Hi Paul,
If you’re going to try alternate software and want to retain tool probe and bitzero functionality, I would advise to look at either CNCjs or gSender: not because they are necessarily better than UGS, just because those two have been used by a number of folks here with bitsetters and bitzeros, while I can’t remember anyone mentioning using both with UGS. I remember UGS has a probe module that should work if you setup probe dimensions correctly in the module configuration, but for the tool length sensor I believe it won’t work as UGS has not smart macro support. I may be wrong, I only ever used UGS a few years ago.