Are you sure Vcarve Pro wouldn’t work for you? It’s about 1/3 the price. There’s no size limitations but it doesn’t do 3d. I’ve downloaded the free trials but have never invested the time into it. With Fusion 360 being free it’s hard to give it up. Yes it’s too powerful and does too much for the hobbyist which makes it frustrating. I’m sure if you use it all the time it makes sense.
Yes, that was the other thing. I primarily need 3D. I wish Pro would do 3D. Thanks though!
That’s not correct. VCarve Pro can cut a 3D design. You can even do some basic editing on it - raising or lowering it within the stock, removing part of it, overlay text or some other component on top of the 3D carve, etc. You can’t create a 3D part using a brush, etc. in the software - you’ll want to do that in some other software like Blender or just import STL files that other people have created. You also can’t import more than 1 STL into Pro but that can be solved by using Blender to combine multiple files into a single STL file that you then bring into VCarve.
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Jim, I thought they called it 2.5d. I don’t have Vcarve so I’m no expert. I assumed that Aspire was more like Fusion 360 where you can work on the project from any angle. While Vcarve pro was more designed for making projects from one side.
Ziggy, I feel your pain. I wish Vetric (or someone else) would offer a discounted version like Fusion 360. I would rather something that wasn’t on-line and limited to saving 10 projects without dealing with downloading. Something that was geared mainly for CNC use. Fusion just feels like it’s designed to do everything for everybody except for simple things like making a simple sign with a V bit.
I have used it for over a year now and I’m at the point where I feel comfortable doing most things that I would like to do. I can’t tell you the number of times when I wanted to extrude something but there was a break in the lines forcing me to zoom in to inspect the entire segment. I still don’t understand why some lines are blue and others are black.
@Dr-Al if you mean blue versus black in sketches, black = fully constrained. Blue = not fully constrained, meaning it can be moved around in the sketch in some way.
If you mean cam, blue = cutting. Black, I haven’t seen. I think I may have heard a video where someone was explaining 3d contour surfacing. I wasn’t paying attention but I recall the person saying black was a tolerance deviation because the cam model isn’t really a solid you see on the screen, but a triangle tessellated mesh. this is predicated on my memory not inventing dialog while I was doing something other than watching.
That’s the old stuff. You can do a double-sided 3D cut path now - if you want you can make a ball using VCarve Pro (from maybe V10?).
Aspire is an “all in one app” where you can create a 3D model with the drawing tools in Aspire and then cut them. VCarve Pro allows you to take 3D models from other sources and pull them into your project and cut them.
I used to use F360 until they started to ramp back permissions (from 100K of sales for a small hobby business to 1K now before you need the paid version) and stripping functionality that they decide isn’t needed by a “hobbyist”. If they just did that once and then settled it wouldn’t be that bad, but it seems every update introduces a new limitation. I was using it for small batch sheetmetal fab and ended up moving to Freecad & the sheetmetal workbench that has (can flatten a 3D box for instance and recalculate the sizes to take into account K-factor to adjust for metal stretch when you bend it to shape).
For artistic 3D something like Rhino, Blender, etc. are much better than F360 where the 3D seems more for parts manufacturing.
Anybody have any suggestions for an affordable CAM option that isn’t web based? MeshCAM isn’t workable from what I have experienced. Couldn’t even set up a v-bit.