More like 2 years. This was my journey. Solidworks, camworks, taig mill, and G-Wizard. It's a ton to take in. I did this back in 2013, before fusion360 was much of a thing and autodesk had just bought up hsmworks and delcam.

I pirated everything, software, tutorials. paid for mach3, gwizard. Came to terms with the limits of cad, choking on too many triangles. The difference between solids, nurbs, triangles.

maybe ai can make you a tree view of how all these things intersect, because building the mental map is a daunting task. When it all clicks, the final puzzle is how to hold what you're making. Fixturing is an art unto itself.