Aspire Vs Vcarve Pro 8

[wsteffan]

Looking for feedback on these 2 pieces of software.

I have Vcarve pro 8 and I am wondering how much of a difference it will make to upgrade to Aspire?

I am looking at the galleries and it seems that Aspire looks like it can do a lot more.
How much more vs the 1400.00 to upgrade is what I am trying to decide.

If anybody has used both or just aspire, can you give me some feedback?

Thank you
Wayne

[4DThinker]

I've used both, and Aspire basically can do anything that all their lower priced products do.

[tonydude]

I used both myself and aspire will do anything that vcarve pro 8 does plus in aspire you can do your own models from line drawings etc. It's work the money.

Tony

[Rando]

Aspire has many more features, and that's a good thing . Are there some specific things you want to do, that you can't with VCarve?

[wsteffan]

I was going through some of the free projects and noticed that a few required aspire only. That's one reason.

The 2nd was I bought a model from cncminiprojects and watching the video they used aspire mostly as well.

I have the trial and so far I'm seeing you can design your own models which I don't know how good I would be at doing that.

As far as if Vcarve does everything for me, I guess so far it does. I just don't have the time to learn probably either of the softwares fully.

[Rando]

All:

I was recently (late May) considering moving from VCarve Pro (latest) to Aspire as well. But the $1000+ upgrade price was a big enough barrier that it made me investigate CAD-CAM options. I ended up going with AutoDesk Fusion 360 for 3D modelling, because it's free, it outputs standard STEP, STL and other file formats, and it lets me check assembly fit of the parts in 3D.

I looked around at various CAM packages, and ended up going with BobCAD-CAM v27, in their 3-axis mill pro package. They gave me a killer deal that made it much closer to the Vectric pricing. At full-retail it is significantly more than $1k; I got lucky on timing, I guess.

I'm completely happy with the choice, on several fronts: the AutoDesk Fusion is a pretty cool 3D package, and can output for CNC or 3D printing. I can even make rudimentary toolpaths with no other software (I didn't look into this much at all). I take the STEP solid models from Fusion, and import those into BobCAD mill pro, which has much more modern toolpath generation than Vectric has (hopefully they'll improve theirs). And, as a bonus, I get to keep my VCarve, Cut3D and Photo-VCarve licenses too.

But for complex assemblies that need to be moved around to verify things like bolt holes and sliding fit, AutoDesk is much better solution. Not perfect, but better. Don't get me wrong: I very much like the VCarve and other Vectric software, but found myself too often working around its limitations...and the fact my particular design was reaching into 70+ separate toolpaths range...very difficult to manage.

As with any full-on change of CAD/CAM software, there was a big learning curve. So far I'm really happy with the change.

Like most upgrade-versus-replace decisions, if the price to upgrade requires more than a little thought, consider looking around at other packages; you might find a gem outside the sandbox you're playing in right now.

I found a good rundown of the popular CAD and CAM packages, and how popular they are:

http://blog.cnccookbook.com/2015/05/24/ ... -software/
http://blog.cnccookbook.com/2015/01/20/ ... ad-survey/

They're long articles, because they start at the pro-level top-end, but eventually gets to the low-cost, hobbyist and free stuff.

Regards,

Thom