As a teacher, I can get Mastercam with a substantial discount. But as a hobbyist, it's still a fairly large wad of cash to justify. A little more than CamBam would cost me. Is Mastercam worth the cost and learning curve for a guy who just wants to make hobby stuff on a Chinese 3040 eBay machine?

I also get a bunch of the AudoDesk stuff for free as a teacher, including AutoCAD, Inventor and some others. Inventor comes with a free 2.5D cad add-on.

CamBam is only $175 and is pretty simple to create code from.

Any thoughts?