A little late on this one but I use Fusion 360 for my hobby work. I started using it since it is free and looked pretty powerful. There is a bit of learning curve, but overall I think it is worth it. As a nearly complete novice, the machining options were a little intimidating at first until I figured out that leaving a lot of them at default worked well for me. I do like the ability to design in 3d and create a drawing with dimensions and multiple views in very little time once the model is complete. I also like the integration of the model, drawing, and CAM - change something once and update the rest easily - Dan

P.S. I'm not using an Acorn board, but I am using a Centroid control running their older Linux control software. I use the generic Fanuc post without modification and it works fine for what I have done so far. I have not seen a dedicated post for the Acorn yet - is there one?