Buyer's Remorse

A couple days ago I bought a carvewright off craigslist. I wasn't expecting much and I have yet to actually do any carving or cutting. I thought I had done sufficient research but it seems to me that Carvewright's business model is to lock down the machine via software, and charge exorbitant prices for addons to add basic functionality to ancient software. I just registered the machine and opened this software and wow, this is pretty bad. The designer is limited to basic shapes and built-in patterns, and importing anything is going to cost me $200? Is that right? Also I'm not on facebook, I don't know if this group is even alive.

Are people using this software or is there an alternative? Can I export gcode from standard cam software?

Right now I'm not planning on putting good money after bad. It seems like this is not for me unless there are better options. I was hoping to do a positive youtube review of this thing, but right now it looks like that won't be very positive. And then this thing is bound for craigslist or ebay.

You can't do everything with Basic, but you can do a lot and it does allow you to import images to work with to produce patterns for carving. There is other third party software that produce images that can be imported for carving. There are others here that do very well with them.

Hi, you can't use standard gcode with the CW. It has its own proprietary format *.ptn.

But the CW user community is pretty generous. There are hundreds of patterns you can use for your carving projects. Search this thread https://forum.carvewright.com/forumd...attern-Sharing

I personally don't use any of the CW addons to create my models. I use different 3d modeling software and then can convert to greyscale images for use with the CW. So the addons are not mandatory for making patterns.

You can now also use AI to create your patterns. Started a thread to discuss that technology.

I recommend exploring open-source CNC machines or selling your CarveWright and starting fresh with a more user-friendly system.

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