I have the Vectric products, Dolphin and Bobcad V21, apparently V22 was crap and isn't listed any more ? and I refuse to go to v23 as it's dongle controlled and they way I get thru USB sticks is no ones business, I must get 3 a week posted back to me.

Vectric products are good, very good support and a user base who have nothing bad to say about the program, that has to mean a lot.

Dolphin is equally as good on support and features but it is limited to 2 1/2D with a tiny bit of 3d inbuilt but it doesn't profess to be a 3D program.

Bobcad tries to be master of all but doesn't succeed, it has to have the worst CAD/CAM reputation in the world, do a web crawl.

Vectric and Dolphin compliment each other, Vectric I class more as an arty program than and engineering program which Vectric will agree with, it can do engineering based parts, the loco wheel we do at shows was programmed in Vectric to show how easy it is but at the end of the day it's more a sign carving and engraving program which it excels at.

Dolphin IS an engineering program, you can engrave with it but it's not as intuitive as Vectric.
Where Dolphin score is it's ability to do a part 8 different ways, doesn't mean to say 7 are wrong and in most cases any will do but on some long jobs 10 minutes playing what if can save a lot of time and it's very easy to order the sequence of cuts.

Both Vectric and Dolphin won't write code until you are happy with the screen simulation and if you want to alter anything you can then post code again.
Bobcad up to V23 was different in that it wrote code on the fly, profile by profile, won't to change anything and it was a cut and paste operation.

Vectric do a starter program called Cut2D that gets you started cheaply, dolphin do a hobby version but you have to contact them for pricing but it is affordable.

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