The CarveWright Pattern Depot

[jlovchik]

We appreciate the great enthusiasm with which the new Pattern Store has been greeted. We are very excited to bring this new powerful extension of the CarveWright community to you. We can’t wait to make thousands of new high quality never-before-seen patterns available to all users of the CarveWright and CompuCarve Woodworking systems. This will transform your machine’s abilities and allow users to profit from their own creations.

The new Pattern Store will enable you to purchase high quality patterns on-line and eventually even directly from your CarveWright software; allow pattern creators to distribute their creations widely to the CarveWright community in a protected environment; and, ensure a continuous supply of literally thousands of high quality patterns that have not been available before. You can try patterns before you buy them; have custom patterns created, and you will even be able to post your own original patterns for sale to other users.

This is a first step, and our programmers and engineers have spent months of tireless efforts and about a billion cups of coffee designing a workable Library and Store. We understand it is not perfect and we will be improving navigation and tweaking it as we move forward. There are additional pieces to come including the ability to create your own vendor account online and begin selling your patterns to the greater community. In the meantime, if you are interested in receiving information about how to make your patterns available for sale now, please contact us at info@carvewright.com

We understand many users have questions and concerns about the new Pattern Store. We’d like to address those issues here and clear up some confusion and misunderstanding about how the Store will work. Also, we want to provide some tips and whatever assistance we can to enable you to start using the Pattern Store as quickly as possible.

Some have been concerned that they can no longer edit patterns in the Pattern Editor.

Any patterns that you had in your software before the new upgrade to the Pattern Store are still there and can be used by you on your system again and again.

If this is a pattern that you scanned in using the CarveWright scanning probe or created from original artwork, there is a simple solution. You just re-import from the MPW file, original artwork or scanned data so the software will assign authorship to you and the Pattern Editor will then allow you to edit the pattern. If you have difficulty doing this, please contact us and we will be glad to assist you.

The reason this is necessary is that the new Pattern Store software is designed to provide some protection for people’s original creative work. This is imperative to encourage the developers and creators of high quality patterns to make their work available for everyone’s use. The extensive work that goes in to developing high quality patterns has a significant value. We’re sure everyone agrees that the artists and creators deserve fair compensation for their work. It was necessary to provide some sort of protection for these creative rights within our software to bring these patterns to our users. Remember, this is just the beginning! Soon there will be thousands of patterns available!

Therefore, due to the manner in which patterns are authored, the software will no longer allow the editing of licensed patterns. When a user saves a file out of the Pattern Editor, it assigns authorship to the user. If a user could transfer authorship of any pattern to them self, then there would be no protection against anyone taking another’s original creation and distributing multiple, perhaps hundreds or thousands of copies against the wishes of the original creator and without any fair payment to them. This would discourage people from making their high quality patterns available at all.

However, you do have some abilities to make changes to an existing pattern acquired from someone else. The Project Designer will allow you to manipulate existing patterns by drawing regions and setting overriding depth levels to cut out the areas you wish to remove as in the case of cropping or removal of an image or part of an image.

Some have expressed a concern over the prices being charged for patterns.

The prices for patterns will be driven by the quality and value of the pattern as well as the demand by the users. This is true for everything. These prices will be adjusted as time goes on and more data becomes available to pattern vendors about what an appropriate price for a particular pattern ought to be. Again, some patterns require a tremendous amount of work and creativity. The artists and creators deserve a fair return for their investment. This is true for any creative arts.

Finally, our moderators are charged with maintaining a sense of acceptable decorum on the forum. They are doing their jobs as moderators to keep the tone of the forum constructive and helpful for everyone. Please keep your comments and questions civil, as stated in the rules of the forum. We want to help everybody and get your questions answered as quickly as we can. Please show everybody the respect and dignity you would have them show you.

[Reset]

As we all learned in Kindergarten,

I find this insulting

Tommy

[rjustice]

Someone might as well start asking questions so here goes...

I guess one concern that i have that wasnt addressed in your announcement is that if one is having problems with a design, until now, one could post it in the forum, and within a very resonable amount of time someone more experienced could jump in, "doctor" up the design, and create a solution for someone that is maybe a little less skilled, or experienced than others. I know that I learned many tips simply from looking at the "before" and "after" files when i first started carving. This doesnt seem to be able to be supported any more.
Does LHR support users having both versions of the software on one computer to be able to do it the "old way"?
Also, what about the "Forum Depot" that the users have contributed to over the last year? Is your plan to block those shared files, or allow them to continue?
I am also wondering about the tweaks that you didnt cover in your list of abilities to minipulate the ptn's. Is depth, scaling, stretching, rotating, mirroring, merging all able to be done?

Ron

[jblues71]

The way I see it, a pattern is just that, nothing more. If I buy a pattern it is just a guideline, I want to twist it, tweak it, push it, pull it, and do whatever it takes to get it "perfect" the way I want it. Now I can’t do that. So what is the point in buying a pattern, if I can’t use it the way I need to? Yes I agree with a lot of others, there are a lot of pluses to the new version but, do they out way all of the negatives? I don't believe they do. Only time will tell. I just hope we can get this "fixed".

[jlovchik]

I want to twist it, tweak it, push it, pull it, and do whatever it takes to get it "perfect" the way I want it. Now I can’t do that. .

None of those abilities have been taken away. You can still use any pattern the same way you've always been able to in the Project Designer.

I think what may be happening here is some confusion between the "Pattern Editor" and the "Project Designer". The Pattern Editor is the the internal editor within the Project Designer. Customers will only have access to this if they have purchased a scanning probe. It is a separate function box where you clean up your scanned data before you place it in your favorites library. The Project Designer is the software that you use to layout your project on your board. None of your abilities in the Project Designer have changed.

I hope this clears up some things. Please post if you still have questions.

[jblues71]

No. No confusion here. I am talking about the pattern editor, and being able to change the pattern or patterns I download and or buy into patterns I am going to use on a regular basis. Now I can't do that, I have to take the patterns I get as is. I am unable to do what I want to the pattern in the "pattern editor", to make it the way I want. As a matter of fact, what I use the pattern editor for mostly is to get a good gray scale pic on my screen. I then do a print screen and paste into abobe Photoshop cs2, it cleans up the "picture" from the .ptn file, so much better. I can also change, add, duplicate, and rotate whatever I want to in it. However I can not do this if I can't open the .ptn file in the pattern editor first. I guess the simplest thing to do here is give us back what you took, and let the law take care of the evil doers that everyone thinks is out there.

[jlovchik]

Very good questions!
You can still post your MPC files on the forum for anyone to "jump in and doctor". We are only protecting licensed PTN files from being freely traded. It doesn't affect the way you use your machine on a day-to-day basis. Your MPC files will still open in anyones's software, but they won't be able to upload it to their card and carve it, if it has a protected file in it. It works the same as the try-it-before-you-buy-it function in the store. So controlling depth, scaling, stretching, rotating, mirroring, merging can all still be done with the Project Designer, just as always. They can even be done by someone else if you need some assistance.

The other issue you brought up is the files on the sharing depot. These are still available and will still work in your software. You won't be able to open them in the pattern editor, but you'll still have all the functionality you've always had in your Project Designer.

I hope this was helpful, please feel free to ask any other questions.

[forqnc]

Your MPC files will still open in anyones's software, but they won't be able to upload it to their card and carve it

So several of the .mpc files that have been posted and willingly shared by other user's will now be no good to the rest of us. I somehow feel this is a step backwards in promoting the CC. Whilst I can see the reason for protection, I think this may need some extra thinking to overcome. One of the biggest threads on this forum is the Pattern sharing depot, and in one fell swoop, you just took that away from us.

[Jeff_Birt]

So several of the .mpc files that have been posted and willingly shared by other user's will now be no good to the rest of us.

As I understand it, you can share any MPC files you wish and other folks can carve them and make changes as long as they do not contain any licensed patterns. One big advantage that this allows us as users is that if we are having troubles getting something laid out just right we could post the MPC even though it contains the licensed pattern, other folks who have not purchased the pattern can still open it up, and alter the MPC but they just can't carve it. So, in that regard it does make it a bit easier to help each other out and nothing has been lost.

i, and i'm sure many others, can not afford your $300.00 pattern editor. i would export a ptn. (with cbpe) into my editor (paint.net). both programs being free/shareware/donation. i would no longer be able to do this. why could you not "lock" a licensed pattern, and leave the others "un-lock"?

What if you could just purchase a license for the CW pattern editor itself? I think many people can't justify the purchase of the probe but would like the pattern editing capabilities of the CW Pattern Editor. Am I way off base here?

No. No confusion here. I am talking about the pattern editor, and being able to change the pattern or patterns I download and or buy into patterns I am going to use on a regular basis.

I think we have a few different ways to think about this. One is that it is nice to be able to tweak a pattern and get it just so (being honest with myself I have to say that I realize that 99% of CW owners don't do this), the other is that the folks who produce/sell them need to be able to protect their products (and their livelihood) and it is up to the pattern vendor to decide if they will offer their wares in an editable version or not.

Those of us who would like to freely offer 'editable' patterns of our own could still do so by posting the MPWs or high quality PNGs, which the folks with the CW Pattern Editing Software (or other software) could use.

[Sarge]

Therefore, due to the manner in which patterns are authored, the software will no longer allow the editing of licensed patterns. When a user saves a file out of the Pattern Editor, it assigns authorship to the user. If a user could transfer authorship of any pattern to them self, then there would be no protection against anyone taking another’s original creation and distributing multiple, perhaps hundreds or thousands of copies against the wishes of the original creator and without any fair payment to them. This would discourage people from making their high quality patterns available at all.

My take on this whole issue is; if Microsoft Word, Excel and other programs allow us to Password Protect our documents or templates... why not set Designer to allow us to choose which MPC's we want to protect? I see no practicality in blanket assigning protection to every design.