Hi, I'm needing to learn Shop-Talk cad/cam for my new job. I've got the cad part down but can't grasp the cam side.

I can't figure out how it knows where your program zero is. I see a place to set the home position but how can you know without putting the part in the machine and touching it then going to absolute zero to set program zero? They are using g50 and incremenatl at my new job rather then absolute and geometry offsets.

I got the part drawn in cad and have imported it into the cam side but I only have options to cut to a point or to a line and add chamfers, etc but I don't see how this makes it easier then hand coding the gcode if you have to enter all points anyway. Theres options to do things such as rough face too but I cant get any decent results using those either.

Any help or push in the right direction would be greatly appreciated. There must be something I'm not getting. Or is this just crappy software?

Thanks