[ger21]

You're kind of comparing apples to oranges here. V Carve Pro is mainly targeted at woodworkers and signmakers, while Visual Mill is a more general purpose CAM package.
Visual Mill has a lot more features than V-Carve Pro, but V-Carve Pro has some features that VM does not.

What version of Visual mill are you looking at?

VM Standard cost twice as much as VCP. It has 3D machining, which VCP does not. VCP has nesting, which VM does not. Adding nesting to VM will bring the cost up to 3x that of VCP. But the nesting is probably better than VCP's nesting.

If you're just doing basic cuts, you might want to look at something like SheetCAM, along with an inexpensive or free CAD program like Draftsight. That can get you started for 1/3 the cost of V-Carve Pro, with many of the same features.

A huge number of router users are using V-Carve Pro, and love it. They have an excellent user forum filled with satisfied users.
I don't see a lot of VM users. Part of that has to do with the cost, especially for hobby users. I have a friend that uses VM for Solidworks, and from what I've seen of it, it's very powerful.

In the end, I always say to get what you like the best. The easiest to use FOR YOU is usually the better choice.

[dan3676]

I was looking at the basic version of visual mill. Mechsoft states their cad software inside of visual mill is fairly basic and it appears you need more powerful cad software to really unlock its potential. I can see what your seeing about comparing apples to oranges. On the flip side of things I would be hard pressed to believe that stepping up to aspire in the future wouldn't give me the flexibility to do what I'm looking for but I've been so focused on vcarve I haven't really evaluated aspire. I'm glad you mentioned the nesting feature. That's something I was interested in and wasn't sure if visual mill offered it. I also really like the inlay feature of vcarve but haven't been able to determine if visual mill has something similar?