All of Vectric software is installed in separate directories. If you installed V12, you still have V11 sitting there to use.
The trials are the same way, but you can’t do anything more than what the trial allows. Files are only good for your use. But, hey, it’s a trial.
As far as 3D creations, they are not meant for general use, but basically for creating toolpaths. There is some export capability though.
Ok, so a general purpose 3D design tool would be better if you have uses outside of the CNC world.
I was
Wondering if I could ditch the V11 and v12 Desktop directories now that I have v12 pro. Sounds like from your description that is safe.
I have to say, only if you are sure that V12 will work fine with your files created with V11. Now, the reason I’m saying that is we’re really all still “testing” V12. Someone already found a quirk in the saving of gcode in V12.003. Within 4 hours Vectric had that incident solved with V12.004.
I’m not in any hurry to hogtie my output, but you may not be under the same constraints.
Aspire can create a two sided 3d model. Looks full 3d to me. I used a vectric model to illustrate it… I can export a 3d STL file so… although I don’t have a 3d printer I am pretty sure it would work. All up to the machinist’s skills. There is a Dutch guy on youtube that does crazy 3d stuff on his Shapeoko. Now…a purist might say it isn’t true 3d because it doesn’t allow undercuts. I might agree with that.
Anyone else feel v12 just didn’t feel like a full point release? They overhyped what little they had in there. Felt like a repacking of some of their existing tools with a ui refresh. Kept waiting for an adaptive something or something more core driven but I didn’t see much to pull from 11 or 10.5.
I agree. It’s mostly a UI release. I am still exploring but so far I see no substantial improvements. I was blown away by 11.5 but so far disappointed with. V12.
Fusion 360 is available free for non-commercial use. I’m kind of a cheapskate, and use it for creating anything more complex than what VCarve Desktop can do.
When something is free, beyond open source it is you and your information that are the price to pay… having said that I understand your reasoning but we don’t think that someone is a non-profit organization because that is absolutely not the case.
I have considered Fusion.
I hope to turn a profit at some point. Their threshold is pretty low but I haven’t crossed it yet. I may try it for free and see if it clicks with my brain.
From Vectric staff:
I’m sorry to hear you are unsure of the upgrade pricing changes. I can confirm the upgrade price for Aspire is due to increase to $450 from 30th April 2024. You should have received this information in your upgrade email, below the ‘upgrade now button’. I have attached a screenshot of this below:
I hope this helps.
Thanks
Stephanie
I think V12 is really the big UI change and then a few other things. I didn’t have to pay for it since it’s been less than 12 months, but i could see being disappointed if you had to pay for it.
I’m assuming more stuff will come down the road with future updates in V12.
I’ve looked at aspire, but can’t wrap my head around the modeling as i’m a F360 guy. The problem with all the software is that there are so many different ways to model, and i feel like once you learn on a certain platform then it’s really hard to do it on another. I tried Carbide Create Pro last year and was like, i don’t understand this at all, none of this makes sense, it felt crazy complicated to me compared to F360 to do a simple operation. So i just stick with F360 for any 3d modeling and import the STL into Vcarve Pro and do what i need to do. Although i do wish you could import more than one model (which i don’t think is an issue with Apsire), but not enough to justify upgrading to aspire.
I did try out the new vcarve inlay feature as i had a job i needed to do for a customer, it worked pretty well, i didn’t really tweak it much and ran the job and it turned out decent, not as tight as when i’ve done them manually, but i think playing around with the depth would help. I kept getting glue warnings, so i just need to spend more time messing with that, but i just needed to get this job done and out the door.
Here was the inlay i did with the new vcarve inlay feature. This was a triple inlay with ash, cherry and hickory. I had hoped the hickory on the petals would contrast more, it had a cool pattern, still might once i get some rubio on it later today.
The butterfly was a little loose and had some gaps so i had to mix up some epoxy for it, but other than that the inlay went fine considering a first pass with the new feature.
This video shows a method to dealing with multiple external 3D models in Vectric.
It’s a little bit of work but he pulls it off.
This guy has fantastic training videos BTW. I have not signed up for his paid content but he has a ton of free stuff.
Thanks for this Cullen, very useful to know.
This guy knows his stuff, I need to watch more of his videos.
Same here. I’m still on V10.5. V11 didn’t compel me to upgrade…and V12 isn’t either. I don’t do a heck of a lot of decorative stuff and am so used to parametric modeling (F360) that it’s hard for me to justify with the updates that don’t do much for me. But I can see if you’re doing decor pieces a lot, it being totally worth it since F360 is garbage at decorative toolpaths. 
Sheets is a nice feature that I think came along in 11 or 11.5. I use it when I have a lot of signs of the same design that I just change the words. Each sheet shares guide lines and it is easy to copy geometry from one to another. Toolpaths are more of a pain to copy and I wish they had improved that in 12.
I Installed Carbide Motion 6.44 and Bit Setter Toolchange in my Aspire V12
Motion is at 6.35, don’t think it’s at 6.44 yet, unless i missed an update, 6.35 just came out
I have 11.5 and v12 in Aspire. I think they tried to make the interface friendlier, and I am slowly learning it. I can guarantee that 11.5 stays on my machine for those times when I just need to design something quickly. I erased 10.xx and I am sorry that I did because of writing backward compatiblity…i.e., those folks with older versions cannot read higher versions product when I send it to them. Nope… I have plenty of hard drive and 11.5 stays forever.
Sorry about that Carbide Motion version typo, Jim
