhino...and people do like it for its acquistion price, but I found it much more cumbersome to get around in.

Mastercam is an industry standard along with Gibbscam and Surfcam. Camworks is an add-on to Solidworks that I was impressed with many years ago and is considerably better now...by all accounts. I expect that if one wanted to learn cad and cam simulaneously Solidworks with Camworks might be the shortest road.

I have Solidworks and Mastercam. I learned cam on Mastercam and don't think I have the patience to learn a new package. But there hasn't been any reason for me to consider that since I haven't run into anything I absolutely couldn't do with Mastercam when I needed to. Each cam package has it's own issues that force a certain methodology which you have to figure out. Technically you can draw 3D models with Mastercam but there is NOTHING intuitive about MC. I used to curse it for being the LEAST intuitive piece of software I have...but once you know it....you know it....you know? Mastercam does have a very good simulation module which is very handy when developing operations.

I have an older version of Solidworks. Later versions made a pretty big leap forward in processing ability when making larger, more complex models. As it is, I might upgrade for that reason alone but there a lot of little tricks that cut down on file size.

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I read Emerson on the can. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds...true...but a consistent reading of Emerson has its uses nevertheless.

StuMusic

I use Solidworks every day at my 9 to 5 gig...I've also got about 4 years of experience with MasterCAM. SW and MasterCAM are great, but expensive. You're probably looking at about $10k worth of the software between the two...just to start. Rhino + Visual Mill (or RhinoCAM) will get you up and running for much less than that. Rhino is a full featured surfacing app...you can draw pretty much anything in there that you can in SW, and the PC requirements are much lower (I run Rhino + RhinoCAM at home).

With that said, if you have an extra $5k lying around for SW...and about $1500 for a nice laptop to run it on...by all means by SW. It's higher powered stuff.

Never ever buy AutoCAD. You can download draftsight for free:

http://www.3ds.com/products/draftsight/ ... -overview/

This is basically the same thing as AutoCAD. This is a GREAT deal for them to give this away (it's basically the SolidWorks folks pulling the rug out from under the folks at Autodesk who make AutoCAD).

FYI, Rhino has a lot of similar commands & such as AutoCAD (and DraftSight). So, if you learn DraftSight it would transition to Rhino well. You should note that DraftSight is really just 2D software. If you want to get into 3D stuff, Rhino is about as cheap as you can go and still have pro quality results.

Let us know if you have any questions...!

Trev

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http://www.PeakeGuitars.com

Wow! Thanks so much for the info!

I guess I never really looked at cost; I figured that I may be out $1K total tops. LOL Goes to show how clueless I am!

Looks like I will be going with the free stuff for design right now. Once I get to the point where I am ready to start programming ops, I will go the Rhino route for both CAD and CAM.

Thanks again to both of you; I can't wait to get started!

Josh

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Finally escaped The Peoples' Republik of Massachusetts; I can smell the freedom in the air!

I wrote up a big spiel about different CAD and CAM systems, but I then realized I could answer your question better by being specific. If you're planning on strictly doing 2D then DraftSight looks like a good ticket. Unless there's some other software with interpolated and control-point curves for less than the cost of MOI (see below) then it's probably not worth buying anything to work in 2D with that out there.

There's a CAD software called MOI3D written by the guy who originally coded Rhino. It's almost as capable as Rhino, and more powerful than you're likely to ever need unless you become a full-time CAD professional. You can do any guitar-related work you can think of in it, and it's file-format compatible with Rhino so you can exchange files with Rhino users very easily. MOI is only $300.

SolidWorks is my favourite CAD software to work in and the best for industrial design and parametric modelling, Rhino is the most capable in pure technical ability and surfacing but not as friendly as SW, and MOI is what I would leave myself a note to buy if I were about to lose my memory and start over tomorrow

I suspect that less than 5% of the users of any of those systems will ever run into a situation where they need any functionality that one of the others has but that theirs doesn't.

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Bob Garrish
Former Canonized Purveyor of Fine CNC Luthier Services

of your 2 choices i'd go with solidworks. the learning curve on autocad is a real pain but I strongly suggest you might want to consider alternative software because you really don't need the power of sw or autocad for a guitar and sw is running about 10 to 15k right now. unless you have disposable income and a real desire to learn solid modeling, fea, and assembly management etc.. go with something that will provide a high ratio of quick success to effort (for a beginner).

i love sw. i've been using it since 99'. i'm supposed to be using it right now (but i'm posting on the internet instead )

Thank you for the info! The more options the better!

I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't need 3D for my guitar building uses. Although, for necks and certain bridges it would come in handy...

Yet another thing to obsess over; and I thought GAS was bad. CRAP!!!!

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Finally escaped The Peoples' Republik of Massachusetts; I can smell the freedom in the air!

If you ever build a carve top and don't want to spend the time and effort to actually carve it, you will want 3d!

There are lots of options out there that are a lot less expensive than others, but sometimes that old saying is true! You get what you pay for.

I had a cadcam system that literally set my 3d learning curve back 5 years! Once I tried a real system, life was much easier.

Mike

ps take a look at Rhino, Madcam, MOI before you do anything. These three offer free trials to test drive, as I am sure others do.

Oh man, I totally forgot to mention that one! Good catch, Mike!

I believe both MOI and Rhino have 'no save' trial versions that work forever and just don't let you save. You can learn all you want, try it out, do some tutorials and when you're sure it's the system for you then you can buy it. I think Rhino also has a 15-save version or somesuch.

Those trials are totally the way to go: no risk, and you'll have real experience with which to make a choice.

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Bob Garrish
Former Canonized Purveyor of Fine CNC Luthier Services

Definitely going to check these out!

I've been messing with DraftSight and need to track down my wireless mouse (just moved); using the MultiTouch on my MacBookPro is a little bit of a PITA! LOL

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Finally escaped The Peoples' Republik of Massachusetts; I can smell the freedom in the air!

You asked which CAD program is more intuative?
Probably no CAD program is intuative if you never used another one.
That being said both Autocad and Solid works, as mentioned, are expensive.

I know you can get almost any Autocad product in educational versions for free if you
are a student or can get acess to a .edu email address. The only thing is they will cause
drawings to be watermarked on the edges as Educational use, and if you file share to
other noneducational Autocad products the watermark stays with the drawing.

Have you considered taking an Autocad or Solidworks or Mastercam class at a community college?
A single night class in any of these will put you miles ahead of trying to figure any of these out
by plodding through a book.

If you want to buy a program, Autocad LT is cheap (relatively) and Mastercam has a drawing only version with no solids
that is called Design LT and it costs only about $250 ( a bargin I think).

As far as Autocad vs Solidworks vs Mastercam...
I've been using Mastercam to do woodworking cnc programing for 14 or 15 years and I think its
OK. I transfer files from Autocad all the time but the way they handle solids is different.
The foreman in or machine shop has had a seat of Solidworks for a while now and he likes the way
it does some things like mechanical assemblies better than Mastercam. He is also a long time Mastercam
user. On the other hand, I think it is easier to draw solids in Autocad than Mastercam and it has some neat things
in it that Mastercam doesn't. I like the raster image underlayment ability. ( I used it to draw up a Gibson filled moustache
bridge from a photo).

I'm working on a Jumbo scratch build. I used Mastercam to draw up the guuitar and all the jigs and forms , etc. for it.
I was able to cut some of the stuff at work on the cnc router but even if I didn't have a cnc it would have been very usefull to have full size plots made at Kinkos and used them as templetes. So I think you are making a good decisiion to get into CAD. I have learned over the years it is a lot easier to try out a bunch of different ideas on a screen as opposed to wasting material in the shop or trying to hand draw stuff.

If you have a friend (or a son/daughter of a fried) who is engineering at university, they can get the student version of SW for $200. I have been using various CAD systems for nearly 30 years. SW is outstanding.

Amen to that!

Solidworks ROCKS!!

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-CyborgCNC
http://www.cncguitar.com
https://www.facebook.com/CncGuitar