There’s always the unruly conflict between software and hardware; both being differently malleable.
1 Like
At least there was a functional physical element justifying that and making it at least somewhat defensible — everytime I look at the “rounded” corners of the screen on my Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Pro 360 I become angry, and every time I think about counting up how many are made unusable by this the words “class action lawsuit” come to mind and to my mind it is simply reprehensible.
I’m probably the minority voice here, but I hopefully my perspective represents more than just myself. I am a full-fledged hobbyist. (Technically, I’m a retired computer science professor.) I spend most of my week on CNC-related activities. I’ve carved chess boards, crosses, Christmas ornaments, a couple of board games I invented, a daily pill case (for us old folk), trivets, wall carvings of the lake where we live, 3D puzzles, parts for a marble track (many parts for a marble track), desk organizers, … You get the idea. Most of my projects were gifts, and many were one offs (not counting the failed early attempts). I have no intention of selling anything I build.
This brings me to my point. The pricing of most CNC software is ridiculously expensive for us hobbyists. We already have to sink a few thousand dollars to get a decent machine and end mills, not to mention dust collection solution and clamps. Fortunately, some of us already have basic woodworking tools that are also needed. Spending additional thousands of dollars for software is out of the question for me. Quite honestly, many of the CNC modeling programs are not as complex as many systems from other software sectors that cost a fraction of this amount.
Cost of software played a large roll for my choosing C3D equipment. (No, I’m not being paid to say this.) I continue to use CC. And yes, I was irritated by the decision to make exporting to G-Code awkward at best. However, about that time I decided to do more 3D carving, and I can live with the subscription cost of CC Pro. I’ve experimented with several other programs, and of course many have more capability and flexibility. However, I’ve found that with an occasional hack, I can make CC Pro do pretty much everything I need - and do it with a drastically simpler user interface and learning curve. If I really get stuck, I’ve learned enough Blender to throw together an STL.
C3D, please don’t assume the world of CNC is all commercial users.
5 Likes
I’m right here with you Dave. I understand the cost of software for someone running a business or turning a serious profit, but for people who are just chilling in the shop for some fun it is prohibitively expensive. I’m looking straight at Vcarve as well. There is also compatibility issues as Vcarve is only available on Windows boxes, which is disappointing considering the increasing market share of Mac users in general.
I have my complaints about CCPro and features I wish it would have, but overall I’m fairly pleased with what I’ve been able to pull of with it so far.
As an ex CTO of a software company I’ll add a point to that if I may.
Developing, maintaining and supporting complex software (we did, physical simulations) such as CAD / CAM is not cheap and the user base tends to be small.
There’s a common perception out there (not suggesting anyone here says this) that software is all profit because the marginal cost of another copy of the code you already wrote is zero. There’s two problems with that, first, you need to amortise the development cost of the expensive developers over however many copies you sell and second, each time you add another user you add support costs. “Saving money” by offshoring development of this type of software is, IHMO, the sort of thing only an MBA thinks is viable, I’ve run offshored teams and this is not the sort of thing they’re good at and the QA costs, product functionality impacts and management costs generally exceed any proposed savings against a good local team.
So, for vendors like Autodesk, who must have poured an horrendous amount of money into Fusion360, yes, they have a large customer base by CAD standards, but by software standards, it’s small. Add in all the corporate overheads of marketing, sales, grossly overpaid CEO, customer entertainment etc. and the costs mount up. I’m honestly quite surprised that the F360 team kept the hobbyist license cost as low as they did when corporate told them to milk the hobbyist users to cover their costs and reduce the freeloader burden (simplified I know). Don’t get me wrong, I was not happy to pay >£400 a year for Fusion after thinking is was “free for non-commercial use” but it’s still an not a bad price for a corporate vampire.
C3D is in another place entirely, the user base is tiny, they support multiple platforms including RPi, their target users are hobbyists / inexperienced users who are simply a higher support cost, they produce regular updates to the software and still have a comparatively low subscription price. I don’t know how they do it, maybe there’s a clone vat churning out Robs somewhere, however they do it, hat off to them.
11 Likes
Thanks @LiamN as I have been wanting to write something along these lines but haven’t had the time yet. I too am a former CTO of a software company and it pains me to see people not understanding the immense cost and effort to produce software.
6 Likes
Laim,
I am not a CTO, but I do hold a PhD in computer science and more than forty years working with software engineers. Since you may be directing your comments to me, let me be clear I never meant to suggest the “common perception” to which you refer. More importantly, I agree with your entire reply (with the exception of the comments about Autodesk for which I don’t have sufficient corporate knowledge to either agree or disagree). I would just add that software pricing all comes down to the company’s business model, including profit margins. My concern is that the CNC world has largely priced many hobbyists out of the market, and I certainly support the thinking that C3D has been an exception. Perhaps that is why some of us struggle to learn Blender.
4 Likes
That’s a perfect summary, I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Now, back into my vat.
4 Likes
David,
Nope, not directed at you, or anyone else here.
I also agree that the software pricing can be pretty steep for a hobbyist and it’s something that most of us getting into the CNC hobby didn’t budget for so it tends to come as a nasty surprise.
All I was looking to do was explore what the realistic price dynamics are for the hobby CAM market are, whilst those of us nerdy enough to want to CNC at home are a fraction of a percent of the population.
I think the appearance of 3D printers has likely increased the home CAD / CAM user base an order of magnitude, perhaps we have another of those transitions in the near future with a coming generation of additive manufacturing machine, in which case somebody may be able to amortise the costs of a CAD / CAM package across enough users to make it cheap, or we may get to a place where an open source package hits that critical point of being good enough to attract enough user contributors and break away.
edit - it’s also possible that somebody not called Autodesk in the commercial CAD & CAM game may figure out some sensible way to avoid the revenue leakage of commercial shops using their ‘hobbyist’ license and then decide to try to take the community base away from Autodesk. I, for one, would consider that to be excellent and would likely go learn their package.
Even when you pay for Fusion many of the things you’d want such as 4th axis machining are even more expensive machining add ons, it’s become quite a bit like a game with ‘in app purchases’ 
5 Likes
This topic was automatically closed after 29 days. New replies are no longer allowed.