There have been many improvements, feature enhancements and fixes to carbide create and carbide motion over the past 2 years. That’s great work to improve these tools for us users. What I don’t understand is why over the past 2 years the user manual in the customer portal of carbide 3D for the CC tool has not been updated since 6/4/2021. The manual there available for download is for CC V5 (it is at version 7 now) and there is no downloadable manual for CM. I and I’m sure many other users would like to see both manuals updated to the current released versions for both software tools. What happens now when carbide releases new versions of these software tools is a short one sentence note of the feature added or fix in the release notes. There is no addendum posted for the new feature or fix of the release to add to the manual to download or a new manual to replace the old one. It is difficult as it is to contact support by phone or send an email with a question about a new feature update and wait for a reply. The support phone is not answered and you can only leave a message. Is there no staff at carbide tasked with keeping manuals updated and posted on the customer portal?It would be more convenient for users with a software feature question to refer to an updated manual explaining the feature than to get in the support queue or hunt in the community forum for an answer that could be answered in an updated downloadable manual. This would provide some relief to the customer support phone queue as well as the email support queue. Can someone at carbide look into this and get manuals updated on the customer portal?Thank you.
Carbide Motion seems straight-forward enough to me that it shouldn’t need a manual — I put some screen grabs and notes at:
but I’ll be blunt — we’ve had many instances of referring folks to the documentation which answered their question, but folks choose not to read it — so it’s easier just to have some handy links which refer to discussions of the current version since they stay updated as a matter of course.
Phone calls are returned in the order they are received.
If referring people asking about new CC V7 features to documentation that is for V5 and not kept current, is it any wonder why it may not be read. And besides, I’m not sure how you can know people don’t read it. Maybe they have read it but can’t find the answers related to V7 in your customer portal for manuals because it is V5 info and hasn’t been updated since 6/4/2021.
The v5 manual is clearly identified as such and I’ve never given it out as a recommendation since v6 was released. However, the fundamentals which it covers have not changed, so it is still valid for the basics.
When folks ask after v7 on the support queue, they get the following response:
It’s kinda sketchy when the updated manual is linked to a non Carbide 3d website. Kind of like the wiki that was provided by a Shapeoko user and s no longer available.
I’m not sure you’re a particularly good judge of this, Will — I’m betting there aren’t many people with more time on the product than you…certainly not figuring out how to make it work. For those for whom CC is not part of their daily jobs - and who aren’t “Trial and error” learners, it could definitely use a manual - certainly based on the numbers of people who have asked about it over the years (particularly 3D modeling!)