I'm already using Fusion for CAD and I've got a bit of past experience with CAM so it Fusion look too bad to learn. I'm using a blackbox to control a Shapeoko style CNC router. I'll be doing a combination of basic engraving as well as trying to get into some fancier 3D carvings. What disadvantages are there to Fusion 360? And is post-processing required? I saw a few posts about an OpenBuilds postprocessor but Im not quite sure what it does and if its truly required.
Fusion360 is great, and there ar emany videos on Youtube that will teach you how to use the CAM, start with 'Fusion Fridays' from NYCCNC. Yes, the postprocessor is *required*. fusion generates tool paths in a generalized internal format, the go here, lift there, do down there, go there sort of instructions you might give when telling someone how to carve something. Then fusion gives those instructions 1 by 1 to the postprocessor which translates the generalities into real Gcode that is suitable for the target machine. Blackboxes speak a subset of the LinuxCNC gcode set, so there are some Gcodes it cannot process. a Siemens or Fanuc or Mitsubishi or other controller each has its own dialect, usually based on the RS274 standard but extended in many different ways over the years, so each of those has to have its own postprocessor to produce Gode it understands.
