I've been designing vector graphics for 19 years, 17 of it professionally.
Software that is supported by huge numbers of users receives much more development than software with a smaller user base. The field of vector editing is dominated by the field of graphic design, with a few major players such as adobe.
There aren't as many cnc operators as there are people using graphic design products; this means the programs don't have the huge influx of financial and user support that design software does.
I can purchase a vector editing program of supreme quality for $700 (and it probably has millions of users buying it). Enroute pro was around $7500 (Cdn). The vector editing in enroute leaves a whole lot to be desired. I am drawing my artistic renderings in other much better software that was intended for this purpose, and importing it into enroute.
This being said, Enroute has some awesome features for quickly creating relief art. I have been combining 3D modeling from other software with enroute's functions, and it speeds things up tremedously. I wish it were possible to rotate reliefs on the y axis without converting to mesh, but oh well.
The tooling up functions are excellent, and very intuitive. It really doesn't take long to catch on.
mitered corners, be it during extrusion, or offset contours, have some difficulties.
Imported bitmaps are sometimes buggy.
Exported .ai files usually don't work - printing creates a .pdf file though, and the pdf's are just fine, and can be edited elsewhere.
I'm thinking of going through and compiling my observations about how the software functions, as a service to the company and user base. There are many things to note.
I think Enroute is a fine piece of software. I feel like I made the right choice in purchasing it with my router. I'm sure that all router software has inherent weaknesses and states of development (any intense graphics software user knows how common this is) If we want it to continue to improve, we as users should document it's weaknesses and send them on to the company for tweaking, as occurs in many other software developer/user situations.
Any thoughts?  |