Comparison

[brtlatjgt]

Has anyone used both Visualmill 5 and Onecnc Xr who would be able to give an objective comparison of the two?

[RandMan]

I bought VM 5 Basic and for the first 30 days it has all the features of the full product. Its pretty powerful CAM software but the toolpaths seemed to do a lot of cutting of air and the only way I saw to reduce that was to use the toolpaths only in the full version which was a $3k upgrade to the $1K I already spent. The long machining times were a big issue without the full version stuff. VM breaks solids back into surfaces which for me seems to defeat the purpose of solid modeling and made everything more complex. I called OneCNC and had Michael do a demo of their XP Pro version with the same model and the difference in the toolpaths was shockingly better (less time). XP also had a good modeler so I could do both design and CAM in the same package which was a huge advantage. XR IMO is 10x better than XP was and it was very good. More features for less dollars, NO Maintenance Fees and awesome support. I wish I had just started with OneCNC instead of wasting time and $$.

[DareBee]

Randman
How does the pricing compare between VM 5.0 and OneCNC XR?

[RandMan]

You'll have to talk to OneCNC to get current pricing because I bought XP almost a year ago. Even considering them equal in features (which they are not) I spent less buying OneCNC than upgrading my VM Basic to the full version and paying the first year of maintenace.