Powder Coating Plasma Cut Steel

I've been focused on the CNC equipment in the wood shop for the past school year because we had been preparing to teach our first guitar making Winterim in March 2022. Deepening my understanding of the process of creating tool-paths using Fusion 360 to mill guitar bodies has led to lots of other experiments on the CNC router including several iterations of frame milling techniques. I have decided it is time to learn more about the CNC plasma cutter and accompanying equipment in our metal shop. We have a student who is interested in learning to plasma cut and powder coat, so I am investigating and experimenting with those tools to build my skills and comfort teaching students to use them.

CNC Plasma cutting is a 2D process. All that is required is a sketch in the form of a DXF. I have become much more comfortable working in Fusion 360 for CAD/CAM projects, so I naturally started designing my first plasma cut parts in Fusion. While this process does work, it is unnecessarily complicated. I think there are some projects that benefit from specific dimensioning that a CAD tool like Fusion 360 or Onshape, however it is probably quicker and potentially easier to design these 2D sketches in Illustrator. In particular, creating text that keeps the inside of letters from falling away will be much easier in Illustrator than the moderately complex process I developed to accomplish this in Fusion 360.