Anyone know of any communities for CAD/CAM SW? VCrave Pro, Carbide create, Easel, Mastercam, etc.

Also along the same lines, any communities for CNC models, files, toolpaths, etc.?

I've looked on quite a few places and haven't found much. Never looked on usenet...

PracticalMachinist is usually my go-to forum for anything machining related, including CAD/CAM.

I don't know of any on Lemmy currently.

CNC machinists tend to congregate on old-school forums, if they're online at all. Those sites can be a good place to ask questions and talk shop. First one that comes to mind is Practical Machinist, but I'm sure there's more out there.

I haven't really seen a lot of sharing sites the way we have for 3D printing, likely in large part because the barrier to entry with CNC machining is much higher in terms of both cost and skill (generally speaking), so there are just way fewer people doing it and they're mostly doing it in commercial environments where they can't share.

Models from printing sites may be usable if the creators provide the original design files or steps. Some CAM programs support STLs, but the tessellations typically create artefacts on curved and organic surfaces if the model isn't a high enough resolution.

That said, there are some sites on the 2D contour-cutting side of things (e.g. laser cutting, routers). The Maslow Community Garden is centered around the open-source router project of the same name and has some interesting projects on it. I think some of the laser manufacturers oriented towards the hobbyist side of things have similar sites.

I doubt there's piracy communities specifically for CAD software. There is a Chinese group cracking a lot of these called SOLIDSQUAD whose releases can be found in various places.

They appear to have an X.com (the Everything App) profile with a lot of torrents posted: https://x.com/TeAMSolidSQUAD