Do we have Vetric’s Aspire for the CNC? I’ve been told we have Vcarve and Photo Vcarve but haven’t heard much on the second?
I don’t think so (yet). If they did, I could give classes on it right away. I’ve been using it for about 3 years.
Considering DMS is hosting a commercial class where Aspire will be used and several woodshop people will attend, I’m sure it won’t be long before it’s available.
Awesome. I’m honestly interested in using the CNC mill more for 3D carving than 2.5D and heard Aspire is going to be the best option for it since Vcarve gets a bit testy importing .obj files from other programs? Their feature to create a model from a black and white photo is kinda awesome.
We’ve talked about it and would like to have it. Unfortunately, Vectric does not discount Aspire a single penny, and the cost is $1995 - a lotfor something serving just a few users (including myself),
Understood. Is there a way to do the same thing in Vcarve if I do it in Fusion or something first? I’m trying to carve a moon surface among other things
Judging from the work Kee @fedakee has shown me recently, there is! He’s been doing 3D scans, modifying them in Fusion360, them importing the model to vCarve for cutting. He’s definitely pushing our knowledge boundaries outward. And I believe, he plans to offer a class in his techniques soon as well (I’m hoping to attend that one).
if it helps it should only be $1300 to upgrade from VCarve. their standard license allows it on 3 machines. I’m not sure about licencing for somehthing like our jump server.
-N
Vectric recently quoted me full price to upgrade, perhaps I got a clueless salesman though. They recently switched to an online key check for licensing, so you’re right, it will be a problem on the Jump server. I sure wish they’d create a makerspace edition of Aspire though.
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Aren’t Ventric coming to the space soon to teach a 3 day? Maybe we can hold them hostage until a price can be negotiated? 
I’d love to play with Aspire on the multicam
feeling the need to remention @fedakkee since the earlier mention appears not to have “taken” (isn’t clickable/ linked/likely didn’t notify).
Carry on.
@Tapper I’ll be going to that one as well. I’m learning Fusion now that they killed the 123D series and am looking forward to testing how far the CNC can go into my little art world 
123D is dead?? That filled a great space between Fusion 360 & Tinkercad!
Yep. Found out the other week when a kid in the middle of the project. It was amazing for my classes because you didn’t need to know much to use it. Now a huge chunk of our post digital sculpting will die because I don’t have time to teach programming AND their regular standards. They’ve said the 123D Make is being integrated into Fusion 360 but I haven’t found it yet. Still waiting to see if they pull an Adobe and kill my already installed desktop programs. It’s definitely out of the app store.
123D Make is the “Slicer” extension/app avail for free in their app store.
Sheet Metal support was just added too.
You’ll have to show me that sometime! The Make was by far the biggest one we uses
I can probably say that I’ve push the boundaries of Aspire to it’s ultimate limits. It’s ability to model things in 3D are excellent. Nontheless, I’ve been migrating over to Fusion 360. Fusion 360 can do everything Aspire does, plus 1000X more. Fusion 360 will generate advanced tool paths for those who do 3D work on the MultiCam.
Here are the Pros and Cons
Aspire>>> learning curve is high in the realm of 3D. You can only model a single face of 180 degrees. So if you want to model 360 degrees, you need 2 separate models that are flipped sides. It co$$$$ts a lot of money. You have to own or have access to a local copy. It has a lot of built in cool features that woodworkers would like and makes life easier. Aspire is psudo-parametric and not intuitive.
Fusion 360>>>learning curve is much higher than Aspire. You can model true 3D objects, 360 degrees. It’s free to makers. It’s cloud based, so you can access it anywhere and don’t have to carry copies of your files around. It’s constantly being enhanced and upgraded for free. It’s parametric, If you are building furniture or anything, you can run strength/stress simulations to see if it will hold up. It has built in CAM for generating g-code. It has advanced tool path generation that is light years ahead of Aspire. Need I say more? Oh, did I mention it’s Free?
If I was negotiating with Aspire for a price, to have it at the space, I’d ask them to make it Free to the members. Apples to apples, in my opinion.
Either way, I’ll probably be teaching some Advanced Modeling and CAM classes in the near future for Fusion 360. If we get Aspire I can help out as well. Just don’t ask me about any of my “secret” techniques!
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Yeah a class on the work flow of Fusion to creating a tool path would be a great solution. I think there was one and I couldn’t make it. Most of what I want to do is relief anyway
except handle STL files with more than 20K faces (which is TINY by all accounts) which is why I’m using ASPIRE directly to do my work on the HAAS where my facets are in the 300K range. 3D toolpathing for mechanical items it is in a class by itself and F360 will do a fine job (although a bit sloppy memory wise) but a a fraction of the price (or free) of something like MasterCam there are no complaints.
For woodworking, ASPIRE is much more intuitive (IMHO) and if/when DMS gets one, I’d be happy to step up and do some teaching.
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I’m teaching a class on how to do exactly what your asking for. You don’t need aspire or Vcarve to convert to topographical carvings of moon surfaces from photos of the moon. Tuesday May 30th 7pm