I just bought a Shapeoko XXL and was looking around for some other CAM software besides Carbide Create. I came across some vids on YouTube of some guys using Vectric and decided to give it a try. I’m interested in buying it but when i went to purchase it came up with a “warning” that the Cut2D Desktop is designed for small machines w/ a maximum bed-size area of 24" x 24" and that if you have anything bigger you need to upgrade to the Pro version. My question is what does bed-size have anything to do with it when you can select material types and cut pieces out as big (or bigger) as your table? Why does the software have concerns about bed size?
Note: i’m just a garage DIY’r that loves wood working so i don’t need anything with tons of horsepower. The price of the desktop version is attractive but the Pro version is almost 4x as high & is not attractive at all.
Your toolpaths will be limited to a 24"x24" envelope, so if you want to make something larger than that you’ll have to upgrade to the Pro version, or tile your toolpaths. I use Vectric VCarve Desktop and own an XXL and it works just fine, I just can’t make a project in VCarve that’s larger than 24"x24" unless I want to pony up another $350 for the Pro version, other than that there’s really no difference in the versions anymore (except the gadget library) since VCarve 9.5 added rotary support for the Desktop version that was previously only available in Pro.
Thanks for the input Dan. So basically if I was trying to make a wasteboard 36 x 16 I’d have to break it down into 2 pcs with 1 pc at 24 x 16 and the other one 10 x 16?
Any reason you went Vcarve instead of the Cut 2D desktop? The VCarve is currently $349 and $149 for 2D.
Yes, you would basically have to break a large job into several 24"x24" maximum jobs. The software has tiling built in though, so you could feasibly tile a 100’ long job into 50 24" jobs right inside the software (I have not made use of this feature myself, but it’s in there). I haven’t had a project that really uses the full size of my XXL that I wasn’t able to do in Carbide Create, so I haven’t coughed up the extra $350 to upgrade to Pro.
Several reasons to go with VCarve, 3D machining, STL import, etc:
I have my own separate 3D modeling software which is what I use for my paying job, so I can easily spit out STL models when I want to do 3D. I really like the Vectric software too, I find it very intuitive (I’m an ex-software designer/programmer and I’m hard to impress). I was up and running really quick with VCarve after just messing around and doing a little reading/video watching. I probably do 85% of my projects in VCarve, some in Carbide Create, some in Catia, .and occasionally use Meshcam as well.