I may have my understanding of “…creating models 3D models” incorrect, but before spending mega-money would give Blender 3D ago first as it is free or even Houdini by Sidefx if you are after something more parametrically driven (free or £100-ish). If you have the money, you could give ZBrush a try. Fusion 360 also has different 3D modelling capabilities.
Yes you can actually create 3d models in Maker+. The shape editing tool allows you to create 3d models and shape bend twist with many 3d shaping features like relief weave, fade, spin, shape, relief cut out that allows you to cut and paste parts of your 3d model. The texture feature allows you to import textures and apply them to the 3d surfaces of your choice. You can deposit and remove material in any place with sculpting tools. This allows you to take any 3d model and turn it into anything you want. The full version of carveco seems to offer more 3d model tools than the full version of aspire but I do not have either of those so I do not have any real way to compare those 2 but would be curious to hear from someone who has used both full versions.
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Great. I think I’ll take a look. No reason not to be multilingual in terms of the design software. It’s possible I may even move away from VCarve altogether at my next paid update.
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Hello,
This looks great. Can you import images and auto generate carves using VCarve Pro?
Thanks,
Anthony
Abwiliams16
I am very sorry for the extremely long reply time. As soon as I started to play with Vcarve and I quickly learned that the 3d capabilities are lacking - so without much experience I purchased the Aspire license. Then I experienced one of life’s setbacks in the form of a fire in the building where I work. That has consumed the last 9 months of my life, but I am happy to report that I am finally playing with my new-old equipment.
Here’s what I learned:
The aspire tutorials have gotten me off the ground. I took a clear - zero-angle photo of the template I use for electric guitar bodies and imported it into aspire to use as a bitmap outline of the basic shape.
That gave me a good starting point.
Because the precision is lost a little with that process, I manually created and located vectors for the various pockets for pickups, controls, neck, tremolo …
That provides excellent body blanks.
I am now in the process of learning how to carve the shapes into the body - That’s proving to be a little tricky. Clipping in the modeling tab seems to be the answer - But I am still struggling with the way aspire represents heights of the 3d components. I will be searching for an advanced tutorial for that.
I know where I want the carve shapes to start and end, but I can’t seem to figure out how my calculations get represented in Aspire.
Anyway I hope my reply is so late that you’ve made tremendous progress by now.
Good luck. More than happy to continue this conversation if it’s helpful
Billy
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Thanks for the reply Billy. Sorry to hear about your fire and loss. I went with VCarve Pro. I started on the free version and learned it fairly quickly at a basic level. I am sure it does way more than I have realized. I am able to import a jpg of a body outline, which is huge. Then it is a matter of fine tuning the vectors and then adding the cavities for the pickups/neck etc. Once I get the hang of the bodies, I eventually want to start making the necks, which I think I will have to upgrade so a 3D version of something. My Journeyman just arrived Wed last week, so I am in full on assembly mode and getting the table and enclosure all ready. Hopefully I will be able to cut something end of this week!
Cheers
Aaron
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Mark Lindsay just did an update to his tracing bitmaps videos (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOzwMnhWPk8) - he’s worth checking out to learn how to do these. He uses VP and Aspire so sometimes it might seem (like this one) that it won’t apply for you because he’s using Aspire but he’ll let you know if it only works on one of the programs. Aspire’s real difference is in the ability to draw 3D objects vs. VPro only being able to insert them into your project & do minor modifications. For something like the necks, you might want to do a Google search on the style neck you’re looking to do and “STL” and you should turn up a 3D model that you can import into VPro and make it work. Unless you really want to do a lot of 3D modeling yourself 
Great info Jim. Thanks! Since i am just starting out, I would definitely like to import something already done and tweak it I didn’t know I could do minor tweaks to a 3D file in VPro. Can’t wait to play around with it. Thanks again.
Aaron
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Fusion 360 has an entire guitar builder add on app that sets all the curves and angles for the neck automatically that you may want to look in to. I tried playing around with it but then uninstalled it as fusion 360 was just too difficult to operate quickly.
Great! thanks for sharing.
I started with Vpro and quickly discovered I needed the carving features if Aspire to get anything beyond the basic neck shape (outline) and truss rod socket. I am still 100% a novice but it looks promising. Suggestion: There is a YouTube video about carving a gorilla head in Aspire. Watch it. The concepts explained in that video were the ice breakere for me to start to make progress with the 3d carving features. I have gone back to that video several times to refresh my memory and eliminate some confusion. I’m still wrestling with a few things that I don’t quite understand yet.
I’ve decided to back up and start with something less precise. I’m working on carving the smooth bevels into a solid body design. Once I master that, I’ll go back to zeroing in on exactly what my neck should be.
My goal is to never need a file again. I’ve got some work to do. LOL
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Apologies for reviving a semi-dead thread, but I’m ready to purchase a software, I have not used any before and need some advice as well.
It seems as vectric has some limitations, but are limitations of well advanced operations and 3d carving. I dont plan to do anything of this nature just yet, but I foresee wanting to in the future. Is carveco the better option, to keep my machine abilities open and limitations lower?
Do I apply the “buy once, cry once” slogan and opt for carveco m+?
I went through this last month. Went from Carbide Create to Easel to testing VCarve Pro then subscribing to Carveco Maker+. I looked for comparisons between VCarve Pro and Maker+ and couldn’t find anything comprehensive. They both have the same roots and a lot of the same capabilities. One thing that always shows up in comparisons is the mode in which they are sold, VCarve being a perpetual licence and Maker+ being a monthly/yearly subscription. Onefinity offered a good deal on Maker+ 1 year subscription so I decided to try it. I’ll have to decide next year whether I stick with Maker+ or not.
The UI of the two packages are quite different. Maker+ seems a bit more modern but VCarve Pro seems very logical and clean. To me it seemed that with VCarve Pro the 3D views were something you rendered to to see results. With Maker+ they seem to be much more integrated and used, giving you one window to look at instead of 2 dividing your screen. Although at times I’ve also been a bit confused about what I’m really looking at as there are layers to it (vectors, toolpaths, simulation, etc).
I’ve found a few frustrations in Maker+. I kept getting ‘scripting errors’ and “Maker is busy” messages. Both seem to be caused by their multi-window UI and the user having to be aware of it. The scripting errors seemed to be caused by doing an interactive simulation and not closing the control panel (it’s small and ended up on a 2nd screen). The “maker is busy” seems to be caused by having a window open that you used for settings (e.g. doing a transformation), hitting the accept button but not then hitting the cancel button (I don’t know why they call it cancel, it really seems to be a close) to close the window. Now that I’m aware of them I get caught less often but it still seems to be a weird UI issue.
As with anything, there’s a learning curve. Sometimes you need to learn ‘their way’ of doing things even if it is not intuitive.
Maker+'s built in documentation seems to be badly out of date. I’ve tried looking things up and can’t find it, documentation seems to be describing a different version. The help within the UI (hit the ? button on a window) seems fairly (still some thing are not documented) good.
One thing I found was that both are leaps and bounds beyond Carbide Create and Easel. I had a project I needed to carve in Easel that I went back to after a few weeks using Maker+ and realized how limiting it was.
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I think V-Carve and Carveco are very comparable. It will come down to preference and if you feel comfortable shelling out for a V-Carve License right away. Also as you said, Carveco is better for 3D work out of the box. The “Desktop” version of V-Carve will limit your work area to be smaller than what’s available on the Onefinity, so you’re looking at nearly $700 bucks for V-Carve Pro if that’s the way you decide to go.
I’ve tried all of V-Carve, Carveco, Carbide and right now I’m trying Easel a bit. I plan on learning Fusion 360 soon as well.
I found the V-Carve interface pretty easy to learn. Carveco looks nicer, but it wasn’t quite as intuitive up front. They have a pretty good set of training videos on their website that are definitely worth going through. They are all about 5 minutes long and can be watched on 1.5 Speed pretty easily.
I find Carbide’s interface way too dumbed down to the point that I have difficulty using it for anything but the simplest projects. The image tracer is pretty nice though and I sometimes opt to use it solely for that.
I’ve just started trying Easel, and the main reason is because I wanted a way to generate box-joint drawer boxes I can cut on the CNC (It works really well BTW) V-Carve has a similar plugin too, but I’m outside of my trial on that.
Even though Easel Pro is going to be more limited than V-Carve or Maker, I could actually see myself using it. It’s very user friendly and I feel like I can create things quite fast.
I would recommend trying out each for their initial trial periods (one at a time if you can) and then go from there. The types of projects you want to focus on will definitely play a part in whichever one you end up with.
For now, I’ll continue to mostly use Carveco Maker as it covers almost all the bases and I really can’t justify $700 on software at the moment. If I need to do more easy boxes I’m sure I can find a way to run a parametric script for Fusion360 or I can just sub to Easel for a month.
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I appreciate the insight. I was initially leaning towards carveco but for the minimal differences and my lack of knowledge, the perpetual license with vectric, makes the most sense. Its the lower investment with ultimately the same capabilities from what I gather, and the option to upgrade is always there. Thanks again
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Thanks for the detailed reply, it was extremely helpful. I believe you’ve swayed me, opposite of my original thoughts.
Vectric is on the list for me. I have 3 month trial with carveco that I may utilize first, though.
Try both so you have a better basis for decision.
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