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Looking for reccomendations for an easy to use cad program???
Thanks

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MK5acoustics.com

Hi Wes,

I would try posting this questions on the CNC board. You may get a better response.

Josh

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Josh House

Canadian Luthier Supply
http://www.canadianluthiersupply.com
https://www.facebook.com/canadianluthiersupply?ref=hl
House Guitars - Custom Built Acoustic Instruments.
http://www.houseguitars.com

Turbocad.

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Dave
Milton, ON

ive been using a free version of rhino cad and i find it to be pretty intuitive. ive had experience with other cad programs though. if you just want to design guitar body shapes, g thang is really easy to use and a pretty cool little program.

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sweat the small stuff.

hello Heath Blair,
where I can get the free version of rhino cad?
thank's herry

I love Rhino, but I'm not aware of a free version, aside from the trial version that allows you to use it for a trial period, or a specified number of uses. Knowing the McNeel group, I can't imagine they would make a free version available.

http://download.rhino3d.com/rhino/4.0/evaluation/download/

This is the save limited 'free' version of Rhino. You get 25 saves, after which it'll still work but won't save anymore. Don't bother saving while you're learning, just leave the window open if you're working on something.

Moi3D, coded by the guy who originally did Rhino, is also a great piece of CAD software and is priced lower than Rhino. I recommend it to anyone who wants to get into 3D CAD at any non-professional level, and it's more than capable of the work most pros do as well. They have both a 30-day time-limited version with saves as well as an unlimited time trial version with saves disabled. It's file-format compatible with Rhino and a user of either one will be comfortable with the other as their interfaces and tools are very similar.

http://moi3d.com/download.htm

After the engineering amnesty thing they did, I think it's a matter of time before Dassault releases a save-disabled version of Solidworks that people can demo. The price of a commercial license is still unreasonable for anyone but a full-time CAD professional, though.

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Bob Garrish
Former Canonized Purveyor of Fine CNC Luthier Services

thats the one.

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sweat the small stuff.

Downloaded Delta cad..Like anything it has a learning curve but seems to be pretty good , not overly complicated and somewhat intuitive, has a 45 day trial to figure out...this may be a keeper..I am building a 12 string and used the program so far to design a head plate and lay out the fretboard so I can design a bridge

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MK5acoustics.com

Check out DraftSight, basically an AutoCAD clone that the SolidWorks folks released just to twist the knife in AutoDesk's side...

Trev

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http://www.PeakeGuitars.com

Depends on what you need it for, if its for wood working then:

I use Sketchup for my woodworking projects and it works famously. Its easy to learn and is free, with tons of scripts to make dovetails, helical shapes,fillets, etc.. It also has a nice forum for downloading models and getting help/started.

Devin