All I know about Fusion 360 comes from this guy. At the time he had about 17 lessons that went from very simple to very elaborate "things" created in Fusion 360. I like his style and he really did simplify it for me. https://www.youtube.com/@ArnoldRowntreeTeachesFusion360
For more design flexibility without a steep learning curve, consider trying out Fusion 360. It offers robust design features and is relatively user-friendly once you get the hang of it. As for CNC software, I've had success with VCarve Pro for wood projects. Speaking of experiments, I recently ordered a cool metal sign, and it turned out really well. If you're looking into making house name plaques, such tools could be quite helpful.
I built a my first couple of CNC mills from plans off Instructables and learned a lot about backlash :-( I bought a home-built Joe's CNC hybrid with a 48 x 48 cut area after learning all I could with my home-built machines. It uses a Hitachi router as a spindle. I bought an FPGA-based motion controller called the HiCon Integra 7866 from Vital System to drive it all with Mach 4 software.
For design I started with CamBam and Inkscape. I moved on to Vectric VCarve Desktop (now Pro) and am delighted with it. While VCarve's CAD is really just vector drawing on steroids it is the absolute best package I have ever used for setting up toolpaths, simulation and generating GCode. Vectric provides a ton of included video training. There is also a lot of VCarve tutorial videos on YouTube.
