Autodesk changed the license functionality and all my parts got locked behind a paywall (yay for cloud services!). Then earlier this month, the party ended. And over the course of 4 years, I built up a pretty substantial library of parts and toolpaths, both lathe and mill. I wasn't particularly interested in switching ecosystems, but Fusion has 3D toolpaths where HSMXpress does not. Well to get that download, you have to give Autodesk contact info, and lo! Autodesk called me to offer me a Fusion 360 license. I had a copy of Solidworks from my sordid past as a race engineer, and I downloaded Autodesk's HSMXpress plugin for Solidworks as my CAM solution.

Solidworks part file and a drawing to express tolerances and intent and my part was done.įast forward a whole bunch of years, and now I have some small-scale CNC machines of my own - an XCarve 3-axis gantry router, a Wabeco D2000 2-axis lathe that I CNC converted myself, and a G0704-clone 3-axis mill that is destined for CNC conversion as well (I'm building the control box at the moment). He used MasterCAM as his programming tool, but I never touched it. I'd do up the part in Solidworks, give our machinist the Solidworks geometry and a drawing, he'd tell me how he couldn't make it, we'd argue for a bit, he'd get revised geometry and a drawing, and a part would find its way into my hands. Big chunks of my job was designing parts for manufacture in a HAAS 3-axis mill. Once upon a time, I was the engineer for an auto racing team.

Mastercam 2021 for solidworks