I have not used artcam; however, after a lot of trials and errors with open source CAM software, I ended up liking CAMBAM. I had tried, Gsimple, pycam, kcam, all without success in doing all that I wanted to do. I asked the same question here and the rec was for CAMBAM. It have 40 evaluation uses. If you can keep it open, lot of designing with the eval version. The cost is $149, which is reasonable. Worth a look.

Good CNCing