Ski Builders Forum

what does everyone use for cad design software ?

There is not one best cad program for ski design. You could design skis with pretty much any cad software, so I would recommend to go with something you either already know or something that's easy to learn if you have no experience with cad software. Cost is usually also a factor, which makes good open source cad software like Freecad quite interesting.

I personally use Rhino...however, the only reason I use it, is because that's what the guy who cut my first templates on his cnc told me to use when I started building.

i use fusion 360 and love it, but if all you need is to draw some templates pretty much anything will do.

I use a couple programs to get my shapes drafted - I start in snocad and export to dxf. at first I thought great, just import the dxf into fusion and we're off to the races! but.. the dxf that snocad exports is a polyline with thousands and thousands of vertices and when I try to import into fusion it pretty much contemplates the meaning of life for 20 minutes and then crashes.

my workaround is to import the snocad dxf into autocad and use a lisp script I found called polyline diet (https://www.cadforum.cz/cadforum_en/dow ... ileID=3078) to reduce the vertices significantly, then import the dxf into fusion for extrusions and cam.

if you dont have access to autocad i guess the next best option would be to import the dxf into a free option like freecad and trace the polyline with arcs. I havent personally tried freecad but I think its really popular, I see it all the time on the hobbycnc subreddit.

I'm sure it doesnt help that I run fusion on a budget laptop with well, not the greatest specs.. If you have a powerful computer maybe the complex polyline won't be an issue for you.