I am kind of new to this world. Here is a little background. I own a sign shop and recently decided to vertically integrate as much of my supply as possible. Part of that meant I needed a CNC router. I just finished building a Lead 1515 and so far Im really glad I made the choice to go that way. My production requirements, right now, are light to medium. Will be cutting mostly ACM, HDU, Acrylic, and occasionally thin aluminum. Mostly 2D and 2.5D but would like to move toward 3D at some point. Ive been using Fusion 360 and I am comfortable with it, but I have been seeing a ton of videos with people using the V Carve. (pro versions of both) It looks to me like V Carve has a simpler user interface, by simpler I mean maybe more intuitive? And Fusion seems like it may have deeper capabilities? My question is which is better in terms of capability and ease of use? Thanks!
It boils down to "what" you are making: Fusion for "parts", Vectric for "art" (not 100% of course - both can do both areas - but if you are an engineer designing parts you want to machine - Fusion is a better bet. If you are a signmaker, or making Artistic 3D carvings - Vectric all the way)
You got to what I was meaning but put it into words a little better than I did. Being that we are doing signs and "simple" sign parts, what I have seen from Vcarve seems like it may be better in terms if ease of use.
Absolutely - its a signmakers dream! Yes! (except the lower end Cut2d - see comparison table: Products Compare Page | Vectric) See their Youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/c/vectric for awesome tutorials Test drive the Trial version Free Trial Comparision | Vectric Use our Post Processors when you use it with your LEAD: docs:software:vectric [OpenBuilds Documentation] Purchase a licence: Vectric Products - OpenBuilds Part Store
Great! Thank you for the prompt reply! This is the biggest reason I chose the Openbuilds platform over the others, the online user support forums.
Vcarve makes importing and carving 3D files super easy. I do a lot of 2 sided 3D carves and rotary 3D carves. It only takes a few minutes importing and creating toolpaths once you get the hang of it and do a couple. I only have Vcarve Desktop, but it has everything I need. For a pro sign maker, Vcarve Pro would be better. You will probably be doing larger carves than I do. The nice thing about Vectric is that you can buy one of their versions and anytime you want to upgrade, you just pay the difference in price.
Good morning. I’ve been using Windows computers for decades and in the last several years have been using Vectric VCarve and Fusion 360. Recently, in early June, I upgraded. Now, I’m running VCarve Pro and Fusion 360 on a MacBook Pro 14” with M1Pro processor and 32Gb RAM. I installed Parallels (ver 17 I think, whatever the latest was in June), and then installed Windows 11 on that virtual machine. First: the MacBook is generally incredible, really should have upgraded years ago. Second: For VCarve and Fusion 360, everything works “OK”, not spectacularly. Third: although the Mac is a clearly (to me) superior platform, many technical (e.g. CAD) apps are not originally or natively designed for it; therefore the experience is not always superior. VCarve has to run on the Parallels/Windows virtual machine. The biggest thing I’ve noticed is that the rendering of the paths in 3D view is slow and choppy. Additionally, in 2D view, it sometimes loses its ability to snap to points, or loses its ability to display accurately. For example, when dragging something, the view may lag the dragging action, or never even catch up. Fusion 360 exhibits similar quirks on the MacBook which I didn’t see previously on the Windows computer. Artifacts from the Fusion window left behind on the desktop, etc. Closing Fusion and restarting it sometimes fixes these issues, temporarily. These things smell like memory management problems. For VCarve, I don’t know if it’s rooted in Parallels, or in the Windows virtual machine, or in the newness of the M1 chip. For Fusion, I’d have to narrow it down to the M1 chip or the Mac version of Fusion having some memory management bugs. I suspect all of this will get worked out in time. The M1 chip is still pretty new, and maybe Vectric will wake up someday and provide a native Mac version. Sorry for rambling, maybe this will be helpful to someone. Thx, rink.
