Comment by WillAdams

(ob. discl., I work for a company which sells software in this space)

I wrote up a bit on Carbide Create at:

- https://willadams.gitbook.io/design-into-3d/2d-drawing (note that there is a link to a free (as in beer) download for Windows or Mac OS at that link)

- https://willadams.gitbook.io/design-into-3d/toolpaths

Other commercial programs which one licenses and installs and which don't intrude beyond that include:

- MeshCAM https://www.grzsoftware.com/

- Alibre https://www.alibre.com/ (note that there is a CAM option which is a re-badged MeshCAM)

- Moment of Inspiration 3D https://moi3d.com/ (this is probably the next commercial package I try)

and of course FreeCAD has a CAM Workbench which has seen great strides and Solvespace has a basic facility for G-code generation and some folks just program G-code/CAM directly --- I've been working on a tool for that myself: https://github.com/WillAdams/gcodepreview