Hi, hopefully this isn't a repeat question, but I had a bit of a search and found many questions but no good answers.

My part-time (almost "hobbyist") workflow uses 2D CAD - often my PCB editor which outputs layered DXFs - into SheetCAM, to mill the odd 2.5D part out of materials like HDPE. It works well, but is slow to design everything in 2D and iterate.

What would make more sense is being able to quickly and simply draw everything in 3D, using simple 2D extrudes say with fillets for ballnose cutters etc, then export a 2D DXF with predefined layers (or even go straight to G code). The idea is to speed up the design / drawing phase, especially when doing tricky things like using the edge of a ballnose cutter to chamfer something.

But I can't find anything. Alibre does the drawing part quite nicely, but doesn't output DXF any more, but when it did (of if I pay) there was no way to export each operation on a different named layer. Various other free or affordable 3D tools are very slow and horrible to draw stuff and/or have similar DXF export limitations. DraftSight draws paths in 3D quite well, but has no solids visualisation ability that I can see.

I can't afford a $5k CAM package, and I only want to do 2.5D at this stage.

And there it is. Just wondering if I'm overlooking any obvious answers.