I am in the middle of a contract support environment with a very ugly history. This post will probably get my banned for life. It did on Vectrix. The owner needs to get this device up and running. I have a loaned Warthog 4x8 1/2 ton router table temporarily in my garage that was running Enroute3x. The pc died, the interface card died, the Enroute3x runs with a dongle only in an XP vm. The Vm was my doing on a win10 laptop with no GPUs. The Enroute is a mandatory upgrade to 1ks of dollars.The owner buys Flashcut with out consulting me. He also just gets through a divorce. I configure the table to Flashcut. We decide to check out Vectrix Aspire. I get a previous OEM version for $10.00USD(ten bucks). The poor dealer is stuck with previous versions inventory and is trying to recoup loses. It runs and produces signs as a test on my previous laptop with no GPUs. He has higher design demands that require GPUs for his software. He is sick of dying in XP and win 8. He has really nice saddle printers, H.P. and the like. He buys a $3500 MSI GS75 Stealth screaming laptop with win10pro. The owner wants 3d. He has some really cool ideas that take 3d models and slice them up into plates. Vectrix advertises this. I pull the models into Vectrix Aspire 9.x and the 3d viewports are blank. I call Vectrix. They tell me my versions can not be registered. I tell them I am a consultant trying to get the table back in business and we are looking at your software. They tell me the GPUs are in conflict and I should start deleting software to find the problem. Have you ever gone down that path with licenses? We dont want to start hacking and bashing the machine to solve some else's problem. I described the problem in detail to Vectrix. How do I go around Vectrix's problem? I run a win10 home vm and viola. I got 3d. I slice an fbx and it comes out way wrong. I send another message Vectrix stating how I solved the problem and that they had better find a solution as many CNCrs do not want to find them selves with a huge investment that is now dead in the water and have to buy a another lesser machine or run VMs. What is in that right? Just run a VM and share a folder for files. It aint magic. Mark my words: In 5 years you are not going to be able to find a machine without GPUs. Vectrix permanently bans me from the support forum. I was working to get them a customer and through my other posts in other forums glorify Vectrix through this experience. I am so glad I did not get my customer to buy the full priced version. That would have been $1500 lost. And oh the support trail would have been horrendous. We all know this nightmare. I go back to my previous laptop and load the 3d model there to slice in Vectrix and I find the same problem. Dead in the water or running software that Vectrix wont register that still doesnt do what we want. Most CNCrs dont have the computer experience, time or funds to keep chasing the elephant in the room. And during this economic failure in the COVID plan no one can afford to lose any business. 41 one years experience in all computer platforms and software and I still run into this damnation of the computer business model. The personal joke is the more experience you have the uglier the unforeseen problems. I know this is not anybody else's problem here but I thought the community should know about the upcoming GPU failure in their software. And yes I get it. They refuse to support unlicensed software. But I will lay claim to this that this is just the beginning of their downfall. In these days there are just too many other less expensive choices. You blink, you die. Caveat Emptor. But I know the development failure that Vectrix committed. They put all the bells and whistles in up front and now newer versions are not at an attractive pricing level while leaving the OEM distributors with dead inventory as collateral damage. I should state that I have bought from Open Builds before in support of this Warthog and the big one is when and if this router table goes home I can reproduce it with an Openbuilds 4x4 table with the works for under $5k. This is my dream for the future. On this 4x8 i did route planks for corner edging of my house and create a vacuum boot. The boot sides are an inner tube strip.
I'm afraid that what you bought for $10 was a pirate copy of Aspire, not a "previous oem version". Alex.
Agreed, Vectric would always honor a legit licence and they are known for great support. $10 licence is software piracy - you may want to consider deleting the posts you make online about this, just on the basis that one may may not want to publicly admit to supporting software piracy. Lay a criminal complaint against the vendor you bought it from (the only bad guy in this story: software piracy is illegal, as is defrauding you of the purchase price) , forgive Vectric (they weren't wrong here) and buy yourself a legit licence from an authorised distributor, like Vectric Products - OpenBuilds Part Store - you'll find the experience to be drastically better!
I am pretty sure the problem lies in your pirated software and not a legitimate Vectric product. I use a high speed gaming laptop with a GPU and have absolutely no issue with Vectric software. I use it almost daily. The main problem I see is your client is wasting his time and money relying on someone testing that doesn't use the proper tools for the job. Aspire has a trial license that is the most recent version. Why not use that? I am pretty sure your $10 OEM license is about as legitimate as the Corel Draw program dongle that came with my K40 laser.
Also: How does a dealer get stuck with copies of something that is sold as a digital download? That should have been your first clue as someone with Come on, you knew what you were buying and now you are maligning a business for an issue that only you have because you tried to avoid paying for the software. It is too bad your client will miss out on great software due to their only experience being with a pirated version.
Thank you all for the answers. This was a situation where I was just trying to get the table up and running. It has been dormant for 10 years. We found Aspire and were ecstatic about getting the table to perform since the ENroute environment went belly up for us. We were able to save all the projects. Buying the new software for me is not a problem. The client cant afford it at the moment. If I buy and the table goes away then I basically buy a table from open builds and I have my own business fully loaded with assets. I would be done. Right now we can only do profile cuts so we thought we had something to go on. The future dictates more varied projects. This whole situation enlightened me to problems in the software sales arena that I was aware of. I had gotten to the end of my rope in the entirety of the process. I will move forward with the decisions at hand and do the right thing by Vectrix. I had no intentions of doing wrong. I just wanted a quick fix for the table to prove it was in good working order and I got it. The owner can not move forward but I can for I am allowed to use the table at my will. Its taking up half my garage!
