Cheap Vectric SW on Ebay. Is it for real?

I see that there are a few offers on Ebay for “Fully functional Lifetime license” Vectric Aspire for as low as US$8.00.

Has anyone out there tried this. I am suspicious, of course.

Thanks

Ron

Sounds to good to be true. Beware.

Don’t do it. I tried one for $5.95 and it didn’t work. Live and learn. Supposedly these licenses come from disposed of computers but no guarantees that licenses are still valid. No response from seller either.

For $8 I’m tempted to try it. Can’t possibly be legit, though.

Mine would appear to work. Would let me design and save my work but when I tried to reopen it would get some kind of error message that it wasn’t legal or valid or something like that. Who knows it may work for you but it didn’t for me. Good luck it you try it.

Whether it works or it doesn’t, I suspect it would be pirated. Then one is just feeding criminal behavior. I suspect the fine folks at Vectric would like to be paid for their work.

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If you are dumb enough to try it don’t complain after its all a scam.

OK. I agree that it’s a scam and probably pirated. To try that route is evil, stupid, etc.

My real intent was to see if anyone had tried it. I also sent a message in E-bay to one of the vendors asking about the source of the products and of course got no response.

In the meantime, I spent considerable time trying both ends of the legitimate free CAD/CAM offerings

Please remember that these are my opinions only. Your mileage may vary.

On the low end was Carbide Create - poor user interface and limited free functionality.

On the high end is Fusion 360 - very rich functionality but far too complicated to use for simple 2D and 2.5D carving. When I want to design a heavy water pump for a nuclear reactor I will revisit Fusion 360.

Based on the premise that time is money, I rethought the idea of buying something instead of wasting effort on either of these two solutions.

I got a test version of Vcarve Desktop and went through a number of tutorials and ran a couple of their demo projects on my Longmill. The results were perfect and the user interface and functionality are exactly what i need to use the Longmill effectively.

So I coughed up the CAD $471 to purchase Vcarve Desktop. I can live with the 24 x 24 inch size restriction considering the Pro version is twice the price. Also, tiling is supported so I can extend work pieces if necessary.

If in the future I decide I need more work space or broader functionality, I can upgrade to Vcarve Pro or Aspire. If that happens I know that the UI is the same and all my projects will be upward compatible.

One last selling point I like is that I can (legally) load Vcarve on up to three different machines. Since I have a dedicated laptop in the shop, I keep all my project files on the cloud (OneDrive) and can access them either in the shop or in my home office.

End of rant. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Enjoy your Longmill. I do.

Cheers.

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I’m pretty much in the same boat. I’ve got VCarve Pro, since I at least wanted to use the full capacity of the machine. I felt kind of ridiculous spending that much on software for a “home gamer” cnc machine, but after trying the software for a couple of projects I felt it was worth it.

I’m also trying to learn Fusion 360 off and on, but I’ve taken a dislike to it. I’m fairly comfortable in Onshape, so the differences between the two are really irritating. I guess it might be worth the effort for Fusion 360’s better CAM capabilities?

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That was my choice as well. The VCare Desk top has addressed my needs quite well. I laughed at your take on Fusion 360. While it is a full service product, I also will not be building water pumps for reactors.

If I sounded arrogant and pretentious when I went off about pirated software I was doing so as a past Hypocrite. In my younger days I will admit to using pirated software but have seen the error of my ways. I apologize for sounding aloof. I spent over 35 years as a Police Officer in Toronto, 10 of which were in Homicide. Some of my investigations gave me a look at how organized crime is funded. Pirating, copyright infringement and knock off merchandise are some of those ways.

VCarve is great. Their tutorials are great. And like you, if I need to go over 24 X 24, I too will fork over the extra cash if tiling is too cumbersome.

Good luck.
Air Hawg.

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I’ve been using Fusion for a number of primarily shop-related designs to help organize tools etc. Basic design isn’t too difficult but I haven’t gotten into the CAM part yet. I was looking at VCarve as well and downloaded the trial but haven’t really spent much time on it. For those of you who use VCarve, is it worth the money?

Scott

I’ve had Vcarve Desktop far about a month now and I love it. I find the user interface to be quite easy to navigate and so far the 24x24 inch restriction has not been an issue. It cost US $349 (CAD $471, no HST/GST) and feel that it’s well worth it. Also, if I need to upgrade in the future, all my work will migrate with no effort and the UI is the same.

There are a lot of Vectric video tutorials plus there’s a guy on YouTube “Mark Lindsay CNC” with alot of useful instructional videos for the Vectric products.

Hope this helps.

Ron

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After trying some of the “Professional” CAD programs I have found VCarve to be a much easier program to use. Granted it won’t do the kind of design work that the biggies do but it accomplishes what most CNC’rs need for 2D/2.5D and some 3D work. I have used it for quite a while and found it very easy to learn. The one drawback is having to purchase it but I think it is worth it. I purchased the desktop version with the intention of upgrading to pro down the road. The trial version is limited in that you can only generate gcode for their sample projects. But you can still play around with design work. There are tons of youtube videos and Vectric has a lot of tutorials.

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On a side note, after talking with a bunch of LongMill users, it appears that Vectric users recommend the software. I have been in touch with Vectric for the last few months and because of the recommendations from LongMill users I have signed the paperwork to make Sienci Labs an official reseller of Vectric software.

You can read more about our relationship here: https://sienci.com/vectric/

I will probably have them available on our website for sale in the next few days.

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The pump is easy, it’s the seals that require the design time.