While browsing the forum world I happened across this somewhat local form section so Ithoght I would give it a whirl. I have a small guitar shop in Ringwood NJ. I have been building acoustic and electric guitars by hand for more than many many years yet under the saw dust I have always been computer addict. so now that I am much older and filing necks and other parts with shaves and files are not as comfortable as it once was I thought I would give automation a try at least dip my toes in to see if I could get a handle on the software environments. I purchased an X-carve from inventables which seemed to me a reasonable starting point and being an old vet I was able to get Solidworks student addition reasonably priced. Since I had also purchased CNC neck design from cnclutherie.com a while back it seemed the right path to take to start. The instruction is laid out quite nicely and I am able to do the neck designs that I find suitable for my electric guitars with tilt back headstocks. Where I am running into a real snag is, you guessed it the CAM. Although the 2D body and pickup cutouts are relatively straight forward. Everything I have trialed when it comes to the neck wants to cut the neck from a solid block of stock that is as large as the highest Z point which of course waist valuable time milling air since the actual stock is cut to 1" with the angle already cut as well See pic. Being lost in the mire and somewhat frustrated I purchased the second series DVD from cnclutherie.com CNC neck machining boy oh boy that certainly shed light on what I really needed. He uses MASTERCAM Yeah right, brilliant. you can even insert a stock model to create to cut/toolpath your design from. So I guess since I can not make enough guitars by hand a year for food, rent and MasterCam license the question is are there any affordable (remember I am a 1 man guitar shop) CAM packages that can utilize the Solidworks coordinate system or in some file extension way unknown to me that will not waste time or wood getting to the actual milling of my tilt back neck stock preferably from a single tool path job. where I do not have to reset my zeros. Not sure I am stating that correctly I hope you understand what I am getting at.. Anyway that my story