Been playing around with easel. Haven’t ordered the xcarve but thought I could at least get familiar with the software. Oh boy, am I having some fun.
How close will the real thing be to the easel pictures?
That’s what the carvings will look like, it’s a what you see is what you get rendering. The variation would come down to a few factors:
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The size and shape of the bit you select. By this I mean if you pick a smaller diameter bit you can get into corners better than if you use a larger diameter bit. This might not be obvious but if you change bit diameter in Easel you can see this change when you preview it. If you use a V-Bit you can get into the corners better on fine detail.
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The wood may not have the same shadowing as the rendering of the wood. Depending on the piece you have the discoloration of the wood will vary.
Anyone else have other feedback to add?
I’d say it will be pretty close. Also, you really only need a depth of about .1 inches to engrave something it you are not filling it in. The renderings look like you are cutting pretty deep. I did the same thing and designed a few things prior to getting it and we have not regretted it.
You can get it very very close. You will have to develop some techniques for carving. I MUST WARN YOU!!! If your having this much fun with just easel then you should see your doctor before purchasing. The excitement may be to much.
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@PaulRinguette, you could click on “Generate Detailed Preview” button to get a better preview of the final result. Notice the final two images (Detailed preview generated) are better compared to other images (Detail preview NOT generated).
These designs are awesome! You will love the real thing.
@PaulRinguette, since the bit you selected would not fit in those small regions, you could carve only the region shown in the preview. You could select a smaller bit to have more details in the final result.
Your designs are fascinating. Once you carve one you’ll have a better feel for what depth you need. Based on the level of creativity you’ve shown here, I would love to see what you can do. Nice job on the designs.
the other thing I will add is, learning the different properties of different woods, soft woods carve way different than hard woods, and the big box hardware store pine seems to be of less milled quality than other places I buy it, and then there are exceptions to hardwoods as well. Jatoba is beautiful wood…but it sucks for carving, its so dense and the grain patterns do not lend well to fine detail carving…MDF is like carving butter, but I hate using from a pride standpoint…its sawdust and glue not real wood. But that’s my own horrible bias.
Then there is the WTF factor…you can carve the the same item over and over again on the same type of wood, and one random time it will turn out like crap, some random chip out etc…you go check your work progress, you’re all confident because you’ve rocked this a million times, your of course also under a time crunch to finish…as you see what has happened to the project gone wrong…you yell a few expletives, flip the xcarve the bird, take a torch on torch to the material that ruined your carve…and you go hug a beer and call it a night…
These are my experiences anyway…so take them with a grain of salt lol
If you take the time to dial in your machine then you will LOVE the X-Carve.
Imagine drawing one of your projects and then actually holding it in your hands after the X=Carve does its thing 
X_CNC you hit it right there, creating something in the digital world and then getting to hold it in your hand as reality is the true addiction for me.
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I once heard someone say that everything great that has ever happened to humanity has begun as a single thought in someone’s mind. You now have a device that can take anything that you can dream up, and turn it into a real object, one that you can share with the rest of the world. A dream doesn’t just become a reality by magic. Dreams become reality by the magic that the X-Carve creates.
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