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Post by tnmike on May 27, 2019 20:24:49 GMT
Hi all,
I am hoping to purchase a Carve King later this year and would be working with it in my garage. Unfortunately that would be maybe 60' from my WiFi base station in my office and have little hope of connecting to the internet, unless I buy some other equipment to extend the range (takes money). Therefore I think it would be simpler getting started by using stand alone software. So I am looking at free or very reasonably priced software, can be even 2D, just to get started. I have a PC in great shape that is a few years old but should be plenty:
Dell Inspiron 620 Win Home Premium SP1 64-bit 8 GB memory Intel i3-2120 3.30 GHZ processor 1 TB HD, I think
I've ordered a RX460 graphics card with 2 GB GDDR5 memory, which should be adequate. In any case can any of you suggest some software that might work well for me to get going, given the information above?
Thanks, Mike
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freik
Full Member
"What did you buy the new CNC Router for?" "To make stuff for my CNC Router!"
Posts: 107
Location: Bellevue, WA
Machine: Power Route
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Post by freik on May 27, 2019 23:57:58 GMT
Why are you putting a graphics card in an 8 year old PC? That won't likely have any discernible impact on the software you're talking about. Save your pennies and buy a WiFi range extender.
-Kev
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Post by tnmike on May 28, 2019 0:26:47 GMT
Because it has an integrated graphics "card" and much of what I have read about Fusion 360 pretty much requires a separate graphics card to perform well. I still hope to work with F360 one day.
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Post by ibohan on May 28, 2019 20:51:01 GMT
Fusion 360 doesn't need to be connected to the CNC. I use my desktop to use Fusion 360, then copy the G code to a flash drive and load it into UGS, which is connected to the carve king. My machine is also outside of the wifi range.
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rowiac
Full Member
Posts: 230
Location: California
Machine: M3
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Post by rowiac on May 28, 2019 22:43:19 GMT
The computer that is actually connected to the CNC does not have to be very powerful, nor does it need to have an internet connection. All you will be doing with it is running a g-code sender such as UGS with a USB cable connecting the computer to the CNC. I am using a ca. 2005 Dell laptop running Ubuntu Linux and it works fine.
If I were you I would get a cheap old computer to leave connected to the CNC in the garage, and use your good computer in the house for designing. Then just transfer gcode files between computers with a USB stick. That would give you a lot more choices for software.
Oops! I see I mostly duplicated what ibohan said, but there you have it. Multiple people thinking the same thing.
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Post by Bruce on May 29, 2019 0:38:35 GMT
I agree to that too. There are some using a Raspberry Pi running UGS or bCNC connected to the CNC machine.
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freik
Full Member
"What did you buy the new CNC Router for?" "To make stuff for my CNC Router!"
Posts: 107
Location: Bellevue, WA
Machine: Power Route
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Post by freik on May 29, 2019 13:51:01 GMT
As for Fusion performing better with a separate graphics card, you can turn the render quality down and you'll be fine. They don't appear to use any GPU optimizations for things that seem to matter for us hobbyist types -Kev
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Post by tnmike on May 29, 2019 19:25:49 GMT
OK, thanks to all. Sounds like a good plan. I'll keep the Dell 620 in the house for everything but the G-code sender. I have another, older Dell that can be my mule out in the garage.
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apopj
New Member
Posts: 1
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Post by apopj on Dec 29, 2019 0:34:11 GMT
Hi tnmike..... to answer your original question, i am using vectric vcarve desktop v10. It and the included clip art are "stand alone" in that you do not have to be anywhere near wifi to use it. I installed it on my computer and use it in my motorhome to design projects while i travel. Jeff
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Post by asumasensei on Jan 17, 2020 12:55:12 GMT
That’s all true about the gcode delivery but not the design. I’m exclusively using Fusion to design and I’m not happy with how slow my desktop is rendering. It’s tolerable but a bit laggy, I believe it’s more the memory available on my graphics card but I’m not a fan of my path generation times either so I’m going to upgrade the CPU as well. Personally I’m blaming Microsoft for their search UI and Onedrive, two different types of OneDrive running in the background at the same time doubling down on your comp 😑. If you’re not using OneDrive I highly recommend removing it. I’m going to be doing a way over the top upgrade because I use my desktop for a lot of different things including video processing and of course video games.
I have a i5 3570K (4 core, 4 thread, 3.8Ghz) 16GB ram Nvidia 780 dual classified (3 GB)
I’m targeting the i9 9900K (8 core, 16 thread, 5.0Ghz) with a Nvidia 2060 (8GB). It’s not going to be a cheap upgrade but it only has to happen once every decade so it’s a relatively cheap hobby in comparison lol
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Post by Bruce on Jan 17, 2020 23:24:44 GMT
i9 CPUs are out now! I didn't know that. CAD software are a resource hog that is for sure.
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gogogad
New Member
Posts: 44
Machine: Carve King
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Post by gogogad on Jan 18, 2020 0:33:53 GMT
Asumasensei, If your building a new rig, I would look into Ryzen or Threadripper. And since its a bit cheaper bump up the video card. If you just upgraded your 780 to something you would notice a huge difference. More so then upgrading the CPU. But, ddr4 ram, if you don't have it already will also make a significant difference.
Video card is the most important part of a computer for Fusion, followed by ram, then CPU. If it were my build, i would stack my money in that order. If your budget allows, a 2080 (700 bucks ish) Ryzen 7 2700 (180 bucks) or Ryzen 7 3700 ( 330 bucks). Plus whatever ram you can add to your budget, would be a crazy powerful Fusion machine. Also the Ryzen mother boards tend to be cheaper then the Intel ones, so you should be able to make a savings in that dept and still get more/better features.
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freik
Full Member
"What did you buy the new CNC Router for?" "To make stuff for my CNC Router!"
Posts: 107
Location: Bellevue, WA
Machine: Power Route
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Post by freik on Jan 19, 2020 6:27:01 GMT
I'm gonna respectfully disagree with gogogad regarding priority of system components. I have "latest & greatest" Mac Mini (6 core i7 8th generation, top speed is 4.2Ghz IIRC, but crappy Intel GPU) and a PC (4 core i7 6th gen, top speed is 3.8GHz IIRC) but it has an nVidia 980ti (top of the line gfx card when I built the machine a few years back). Both have 32GB of RAM. The Mac Mini trounces the PC while using Fusion 360, particularly during the CAM pieces of the workflow. They take turns driving a 5K x 2K monitor (*lots* of pixels).
More, faster cores seems to have a much greater impact on performance of Fusion than the GPU does. RAM is a "You need enough RAM, but having more really won't help" sort of thing, but I'd *definitely* not bother with a nVidia 2080 graphics card. You're paying a very high premium for only passably better performance for what you're doing. CPU (lots of cores, high frequency: Ryzen or ThreadRipper, honestly), and then 32GB of RAM at least. Get a $300 GPU, and you'll still be just fine. I honestly can't tell the difference between my PC and Mac.
Anyway, that's my $.02, (I've been building PC's for 25+ years, and have been working in "big" software for 20+ years). Wait. How did I get this old?
-Kev
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jms
Full Member
Posts: 168
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Post by jms on Jan 26, 2020 13:21:49 GMT
I will say, F360 , first of all takes forever to boot up, then when doing 3d modeling it locks up and crashes my desktop. I have to pull the plug and restart PC . It drives me nuts. It also causes my computer to behave wierd after I shut down f360, as if its still running in background for a little while. I have only 8gb ram, so maybe I'll look into adding more RAM. But I am clueless about video cards.
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Post by asumasensei on Feb 6, 2020 19:56:09 GMT
Asumasensei, If your building a new rig, I would look into Ryzen or Threadripper. And since its a bit cheaper bump up the video card. If you just upgraded your 780 to something you would notice a huge difference. More so then upgrading the CPU. But, ddr4 ram, if you don't have it already will also make a significant difference. Video card is the most important part of a computer for Fusion, followed by ram, then CPU. If it were my build, i would stack my money in that order. If your budget allows, a 2080 (700 bucks ish) Ryzen 7 2700 (180 bucks) or Ryzen 7 3700 ( 330 bucks). Plus whatever ram you can add to your budget, would be a crazy powerful Fusion machine. Also the Ryzen mother boards tend to be cheaper then the Intel ones, so you should be able to make a savings in that dept and still get more/better features. I just had a buddy telling me the same thing when I brought it up in conversation. The last time I built my PC, AMD had unreliable processors that didn't have the same safety and limits that Intel did at the time. Times have changed, so should my dinosaur mentality. I'm hearing that they did fix those prominent issues (it has been a decade after all lol). I do have 16 GB of DDR4 RAM and I'm using project lasso to monitor my PC and basically give it a crutch under the high duress times. I notice that my RAM is never pinned but my GPU wants to poop during simulations and my CPU has an an urism on post processing.
Honestly I think it was MW2 and their piss poor port that is scaring me to the i9, missile for the ant analogy lol. They didn't compress the game before having me download it and it's been having all sorts of issues. 180GB uncompressed download and I'm having issues, who would've thunk it.
You too built you're PC near the same time!
However, that's apple to oranges my friend, you're mixing operating systems while comparing specs. Windows is as capitalist as it comes when talking about being power hungry. Their Windows 10 SearchUI is absolutely obscene and would make the difference you're seeing between the two by itself lol. I got so mad I found a way to uninstall it only to realize that I was using it stupidly heavy as a workaround to find administrative tools for windows I've used since 95 lol. (Not directed at computer savy people lol) Press the windows button and just start typing the name of what you need and you'll see how nice it is. Most people don't even realize it exists lol. Not to mention you have the extra cores in the mac daddy, combined with the leaner OS that's definitely no contest.
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