I just wanted to put in a few of of my cents here. I am a web developer of over 20 years now. I am very familiar with Raster and Vector drawing and, in fact, have taught these using a variety of software.
After purchasing my X-Carve and playing with easel I was slightly dissapointed. Easel, being a web/java application is inherently slow and limited in its design abilities. Nothing against the developers or the software specifically, I was just used to much more control than I had.
I turned to Corel Draw to do my vector layouts then importing them into Easel as gcode. Bad idea. It rarely worked.
So I laid out the massive $$$ for VCarve Pro. Its a pretty decent vector application but cannot shine a light on Corel Draw. Corel has been in publication since 1989 coming out with newer and better versions all the time. VCarve hasn’t had long enough to mature that way. But VCarve is an OUTSTANDING toolpath generator and simulator and can handle a lot of relatively basic vector manipulations. So I have been importing my Corel Draw (and also SketchUp) drawings into VCarve to generate and cleanup the carve before sending it to the machine.
Incidentally, I also use Universal G-Code Sender instead of Easel to send the G-Code to the X-Carve. This seems to work wonderfully and I have great, quick, success.
Again I am not trying to put down either Easel or VCarve for their abilities. They both do some decent vector graphic manipulations at varying degrees but I wanted to suggest that if anyone wants some real vector control and some really serious effects, give Corel (or SketchUp) a shot.
This is just an informational post in case someone is looking for an easier way to work with vectors or a more advanced software than Easel/VCarve.