New Fusion 360 user checking in here...
Been around CAD for a long time, all informal. Currently have medium skills in OpenSCAD, Sketchup, and any of half a dozen drawing programs from the past. At one point, licensed BobCAD. I actually ended up dropping BobCAD because their sales staff was so pushy on the phone. Used CamBam a lot when I was using BobCAD. Also used Vetrix products quite a bit for CNC. The CAM is 'built in' to the Vectrix products.
Scratch built a 24" x 60" x 5" CNC router a few years back and used it in a small business for quite some time. Still have it and use it for occasional hobby/family use. That's mostly where the Vectrix products come in. Also have a "Charter Oaks Automation" Mill, that is NOT CNC, just a human with a DRO.
Built a "Liteplacer" pick-n-place machine (see liteplacer.com) about two years ago, and this made me interested in the "TinyG". This is an all-in-one board that takes G-Code over a USB serial, and moves a CNC or similar. Somewhat like a RAMPS or DUET or SmoothStepper in a 3D Printer. Somewhat. I ended up getting involved in the Firmware for the TinyG, and had a few fixes pulled into the main branch. I also became heavily involved in the "Chilippepr.com" user interface for TinyG / CNC, and ended up writing most of their UI that involves Axis, Homing, Coordinate system transforms, and similar. So, yeah, I code imbedded, web, etc.
Ended up converting the CNC router to TinyG and that was a HUGE improvement (vs. Mach3 and a smoothstepper board).
I've also done a lot of circuit board 'drafting' and production. Used "Eagle" quite a bit in the past. Eagle is still largely a de facto industry standard. However, it has some limitations for the hobbyist license, and it has the WORST UI of ay CAD system I've ever used. Therefore, I've become pretty fond of DesignSpark PCB. If you do any circuit board CAD, DesignSpark is worth it, in my opinion. In particular, it has the best way to build custom components for the library that I've seen... and PCB CAD largely lives and dies by its libraries.
Let's see... if anyone is still reading (and I don't really know why they would), a few other things:
4th Generation Texan. Live in an "Airpark", a group of homes that share a runway, near Denton, TX. Private Pilot. Own a CH750 STOL (Short Take Off Landing) airplane, and a "Powered Parachute" (not the backpack thing, the two-person chassis under a parawing thing). Also a "Light Sport Repairman", meaning mechanic for ELSA and SLSA aircraft.
LONG time RC flyer as well as the full scale stuff. Mostly helicopters (pod-n-boom, not multi) these days.
Make my living as an "Enterprise Architect" for a Fortune 50 who shall remain nameless.
Several years back, involved in the Firmware for the "MultiWii", one of the projects that took Multi-Copters (aka Drones) from Government/College lab level funding down to a few hundred dollars. And maybe that team helped lead up to the fact that they are now in every toy store for just a few bucks. In particular, I wrote all the support for decoding "Spektrum" (brand name) radio data streams.
That's way too much for an intro. Looking forward to the community.
Danal
danal (dot) estes (at) gmail (dot) com
Hi Danal,
Thank you for this very comprehensive intro. We now know everything about you! 🙂
Welcome to the Community and I hope you will enjoy the Fusion 360 forums https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-360/ct-p/1234