I Really Don't Like Carveco. Change My Mind?

CAD (Design) Software Carveco
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I’ve used several CAD/CAM softwares in my time, but I have to say I’m pretty disappointed with carveco. I’ve been using it for the past few months because a free year came with my new CNC, but there’s a slim to none chance of me continuing my subscription once the free trial is up. Nearly every time I use this SW I find something else that makes using it just that much more cumbersome. That being said, I am open to my mind being changed. If someone can tell me fixes to the issues I have, thereby making the use of the program more enjoyable, I’m all ears.

I have been trying to post this same thread on the carveco community forum but for a week now the post has been pending. Symptomatic of that whole org I think…

A few gripes:

Each time I search the forums or carveco website for the varied issues I have, I’m very seldom able to find clear answers. This isn’t because of a nuanced problem and there are many ways to accomplish a task. It’s due to me not finding any other instances. Maybe that’s because it’s newish and a library hasn’t had the chance to be built yet, but it sure is aggravating.

There are many ways to make CAD/CAM more efficient, and one of my favorites is hotkeys. However, the hotkeys that I’d like to apply to actions in carveco aren’t allowed. Moreover, one of the MOST frustrating things I’ve found is that when I try to assign a shortcut key to some buttons, they are “assigned” to something called “New Menu”. There is no command in the structure called New Menu when I search for it, therefore I can’t unassign the current hotkey and reassign to what I want to. Additionally, when I do press any of the several hotkeys for “New Menu”, absolutely NOTHING happens. I’ve tried it with different windows/toolbars open within carveco and still see nothing. Absolutely useless, and I can’t unassign it in order to reassign the hotkey command. Also, there are multiple hotkey commands that are assigned to “New Menu”, so it’s not like it’s just one command that I’ve ben deprived of, but several. Sheesh!

What the heck is “Cursor Info Settings” in the options menu? There are two fields that are under this submenu, Opacity and Text Size. I was hoping that I’d be able to enlarge the text size of the GUI to make things easier to read, but changing these has no effect that I have been able to discern. I’m sure they do something, but I can’t find any forum topic about it and I’ve watched so many videos from carveo tutorials that I would think I’d have come across it by now.

If that’s not the way to adjust the text size of the GUI, then how would I do that? If I can’t do that, that’s a really dumb miss by carveco. I can change the text size for the PC so all programs have that, but a) carveco is the only one that’s difficult to read, and b) when I do that, the fields the numbers are in don’t change so it just leads to even greater legibility issues.

As I said, I’m open to having my opinion of carveco completely turned around and be shown that I was just not finding the correct menu options for a lot of these issues. I’d still argue that carveco did a poor job of making things intuitive if that’s the case, but I wouldn’t completely talk trash on it. I will genuinely be grateful for any solutions or insight from others. Show me the error of my ways.

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I had similar issues with Carveco. Switched to Vetric and have 3 websites with YouTube videos as well as great teachers especially Kyl Eli. Good luck.

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Can’t say enough good about Vectric, outstanding support and a great program.
Pat

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I originally posted this same message on the carveco community forum page, but carveco has had the post “pending for approval” for a week now. My guess is that whoever is moderating the forum for carveco won’t allow any post highlighting the faults of carveco to be published which is quite a shame.

Sounds like I’ll be going down the Vectric path. I used it way back when but not for a long time. I had messed about with it to sample a friend’s x carve machine. I’m sure it’s changed a bit since, but likely for the better. Thanks for the input, folks!

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This post is a bit old but I thought I would answer your questions. The best place to get Carveco support is on the Carveco users group on FB. There is an active crowd there that will answer any question and respond usually in minutes to your issues. The hotkeys can be changed by first going to the options and making sure locked toolbars is not checked. This option locks all the customization of the toolbuttons. Then if you right click and go to customize you can change the icons and hot buttons in any of the menus. You can drag and drop these buttons to any place in any menu you want or if you assign a button it will overwrite what is already there. You also have to have save toolbars on exit checked or it will reset to default when you close the program.
Cursor information is when you hover your mouse over the material it gives your corridinates in x y and z axis
The text size in the options is for default text sizes in the text generator tool. The dpi of the vector size will only make the vectors bigger. The best way to make the program larger is to change your computers resolution when running this program. You can set that by right clicking the icon and going to compatability and run in differnt resolutions.
The software is the most advanced non parametric CAD/CAM on the market and has user base that is 10x the size of vectrics and most of the worlds coin mints and jewlers use carveco for its design power.
Feel free to message me on FB for more help or tips. I also have youtube channel showing Carveco how tos at https://www.youtube.com/@timberfalls

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Could not be more frustrated!!! I received this with the one year as part of the Onefinity offer and to many times I go to open the software and it errors saying it cannot connect to the system. I go through everything it tells me to do and still nothing. I then have to use the online which just slows me down. I will be looking into Vectric

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Onefinity should give you the option of choice of software.

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I have switched to Vectric. The Carveco that came for the first year worked. It was cumbersome, definitely NOT intuitive and generally clunky. That said, it worked as advertised for the few times I used it. I agree with Derf that OneFinity should offer/allow a choice in software with new machines.

The help on FaceBook is not necessarily helpful. Not everyone on the planet is as computer savvy in the social media world nor wants to be so involved. A simple web site with forums, moderated or not, seems the best corporate path. Trying to take advantage of free FaceBook to save a penny is costing them dearly with desktop CNC clients. The posting about designers of coins using Carveco and having a large user base is not helpful unless you’re designing coins. The description of how to change fonts, button functions, etc. is definitely NOT designed to be intuitive. Having to post here, finally get an answer months or years later is simply not going to cut it.

I had an initial issue with Vectric in the first tutorial on their web site. I still don’t know what I did or did not do, but the vectors simply disappeared. The response from three different people within and outside Vectric provided varying levels of solutions within a few hours. The combined responses give me a thorough understanding of how to recover the work and further manipulate/configure the interface.

None of these points were included in the original tutorial from Vectric. Many may come up in later tutorials. For now, access is the key and it works.

This is a somewhat unique/limited software distribution, (compared to say Microsoft Office or similar products), taking a step back from assuming too much will go a long way to keeping customers happy, upgrading and the company income steady over many years. While not applicable to most, it’s worthwhile to remember that Campbells Soup removed instructions from their products. That was unwise and they had to resume providing directions to heat a can of soup. Maybe not quite so extreme with this technology, the idea remains applicable.

Vectric is intuitive for the most part. Items are clear and arranged in a logical pattern. Due to the similarity between functions, I find modifying the interface far more helpful and I’m sure as I learn my preferences that will be very handy and speed up my work. With winter coming on and my workshop finally usable year round, I am developing new and more advanced projects. My bigger problem may become sourcing materials, not software. I’d LOVE for that to be my biggest issue with the CNC.

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Yep, I switched over to Aspire/Vectric as well. I went with a trial and within the first half hour was completely sold. I hate a subscription service so forked out the dough for a perpetual license. Aspire for the win. I will never go back to carveco. It’s left a burning hatred in its wake. All the things I wanted it to do Aspire can not only do, but do intuitively. I spent some time converting all of my carveco projects into straight vector files, so while it’s a bummer to have lost all the tool paths, it was waaaay quicker to reproduce with Aspire. And even better, since I have a perpetual seat, I won’t have to worry about losing them again. Far superior.

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The shortcomings in Carveco and the recurring subscription are a bad combination. Since my last post I’ve been able to design my own projects, taken ones I’ve purchased and run them successfully, and even modified existing projects enhancing the results. I was never able to do that with Carveco. Just ran into too many issues trying to do simple things. I still agree, OneFinity needs to offer options, not just push Carveco. I don’t know the “deal” they have between the companies but I’d hazard to guess that they would sell more hardware if they opened it up a bit or moved away from Carveco.

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Onefinity used to offer VCarve. Why they stopped is beyond me. I have been very happy with VCarve Pro. I purchased V12 and was happy when I received an email for a free upgrade to V12.5

I do cabinet work on an elite Foreman. I wrote software CabMaker32 and CutMaster that work seemlessly with VCarve Pro or Cut2D Pro and OneFinity (Masso)

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We offer both Carveco and Vectric.

We just offer carveco maker for a year for free, currently, as a promotional when buying the Apprentice or Gen 2 Elite.

But you are free to use either one (or others)!

Both are available on our site to purchase!

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We do. It’s here: https://www.onefinitycnc.com/shop/category/cnc-machine-software