[SCzEngrgGroup]

Ray - the download and install are no problem. It's finding the time before the trial expires to actually use them enough to know if I want to plunk down money on them that is the problem. Especially since Alibre (err, Geomagic) mostly works just fine for what I need to do and on a good day, SprutCAM is the same. It's the bad SprutCAM days that have me wondering about alternatives. Frankly, SW + HSMWorks for $10k (my guesstimated total price) is just too much buck for the bang for my situation and disposable income.

Mike

Mike,

I completely understand about the money - I could not spring for HSMWorks right now, and Solidworks was a real stretch. But, Solidworks, and Inventor, are both FAR better than Alibre for modeling. And, if you're familiar with Alibre, you'll be comfortable with either Solidworks or Inventor very quickly - I think one afternoon and you'd see how much better they are. I also did a SprutCAM eval a year or two back, and found it extremely complex and convoluted - not remotely intuitive. HSMXpress I found very easy to pickup, and generally very intuitive to use. Even writing my own highly-custom post was downright easy.

Regards,
Ray L.