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.