Visual Mill 4 so far so good.

I bought Visual Mill 4 with Rhino 2 weeks ago as it gave me most bang
for my severely anemic New Zealand $'s.
I tried various CAM demos before hand and I just found Visual Mill
easier for me to get my head round plus it is a really powerfull
package.
I'm an absolute beginner and despite having Solid Edge for 9 months
and my Centroid equiped Shizuoka operational for 4 weeks this last 10
days is my first experience with a full on CAM package.
So far it's been great but with surprises.

The support is excellent 4 emails and two phone calls have got me
out of all my mainly self inflicted problems.

For us metric people there is a bit of faffing about to sort out mm
vs inches. Setting the parameters is easy but you then have to scale
the STL object via the Edit menu.
To scale the stock you have to open it in Visual mill set to mm and
then "export as STL" Then you can then reimport it as stock to ready
to create the part toll path. There is all so a one off mm setting in
the Controller post as well.

Native Solid Edge files can't be imported, they have to be STL files
and IGES files don't import from Solid Edge Version 11 but this is
being worked on.

For a machining newbie the feeds and speeds table that Visual Mill
uses to create rpm and feed rate depending on the material and
tooling is a huge time saver. No more pondering Machinery's Handbook
tables and trying to get it all back into metric units.

The setting of cut parameters, clearence planes, stock and part
alignment and position seems obvious to me and the work flow (Left to
right across the tool bar) works well. NB I prefer to use a mouse as
I type like a drunk pigeon.

Usual disclaimers no connection, just a customer etc, etc
Cheers
Mark Stacey