This fantastic site of bundles and sales that all goes to charity is hosting for the next few days a software suite from COREL which tops out at a mere 30$.
the main come aways from this bundle is
Core.CAD - $700 - a potential alternative to fusion 360 since its been locked out of free version. especially when the rotery modual comes out.
Corel draw. photoshop alternative with many plugins included adding fonts and brush styles to use in both laser and cnc modes.
from the site…
We bring you an exclusive creative pro’s creation dream with Corel worth ~$2k. With an impressive bundle that includes award winning tools used by artists from Disney, Ubisoft, Blizzard and Riot Games take you from 2D art and design to expert image editing, multi-publishing and CAD design. Not only do you get a professional CAD software, you also get Painter 2020, CorelDRAW Graphics Suite and over 1,200 brushes, 15 Scripts, 8,000 clipart and digital images, vehicle wraps and hi-res digital photos, not to mention over 1,000 TrueType and OpenType fonts and design templates to help you slay your creative goals. Your Creative Superhero status awaits!
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with most of fusion 360 just now getting locked out here in 3 days… including file exporting… and 4th and 5th axis control… while not the best software to use for cad works… at only 30$ for everything… this is an offer i would be rude not to share to the maker community… and hope it makes a worthy first post to the forums as i JUST got my machine running last night.
Thanks for sharing, and welcome to the forums! Glad to hear you got your machine up and running last night!
Question: My understanding is CorelCAD is a drawing package and NOT a CAM package. Regarding Fusion360 locking 4th and 5th axes, how will CorelCAD help here? It doesn’t generate machine toolpaths as far as I can tell. I have no experience with Corel products (at least not in the last 20 years) so if CorelCAD can generate toolpaths can someone link the documentation on it?
Also just clarifying the restrictions placed on Free Fusion360: file exporting still works, it’s just limited which formats you can export. For example: you can still save bodies to STL:
The 4th and 5th axis restriction is a huge bummer though, I was really REALLY excited for the rotary module, and I don’t have a clear path forward on how to use it now… If anyone has any software suggestions on that, please let me know. Since STEP files were added back into the F360 exports I think it may be possible to export STEP files and generate toolpaths with another software package, but I don’t know any.
@DFStormbringer did you get the bundle? It says that coreldraw is only a 6 month subscription, can you confirm that?
@brent113
I belive you are correct I see nothing indicating CAM. Still is a very useful suit. Only other good, free, CAM software that I know of is freecad… and its a doozy.
I’ve never used freecad - what’s a doozy about it? If it’s the modelling, there’s no modelling limitations in F360, could we export to freecad using a STEP file and do CAM in freecad?
Yes to what Atom said (Currently doing FreeCad stuff) the CAM side is quite limited 4th axis sofar isnt in the stable release (0.18.4), there are Fourm posts about it though. I didnt use Freecad greatly for CNC sofar but there are a couple tutorials.
@Atom yes I did get the bundle the Corel Draw is indeed only for six month subscription but every single thing else in the bundle is a one-time purchase and you keep including the Corel CAD witch with the research I’ve been doing it does in the 19 version start working with 3D including the Import and Export of Step files.
I will freely admit I’m an absolute nuve in all of this and there’s a lot of research with this machine in Aldi software to get things up and running but from what I can tell it has the potential to be a starting point especially for $30 and the website states that the new 2020 version enhance is on 3D printing with upgrading the version being only $100 which is still considerably cheaper than the 700 outright.
The other art programs photo editing brushes in fonts included which can be used for signs and what not in my opinion as a maker the whole package is absolutely worth 30 bucks even if just to find out if this CAD program can be fully useful or not.
But being a rookie it’s entirely up to the professionals here to dictate just how good of a value it is
I agree its a nice suit but most of the brushes and extras are for coreldraw, and that is the most useful pice of software as it is the one that does all the vector images needed for the cnc and laser engraver… still not a bad price for 6 months of a good program. I just don’t think I want to learn a program to have it expire. But I still appreciate you sharing the deal! Please share with us the first thing you make with the new software!
From what I seen it is very similar. It is trying to compete in that market but its aiming at smaller businesses and those who can not afford adobe’s high prices.
I’ve been using Affinity Designer.
$50 for a pretty good Illustrator clone.
If you’ve used illustrator or photoshop you’ll feel right at home.
They also have a photoshop clone, but Designer has a raster mode that does most of what I need.
-S
(Currently doing FreeCad stuff) the CAM side is quite limited 4th axis sofar isnt in the stable release (0.18.4), there are Fourm posts about it though. I didnt use Freecad greatly for CNC sofar but there are a couple tutorials.