My Altmill is on the way from Canada to Oregon! I have used the free version F360 for a few years for 3d printing. Its got its problems, but is usable. I started looking at Aibre Workshop for $399 with cad and cam included instead of upgrading to the paid version of F360 for a year. There is almost no information here on using Alibre. The advantage is you own the software on your pc and you store files locally. I was also looking at Solidworks Maker CAD and CAM for $48 a year subscription. The feedback on other forums for the Maker versions has been very positive or very negative. They do cripple the Maker versions and that seems to be what all the bad reviews are about. V-carve pro seems to be the favorite here, but it seems to me mostly biased to wood. I am not familiar enough to make that call though. I think I will use mostly aluminum and plastic stock on the Altmill. I do have access to older cnc mills with heavier cutting capabilities if needed.
I had never heard of alibre workshop, I have vcarve desktop for my longmill and I found it quite user friendly. This was coming from just a cad and 3d printing background.
Alibre looks great if you have more complex geometry and metal milling in mind.
I have Vectric Carve Pro and Fusion360, the latter is better for me (creating 2, 2.5 and 3D from scratch) but to have the 2.5D CAM means no hobbyist licence… and Autodesk do seem to keep hiking the prices. Fusion is the more comprehensive product for an Engineer cum woodworker, I suspect the opposite is true were I a woodworker cum Engineer. Of the products I’ve tried, VCarve and Fusion have been the standout winners.
A friend uses Alibre and swears by it, but he doesn’t need CAM. The bundled MeshCAM product is the twin of Carbide Create (same author, same UI, likely much of the same underlying code) and as a result I suspect it will be a beginner-only product (when I got my CNC I tried CCreate, but very quickly grew frustrated with it, so maybe I am prejudiced against MeshCAM for that reason).
Fusion 360, Solidworks Maker, OnShape, CarveCo and Alibre are all ‘kind of equivalents’ to my mind and your preference will depend on your projects and way of thinking. There are others such as FreeCAD, LibreCAD, OpenSCAD etc if you are ‘a determined type’ and prepared to overcome quirks. I’ve seriously tried FreeCAD 1.01 as an antidote to F360 price increases, but it just isn’t solid enough for me, not yet anyway.