Fill in my knowledge gap :)

[Neale]

When you are comparing products like Aspire/VCarve and F360 which include both CAD and CAM modules, you do have to be careful to compare like with like. The Vectric CAM stuff is really easy to use, although it might not have quite all the features of F360 but which are more difficult to find and configure - there are so many options and parameters! However, I compare the CAD part of VCarve (and TurboCAD, which I used to use) to a power-operated drawing board. Very accurate, precise, etc, but a real pain if you want to change something in a design which is going to affect other parts of the design. Often easiest to delete and start again. F360, on the other hand, is like a power-operated "back of the envelope". Once you get used to the very different starting point - you literally sketch something that is kind-of what you want, then go back in and add critical dimensions where you have to and constrain and link other relationships wherever you can - suddenly you find that you have something where you can change history. Want to increase a dimension on something you did at the beginning of a drawing? Just change it, and watch the knock-on effects ripple through everything that you did after that point. I've done demos of F360 a few times, and I usually draw a simple bracket made from two plates joined at 90deg. I show how you position mounting holes in the edge of one piece and how the clearance holes in the other are linked - change the first piece and the second changes with it. Magic, once you're used to it!