I did a lot of research before I bought any Cam software & at the time for me Vectric were way ahead of anyone else for my needs. OK I am biased being a Vectric user so if it is down to money then there are free cad & cam programs available & cheaper paid for software. I can promise you that you will save money on wasted materials, save time, and save a whole lot on frustration. Nice thing about their software is they let you upgrade to the next level of product for the difference in price usually. You might trial the cut2d version of their software and see if it would do the operations you need to do. Yes, it is about 6 times the price of this software for just the desktop version ($350).
WITH ESTLCAM SOFTWARE HOW TO
Again, not apples to apples, I haven't spent enough time to learn how to do all the operations I did in vcarve, but in the vcarve model, I can move the part around when done and actually see what it will turn out to be, I even made a mistake on one of the pockets, corrected it, regenerated the preview, and verified it was what I wanted to do. Just to show an example, below is the preview of out of that software.
![with estlcam software with estlcam software](https://www.softpaz.com/screenshots/estlcam-christian-knll/11.png)
I still do, but not nearly as much since using vcarve. While I don't spend a lot of time doing this type of work, I can tell you I've wasted a lot of material learning and making my share of mistakes. Looks like it will generate files for other controller software, such as Mach3/4, so can see a lot of shops are probably using it. It looks like it would be a good program to generate 2d files and less complex machining for the price. I could probably learn a bit more from watching their tutorials to make a more apples to apples comparison.
![with estlcam software with estlcam software](https://mypccrack.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Estlcam-2-5D_16-1-1024x577.png)
I downloaded the app to try it out a bit tonight.