So far I have installed trial versions of cambam, meshcam, and artcam.
I will be using autocad 2012 and solidworks to generate my models. I have gimp to do my art work if necessary.
I purchased a Romaxx HS1 in december, should be here next week. Been lurking the forums and signed up last month. I will be running my machine with mach3. Purchased my bits and precision collet from precisebits.com
The 6 week lead time has allowed me to play with the software some.
My thoughts so far:
Cambam -
-archaic looking
-pricey when you compare it to meshcam/artcam feature set
-more tedious to get results
-lots of settings
-not very easy to move around
Meshcam-
-Very intuitive
-Does 3d, flip, 4axis
-Creator has a nice forum, blog and is active on forums
-Takes in customer feedback and updates the program
-From start to finish the process is very step driven and easy to do
-Price is good for the feature set. May even be able to run MicroCarve instead of opting for Meshcam Art
Artcam Express-
-Lots of features
-Modules that you can add are nice but are very $$$$$$
-Does not appear to do what I need it to do with 3d stl models.
-Menu overload when compared to meshcam. Just too many things to learn at once.
-Required internet explorer 8 to be installed. Meh. Probably so they could have all the purchase options in the demo which was annoying
So far I am looking at pulling the trigger on meshcam. Any other software I should try out that are similar to meshcam?