You can call us many things, but calling us "unloyal" is something I won't readily accept. You are currently talking to the CEO of the company. I'm ready to have a dialog with you. I want to do that and understand your point of view. Try that with Autodesk. I am happy to seriously consider what you're saying but it needs to be in fairness. I, and we, want to make you happy, but we can only do that insofar as we have the power to do so. We can't change what Mecsoft has done. Mecsoft product have not been part of the Alibre product line for almost half a decade. I think it is a little unfair to purport otherwise.
I bought and have paid maintenance for an integrated product that included CAM and that product was called AlibreCAM. I acknowledge that I have paid separately for the CAM portion knowing full well that it wasn't an Alibre Product. But had it been called VisualCAM from inside AlibreCAD perhaps I'd feel a bit better about it.
I guess my point is that the moment AlibreCAM separated from AlibreCAD the product I thought I had changed. I still believe that AlibreCAD is better than Fusion360 and I completely disliked using VisualCAM during the Geomagic years. So now I feel like I'm being tossed out again just like the sale to Geomagic.
And if AlibreCAM is just an add on from another manufacturer why is it that Mecsoft can't continue to provide the integrated software? Why is it they suddenly don't want to do that? They are earning a paltry $400 per year from me for maintenance, with a name change and otherwise what appears to be identical to VisualCAM but integrated into AlibreCAD. Perhaps I'm their only maintenance client?
This evening I created a small part in AlibreCAD. Exported it as an stl and 3D printed it. This was the easiest and fastest way to test the concept. Next I pulled down the menu marked "
AlibreCAM 2020" which again gave me the impression I was running an Alibre Supported and Integrated product. That it was written by someone else is irrelevant. It had
your company name on the menu and the program.
Now it becomes interesting. In the middle of doing something Alibre stopped. Completely. CAM and CAD and this wasn't the first time. Happens about once per month. To be safe I rebooted the PC. Ran AlibreCAD and interestingly my history of recent files was gone. Now it was probably AlibreCAM that choked. Ultimately after a lot of work (another 3D print would have finished by then) I was able to create the G-Code and run at test on the mill. Most of the issues I've had over the last year appear to be related to AlibreCAM but then it could also be that AlibreCAD is supplying crap to the AlibreCAM side.
So if I go yet again into the stand alone VisualCAM package and it blows up like it did this evening Mecsoft can point the finger at AlibreCAD and AlibreCAD can say it's not our problem since Mecsoft VisualCAM is a stand alone package. And I'm the one left in the middle with both sides pointing the finger at each other. Which is interestingly since that's what it already sounds like.
To say "Mecsoft product have not been part of the Alibre product line for almost half a decade. I think it is a little unfair to purport otherwise." is a bit disingenuous. Since the repurchase and branding of Geomagic back into Alibre, the menu and tabs have all used the Alibre name. Were you being realistic about your lack of connection you would have relaunched AlibreCAM as some other name. But you didn't. So as a customer I don't care about your fine print or the lack of a contract with Mecsoft. And Mecsoft is just as guilty for the misrepresentation.
In either case it's a misrepresentation. And that's what I'm ticked off about. And the change to non integrated CAM.