I’m about to purchase my x-carve, and am curious about vcarve. Is it worth it?
What’s the difference between vcarve and easel? Basically, what can vcarve do that easel cannot?
They don’t really have a product description. I had one guy on youtube saying the vcarve wasn’t worth it, that he could do everything he wanted with easel.
Any opinions, experiences, product knowledge?
Desktop as well.
Easel is fine for starting but you can’t go wrong with vectric products. I started with cut2d, then upgraded ( vectric lets you upgrade for the difference)
Purchasing Vcarve is like discovering you have an extra arm that you never knew about. Easel is great for getting started, but once you understand how CAD works you will really appreciate the features that Vcarve offers. Just having true Vcarving is almost worth the cost by itself.
depends on what you are wanting to do with your CNC
if you are wanting to make vcarve text signs then yes vcarve is probably worth it
if you want to machine parts and have no need for fancy text i doubt it would be much benefit to you over easel
also consider fusion360 which is free
Pretty sure you can do a lot of that with fusion360
You can with traditional end mills. Fusion just added support for vcarves, but the abilities are limited.
talking about what phil posted
Understood. Fusion will do those features with straight endmills, but not V bits. At least not to my knowledge.
The bad part about Fusion 360 is the learning curve and the possibility that you spend countless hours learning it and in 6 months or a year the decide to stop offering the free license.
Well i had mentioned fusion360 as an alternative before your post
+1
I understand that not all can afford to purchase expensive software. But, as I get older, I find that I have to trade “dollars” for time. That is, rather than spend a lot of time learning and living with “free” software which is often buggy and lacks features, sometimes it makes sense (for me) to just buy it. Thanks for EASEL, free, to enable others. But, I didn’t want to be tied to the internet to carve and although EASEL has continued to be improved, I think it is still lacking.
So, I started with VCARVE desktop. It could be okay for many. But, watching some online videos, like on YouTube, it was clear (to me) that Aspire was the way to go. So, I paid the difference and upgraded. Yes, I didn’t tell my wife that I was spending this much!
In my many years of dealing with software, I have found that Vectric software (Aspire) is one of the best in terms of features and reliability. Newbies might start with the demo and then decide how, or when, or if, to upgrade. Yes, it’s expensive to upgrade. But, when you’ve already spent several K dollars for a CNC, what are you going to do with it even if you’re not doing it for business? I’m just a hobbyist, but I want to do what I want to do.
Today at 10 central there is an Easel Live talking about the latest enhancements.
Do you have link to Easel live. At work and can’t find it.
I believe it starts at noon CDT
doh. my bad. I went looking for it and couldn’t find it… then I started to doubt I even saw the notification. ha ha ha
Hi Gary, I don’t think I would be lucky enough for you to be living in Lismore Australia because what you wrote I thought sounded a lot like what I was thinking. I am an old fart at 77 and enjoy playing with cnc and 3D and am at the point of looking for something to replace Easel. Thanks for your advise and have a Merry Christmas.
Regards Col Britton
