Rhinoceros

As to those who whine about the cutting strategies in DeskPROTO, they didn't read the manual. Good product for the price. Quirky UI grows on you. I would suggest watching the videos on how to use it first. DP only does 3D cuts, the author tells you to keep your 2D cutting tools around as you will still need them.

i can only agree with david from the uk. when i compare the effort the programmers of mecsoft put into visualmill to the poor cutting strategies of deskproto, deskproto should cost a tenth of what visualmill costs. yet deskproto costs 1300 euros compared to the 2000 euros for visualmill. this is just ridiculous. a really amateur program

Powerful and fast cam at a low price. With new version 5 comes a lot of features especially useful for prototyping world, like spiral, circle and radial strategy. Very nice are bitmap operations, you can have a toolpath starting from a picture. See some examples here: http://www.protoway.us/ford_capri.html http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5G0lQ_lxEs&feature=channel For more examples wisit us at www.protoway.com PROTOway technical office

If you want to turn your Rhino models into something you can touch, but don't want to become a skilled machinist, you're probably looking at stereolithography or stl milling systems. When I got DeskProto, I had compared it with most of the others of that type and it won for two reasons, even though it was higher priced (they have a low cost 'lite' version out, now, too). First, the interface is easy and pleasant to use. The graphics are excellent, stl files load fast, toolpaths generate fast (and accurately!), nice options for user customizing. Second, even if you don't want to learn to be a machinist, you'll quickly find that you want as much control as possible over how the cutter does its job. Deskproto has lots of easy-to-understand user inputs for that purpose,that you will really be glad to have. They have a working demo,and it is worth trying! I can't comment on their support, because I never needed it. A really well-debugged program. Excellent for schools and rapid prototyping.

i have used deskproto for a while but switched to visualmill a few weeks ago. although the pakage costs a bit more (2000 euros) it is far more professional. it has cutting strategies like horizontal roughing (and reroughing), parallel finishing, pencil tracing, spiral finishing, pocketing, drilling..and so on. deskprotos strategies are lame compared to this. with visualmill i get a better result in less time.

I see that there is some dissatisfaction regarding Desk Proto amongst the troops. Well, I just can't understand why someone would slam a good product in such a hurtful manner. I guess I can only tell my story and let the reader decide what's best for their own needs. I bought a good desk top mill (Minitech 3)with which to make jewelry related wax models. At about the time that I purchased my mill, Desk Proto 3 with 'A' axis functionality came onto the market. I received RAMS software with my mill deal but RAMS kept faulting out. I couldn't use the program. I downloaded the Desk Proto demo and, with no prior experience in the field of CNC machining, I was making parts in a day - useabele parts on the second day. For my purposes, DP is usually just about all I could ask for. I build the forms needed for jewelry components. I don't need to do much lettring and I'm not making production molds for complicated product. Basically, I'm doing rapid prototyping with a mill. After a year or so of using DP, I realized that there was more to think about than raster tool paths if I wanted to really be able to call up specific functions in my tool paths - so I got myself the newest version of Visual Mill with the intent to become a more precise machinist. I've had Visual Mill for months now and I'm sure I'll get around to installing the program one of these days ... but the truth is that my business is very strong. Free time is scarce and I'm milling all of the time. Desk Proto just keeps on taking care of my machining needs while I am busy with the myriad other tasks involved in getting my finished goods out the door. Tool path generating software is a tool in and of itself. I try to buy good quality tools. Sometimes I buy what is reported by others to be the best tool for the job. Hey, I bought TrueSpace before I tried Rhino. I use Rhino. I have Visual Mill. I use Desk Proto every day. I'm not a machinist. I am a custom jewelry manufacturer. Machining is part of a larger process in my shop and Desk Proto is as reliable and faithful as any of my 30 year old hammers and pliers. Sales in my shop have doubled in the 18 months since I began to use Rhino/Desk Proto. I will reach out for more functionality some day - when I feel that I can't live without it - but by the time that I can't live without it, my business will have grown to the point where I can let somebody else worry about it. For what it's worth......... Mark Morrell www.mwmjewelry.com

I have found DeskProto to be very capable when milling large stl files. I use 'other' CAM software regularly but for the price and features I definitely recommend this software for similar applications. Currently I am driving several large scale custom machines with code generated by Deskproto and experiencing fast cycle times and high levels of accuracy. I generally only spend several minutes building tool paths as I am milling uniques on a production time schedule. DeskProto allows me to build relatively optimized paths in a very quick manner. We have used DeskProto exclusively on several recent projects including a 45 ft tall FRP bear installed in Denver. The project was direct to mold, bypassing the pattern process, and required over 85 molds which were milled into EPS using DeskProto. Anyone working on one-off production of complex stl files should investigate DeskProto. If anywhere needs improvement it would be the addition of better acceleration post processing for those of us without look-ahead on our controllers.