VCarve Pro: Try Before You Buy

I'm gonna show you a great example here of being able to try before you buy. And here's what I'm talking about. VCarve Pro is a piece of software that a lot of CNC companies use for programming their machines. So in many cases no matter what CNC machine you have, you're gonna start here at a computer, do all your design work. Then you're gonna output that design and take it to whatever machine you have. So I think for a lot of people who are interested in getting into CNC, the first question is really well, can I do the programming? What does the design work look like? Is it difficult, is it easy? Well, so what's cool is Vectric is the software company. They've got a full trial version available to you, and I'll show you some of the things we can do with it here. And the only difference between this and what I use on my regular programming computer is that I can't output and cut with the file on a piece of hardware, on a machine. We can do a virtual cut here to make sure we did everything correctly, but we can't actually output it. If in the future you buy the software, you will be able to take files that you created in the test version and run them into the software that you purchase to output those files to a CNC machine. So you're not gonna lose that work. But the ones that we create here, I cannot create a file here and then take it to another VCarve that was purchased and run it. It's not gonna let you do that. So it's a pretty brilliant thing here because I think again it's gonna give for those of us who are nervous about can I do the layout work, it's gonna give us an opportunity to experiment. So let's just do a little messing around here. I'm gonna create a new file. And we're 10 by 10 half inch thickness. I'm okay with that. And then let's go right to the gee whiz part of the software. Let's bring in some 3D clipart. So here's a lovely fish. Let's bring that into our work. And so I'm not looking here to teach you all about using the software. I just wanna give you some ideas of what kind of things this'll do for you. So I just centered my fish. Now let's give that some lettering. All right, now here's what I think the cool part. I said you can't cut this file, but we can test cut this file. So I'm gonna come up to my toolpaths and work on the fish here. And I'm gonna start by roughing it out. Then I'm gonna come back and I'm going to finish it. Then I'm gonna come down and I'm gonna cut my letters. And then the gee whiz part of this is here I can preview my toolpaths. So this shows me did I get this right? Did I cut the fish correctly? Did I cut the letters correctly? It's kind of cool. Look, my F in fishing is up a little too high. It was cut into. So this is gonna really give you a good idea of what it takes to run VCarve Pro, how it feels to do the programming, what it's like, and help you get a comfort level with the software before you make a buying decision on the CNC. So I think it's a great idea. You can go to the Vectric website, you can download this test version for free. Give it a run, see what it's all about, and see if you're comfortable using this software for your woodworking.