Greetings from LA, Ca

[John Casagrande]

I live in Los Angeles, Ca and became interested in laser cnc'ing about a year ago. I purchased the same laser shown in Russ Sadler's video series. I watched his whole series before purchasing my machine from a local supplier (www.toolots.com) after having an issue with non-delivery of a K40 unit directly from China via E-bay.

I am a fairly knowledgeable IT person having working in the field for 45 years before retiring several years ago. I initially purchased the laser to cut out leather parts for phone cases, key chains and moccasins. My son has a graphics design business and we have used the laser to burn menu boards and acrylic logos out for several of his customer projects.

I have found RD works a little difficult to use and have tried Inkscape, Corel draw, Autocad and the free version of Siemens Solid Edge. I find that Solid Edge seems to have the most intuitive user interface and tools but all have been problematic when trying to import back into RDworks. I would appreciate any suggestions on what others have found to be useful CAD tools and import strategies.

[Pete Cyr]

Welcome John. You may want to consider LIGHTBURN
https://lightburnsoftware.com/

It is much better than RDworks if you are looking for a one stop shop software to run the laser.
Otherwise designing in something other than RDworks and just using it for a layer and power assignment is a good way to go.

[John Casagrande]

Thanks Pete,

I downloaded the trial and installed on my iMac. I neglected to say that I used RDworks in a VirtualBox Windows 7 or 10 VM on my iMac. Lightburn imported files that RDWorks opened but required a bunch of clean-up. Again, thanks for the tip it should make things easier.

[Willy Ivy]

Welcome John. Prior to RDW, I had no experience whatsoever with any kind of computer design so I learned on RDW and designed and cleaned up probably 500 or more images. Then came LB. I use it for 99.9% of all my designing and it has saved me countless hours. I have coreldraw but I don't understand most of it and spend more time trying to figure it out then what it is worth. I now have about 300 of the images created in RDW imported into LB and it is the only reason I open RDW. There is no comparison between the two. I will be glad when it is finished because I do not see any reason to have other programs in the near future.

[Pete Cyr]

Again, thanks for the tip it should make things easier.

Your welcome - hope it works out for ya.