Hey this is my first forum entry so if i did something wrong pls tell me. I want to make a solar trough. And i would like to cut out the basic shape of the parabola in wood and i want to have a near perfect shape ( so that all the light if as focused as possible) so i thought why not make a sketch and print it out. But i want the parabola to have an underlying mathematical function ( e.g. y=0.0016*x^2) but i dont know how to do it in any program i have accesses to, autocad for mac ,inventor fusion for mac and a solid edge st3 but im not very familiar with the last.All halp is greatly appreciated.

You can import sketch curves from Excel (there you can generate any expression) - see:http://www.cadstudio.cz/en/apps/importcoord/ 

You can import sketch curves from Exce.