Carvect™CNC CAD/CAM · Windows & macOS
Design it.Preview it.Manufacture it.
Signs, inlays, carved reliefs and cut parts. Draw them, toolpath them and watch them cut on screen, all in one application, before the router ever touches the wood.
No time limit on the trial · perpetual license · version 3.6.2
What it does
From the first line to the last pass.
Drawing, toolpaths, simulation and output live in one program and one job file. Change the drawing and the toolpaths rebuild with the tools and depths you already chose.
Draw and import
Shapes drawn to an exact size, text set on a curve, offsets, fillets and booleans. SVG, DXF, STL files and photographs all come in ready to be cut.
Cut-outs and pockets
Profiles with tabs and lead-ins, pockets with islands, drilling, chamfers and round-overs. Adaptive clearing, and trochoidal clearing that takes a whole shape into its corners in light half-circle bites.
V-carving and inlay
Lettering and ornament carved to the width of the shape. Two-board inlays whose walls match along the whole join.
3D carving
Reliefs and imported models, roughed and finished. A model taller than the machine can reach is sliced into boards and glued back up.
Simulation you can trust
Material comes off stock the size of yours. The part on the screen is the part that comes off the bed, scallops and all.
Tools, materials, machines
A tool library with 120 bits in it, a material library that sets the feeds, and your machine's travel checked before anything is posted.
Toolpaths
19 ways to take material off.
From a plain profile to a two-board inlay to a finishing pass over a carved relief. Pick the shape, pick the strategy, pick the bit, and every one of them previews in the same simulation.
2D and 2.5D
Cutting through and into flat stock
Profile- Cut along a contour, inside/outside/on the line, with arc lead-ins, holding tabs and an optional finishing pass.
Pocket- Clear an area to depth — concentric offsets, raster, or a continuous spiral — with islands left standing.
2D Adaptive Clearing- Clear at a constant radial engagement, so the cutter is loaded the same in a corner as in open air; deeper cuts, faster feeds, less heat.
Trochoidal Clearing- Clear a shape, into every corner, with the cutter taking light half-circle bites instead of burying itself; on an open line, a slot wider than the tool.
- Rest Machining
- Cut only what the previous, larger tool could not reach, computed from the material it actually left.
Drill- Peck, dwell and retract cycles from circles or points, with reducing pecks and a break-through allowance.
Chamfer- Break an edge with a V-bit or chamfer mill, on either side of the line, to a width or an angle.
Round Over- Roll an edge to a radius with a round-over cutter, inside or outside the line, in one pass or stepped down for a clean finish.
Carving
Depth that follows the shape
V-Carve- Vary the depth so a V-bit's width matches the shape's, following the medial axis; optional flat bottom cleared by a second tool.
Inlay- A tapered cavity and its mirrored plug, both cut with the same V-bit, on two boards. The angled walls wedge the plug tight as it seats — no side gap, no glue line, and corners as sharp as the bit's point. The plug's wall height is set so it seats at an exact depth rather than wherever it jams.
Engrave- Follow the line itself at a fixed depth — text, outlines, single-line fonts.
Flute / Wide Flute- Decorative rounded flutes along a path, sized by the ball-nose or by a chosen width.
Prism- Raise a shape to a faceted prism, cutting the sloped faces with a V-bit.
- Photo V-Carve
- Turn a photograph into variable-depth V-cuts on a grid, so the image reads as light and shadow in the material.
- Sketch Carve
- Hatch a bitmap into carved line work, the way a pen sketch builds tone.
3D
Models and reliefs
3D Roughing- Take the bulk off an imported model in level passes, leaving a machining allowance for the finishing tool.
3D Adaptive Clearing- The same constant-engagement clearing, applied level by level to a 3D model.
3D Finishing- Parallel, contour, scallop or pencil passes over the surface, with the stepover set by the scallop height you will accept.
Surface / Relief- Machine a height field — a relief modelled or imported into the job — rather than a solid.
In every job
The parts you use without thinking about them.
- Projects
- A picture into a toolpath
- Your machine, carried through the job
- Posts you can edit, header and footer included
- A tool database, and a material one
- Feeds that follow the cut, until you say otherwise
- Drawing to a number, not to a pixel
- Measuring, without picking up a tool
- 3D models, placed where you want them
Guides
Notes from the workshop.
How the cutting actually works: feeds, tabs, V-carving, posts and constant engagement. Useful whether or not you ever buy it.
The feed that reaches the machine
A number written against a tool is a starting point, not an instruction. Here is what happens to it between the tool database and the F word in your file — and how to stop it happening.
Read it30 August 2026 · 5 min readTabs, lead-ins, and the last pass
Three small settings on the profile form decide whether your part stays put, whether the entry shows on the edge, and whether the wall is straight. None of them is optional in practice.
Read it26 August 2026 · 6 min readV-carving, and the line down the middle
A V-bit cuts wider the deeper it goes. V-carving turns that into a feature: the depth at every point is whatever makes the cut exactly as wide as the shape.
Read it19 August 2026 · 6 min readWhat a post-processor actually changes
Two G-code files can describe the same toolpath and still be different files. Here is exactly what differs, and why picking the wrong post shows up as a crash rather than an error message.
Read it12 August 2026 · 7 min readConstant engagement, and why it lets you cut deeper
A conventional offset path quietly triples the load on your cutter every time it turns a corner. Adaptive clearing exists to stop that, and the payoff is a much deeper cut.
Read itBuying it
Pay once. It keeps working.
A perpetual license for two computers, with a year of updates included. After that the software carries on, and every version released in your year stays yours.
Try it on a job you already have.
The trial is the whole application with no clock on it. It holds back one thing, the file for the machine, which is what the license is for. Open a drawing you have cut before and see how it comes out.
Windows & macOS · no card · version 3.6.2