Ryan, others, remember Emachine Shop?

klein bottle, coming right up......

 

fuck dude! i'm pretty impressed!

i'm a CAD junkie from way back, and when i hear people saying they're great at CAD, i usually yawn. i honestly didn't think you'd manage that one, and i'm summarily gobsmacked.

but really, you need to get yourself a parametric modeler. if you're that good with AutoCAD, you'll be awesome with something GOOD!

 

You know, I keep hearing that kind of stuff.

AutoCAD gets a lot of bad mouthing and I think it's undue. It is making an impact on how AutoCAD programmers are re-directioning thier new updates. I see a lot of the interface going towards the "model on the fly" kind of interface and away from the command line.

Maybe it's because I don't know any better, I have never used anything but AutoCAD. I have a copy of Solidworks here, but I have never installed it - it's almost a shame isn't it? But I have never been stumped yet, so I follow the old "if it ain't broke...." attitude.

Thanks for tipping your hat Autcol. I can appreciate that. Maybe I WILL have to open up that Solidworks package and take it for a spin.....

 

In most cases, the shop that'll be doing the machining won't want you to specific tool paths. They'll just want a dimensioned drawing or DWF/DXF file so they can tailor the tool paths to meet their requirements and machinery. This is the case on the parts I have sent out for prototyping at work.

I've not purchased anything from eMachineShop, but have tried fiddling around with their software. It's not all that great for making anything complex and doesn't do 3D. So, if you've just got a simple bracket it may be perfectly fine option. Anything else, you're probably better off taking up Broman on his offer and farming the work out to any one of the thousands of machine shops that can be found on the internet or locally.