Thanks for the speedy response. Yes, I consider Vectric to be a modern UI, but also any of the tabbed/menu-based software–Word, Excel, etc. come to mind. I find CC frustrating because I cannot see all of the selections all of the time. Stuff seems to only appear when you have certain things selected. And usually I have trouble recreating the steps to make an item appear. Even if something is not available, it is helpful to see it greyed-out. So you at least know where to find it in the future. CC seems to be geared to a “power user.”
Please keep in mind that I do not use CC at all any more. After using it briefly when I got my SO3 I looked around and settled on Vectric. Yes the price is hard to swallow and functionality can be complicated. To offset that, their tech support is very responsive and tolerant of new users.
Therefore, I’m in Vcarve Desktop for all of my work. I’m sure that for someone that uses CC frequently, finding stuff is second nature. But for noobs and infrequent users CC is just not intuitive, well, at least for me.
Thanks for asking for my input. I appreciate that courtesy.
Maybe this has already been asked for, but a feature that I wish was inherent in the Carbide Create upon multiple occasions was the ability to perform linear or circular arrays. Linear arrays to rapidly layout a design in rows and columns (ie stars on the US Flag) and Circular arrays to rapidly layout a design item around a specified circle diameter.
I use the Carbide 3D, CC and CM software, I also use the MeshCam and the results are excellent, I can not complain about it. There are small problems but we are solving them. And many times it is due to failures in my knowledge of g-code and machining, I arrive here without any knowledge and today with the Shapeoko I do what I want and very accurate.
I am used to the Vectric style of having all the options up there, and if you click something without the right conditions being met then you get a popup with the selections required or changes you need to make before selecting this tool. Rather than the CC way of once you have made the selections you are given available options fitting those conditions. This does make for a less cluttered interface, but can lead to trying to work out what you need to select to perform a certain task.
I personally prefer having everything up there like Vectric, but the more time I spend on CC the easier I find it to work with.
@robgrz: While I was reading @WillAdams (excellent) assistance on this thread I realised that if CC had a vector trim tool this would have been a trivial exercise. Instead he had to create circles and perform several steps involving boolean subtractions etc… I think the reason that Aspire is going to be difficult to replace as my go-to is the abundance of these super handy features. For this to compete with even the likes of Vcarve desktop (At $350) you need to have the majority of features that it provides, reading through the Vcarve Desktop product page here I can still see a lot of gaps.
This only comes from a constructive place, I just want CC Pro to be the most feature-packed and best value software there is, and for people to say in DIY CNC forums “Carbide Create for $750 sounds steep, but it’s worth it”
I agree with Will on this one. UIs will always be an acquired taste. New ones are never perfect until they are, but they can be bad.
It sounds to me like CC just needs the vector editing capabilities of Illustrator and Inkscape, the 3D capabilities of Fusion 360 and Blender, the toolpath generation capabilities of Autodesk HSM, the CNC specific tools of Aspire, and a UI that knows what you are going to click before you do it.
Do that, plus add a couple of features that set it apart (like some sort of AI for feeds & speeds), and I’m in…as long as it runs on my Win95 PC or my Pi Zero…Oh, and make the price much closer to that of Inkscape than that of Aspire.
Yeah, because nothing says “success” like buying your competitor almost 10 years to the day after a federal judge declares you can’t buy any competitors for a decade.
An example of why Freehand is far better than anything even without any recent development: Processing a complex SVG
Adobe InDesign is a much more consistent program with a much better UI than Adobe Illustrator, because it’s based on the Aldus standards which were modeled on the drawing program designed by Altsys.
Moreover, Fontographer is still available for sale, and is much the same drawing interface.
Just to add to your comments, I agree with Will that sometimes, the Vectric menu can seem very busy but the tools are there and on mouse over you get what the seldom used icons are used for, while not perfect, it works well. Maybe it is because it has so much functionality that the interface can be a bit busy.
What you did not mention is that Vectric has menus that are accessible with a right-click when you select objects, it follows the standard look and feel for Windows including shortcuts, has multiple undo/redo. CC does not have half the features of VCarve Pro let alone Aspire (just look at the menu). For example, VCarve supports tiling, engraving, a fully customizable tool library that can import endmill data, import STL, trace bitmap and dozen of other functions not available in CC.
What takes me a few minutes to create in VCarve takes a lot more time to create in CC and I have to use workarounds and a lot of frustration. I use CC for simple stuff and maybe would consider Pro if it had a better than VCarve 3D functions with 2/3 of the other VCarve functions at half the price.
This will definitely show up at some point in the near-ish future. We didn’t have a good way to implement it until we redid a lot of the internals to support the Pro features so it had to wait until now.
Another feature I realized would be useful: When clicking onto an existing component in the Model tab, it would be helpful to see what the shape parameters were used to create the component. I have read the reasoning about the shape parameters not being adjustable after the 3D component is created, which is unfortunate but acceptable, but maybe we could show the values grayed out at least for future reference. That way when I come back to something months later, I do not have to guess on how it was created or guess how someone else created their shared *.C2D file.
I would love a Pro version… just stumbled onto this thread.
My biggest problem with CC, though, is the mac bugs for the cuts screen. It got a tiny bit better with the newest version, but right clicking on cuts is often times a whole inch away form the actual item i’m right clicking.
Now… I’m not terribly worried with a “free” version… and otherwise it does all that i want… but if i’m paying for a “pro” version, i’d expect bugs support and solving of those would be much faster.
Now… as for features i’d love to see… 3d mouse support! I know it’s silly… but for those of us in Fusion 360, a 3d mouse is absolutely essential.
