Brad,
That is what we are thinking on the waterjet..... use it to rough out some material. There have been many occasions where it would hae saved us alot of boring or pocketing.
As far as the tornado goes.... I havent used it myself... havent had time to learn it. The controls certainly arent as nice as the Haas. They do however have more graphics that our Fadal controller. That thing is only missing a Tape hanging out of it. I do enjoy using it though.
We are using Feature Cam for our main software. I really like it. It is equiped with Solid Modeling, Automatic Feature Recognition, turn, and live turn as well.
I recently bought Vectrics Aspire software. I really like it. It is great for the special projects (plaques etc). You can do some simple stuff with it that is alot harder on more sofisticated softwares and it is only $2000.00. It is still great for alot of 2D work as well and easier to program. It may not be as precise as FEature cam but is plenty close enough for most projects. It does 3D machiniing as well and you can buy many 3D files from Vectorart3d.com at a low price to machine. Things like the Marine Logo, flags, eagles, horses, etc etc.
Another advantage to Aspire for me is that I can make a program and save it using the post processor for the Fadal, the Shopbot or my Machine at home and machine the same file. I like that.
Kelly