Ag. Teacher New to Plasma Spider

[tvehorn06]

I am new here and this looks like a great site if I need help. I have very little CAD training so any advice on making the design phase easier and quicker would be appreciated. I have a large file of DXF designs but none of them are 100% ready to be cut. Any advice that you have to keep students interested long enough to design and fix files to prepare to cut would be appreciated or good sites or places to purchase completed DXF files to cut would also be appreciated

[plasmanewbie]

Welcome to the site, plenty of help here. I would suggest picking a CAD program and sticking with it, I use CorelDraw, many here use Inkscape. As for design advice your best to upload one of your designs with your questions about making it cut ready. You will get some help and learn something that you can carry on to your next design. Good luck and have fun!

[SegoMan DeSigns]

I use CorelDraw as it has drivers for my vinyl cutter and can generate DXF files as well.

CorelDraw or Adobe Illustrator would allow assisted training from the art teacher for your students and works well in the 2 dimensional realm of the plasma cutter.

Fusion 360 is 3d that could be used for plasma and 3D printers both.

All of the above mentioned has a lot of how too tutorials on YouTube

[adbuch]

Welcome aboard! Inkscape is free, so students who wish to work on the file at home or away from class may benefit from this choice. It is very well supported with online tutorials, videos, manuals, etc. CorelDraw would be good as well - and Educational Licenses for some versions are available for around $100 per seat. Fusion 360 - also free for educational use - is another possibility. What program do you intend to use for the CAM portion? Many here use Sheetcam for this, but Fusion 360 also does well with the complete process - cad/cam/post process to g-code.

There are sections at this forum specific to Inkscape, CorelDraw, and Fusion 360 which you may find useful. Feel free to share a few of the dxf files you intend to clean up/edit for cutting and we will be happy to take a look and perhaps give you more specific ideas.

David