I’m also at the end of my rope with EstlCam. I refuse to buy the license for the software, until I feel I’ve tested every aspect of it. But the countdown timer that cumulatively grows each and every time is getting to be too much. I haven’t figured out carving anywhere near to the point of feeling confident in purchasing the license.
I’ll likely look into Fusion next.
I think it caps out at 3 min I may be wrong but I read it on the internet somewhere
I thought it was 30 seconds…
No that would be an eternity for me I paid to not hold my breath.
It may be it’s been a long time since I purchased it. there is a point where it stops getting longer though if your patience can hold out you don’t ever have to pay.
Definitely not. Mine was up to about 2:15 when I caved and purchased it. Note - it becomes much less annoying to use with that wait gone.
Kind of a difficult thing though. Saving a project and getting the simulation is what will help you get more proficient, but you have to pay first to get a quick save.
I deleted everything out of the registry once, then after the nag got to me I bought it.
I get the point of the (annoying) delay when you save to prompt you to buy it.
But, the damn delay also appears when you accidentally open the wrong file, and it won’t cancel until the delay is up. That just creates frustration.
If I press cancel… then cancel.
Learning Fusion would be great. But I don’t have the time available to sit and learn something else from scratch. I have watched a few Youtube videos about it. I don’t think I need that level of CAD abilities to carve a name in a plank of wood.
I have actually had pretty reasonable success with Tinkercad. If you are making a simple front panel with cutouts, holes, text etc, it works quite well.
You have to remember however that if you want to mill an area, you need to make it a hole in Tinkercard, and then once exported, select that ‘hole’ as an area to mill.
If you draw the area in Tinkercad as a milled area (say 3mm thick in a 6mm piece), it doesn’t export.
Well… How much are you willing to pay? Changing to grbl lets you use carbide create and easel. There are other cad/cam packages out there, but cost X amount of $.
I recommend FreeCAD and use one of its GRBL postprocessors to generate all of my MPCNC gcode with minor modifications to output for compatibility.
The Path workbench is under active development and has improved greatly over the past few releases (nightly builds include new features). It’s basic, has quirks and may lack the polished workflow of closed alternatives, but is currently very usable.
Path/CAM subforum: https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewforum.php?f=15
https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?t=33910
I will give that a try! Estlcam, for all it’s abilities etc… is still driving me mad with its silly issues
FreeMill maybe an alternative for you.
So I asked and someone saved my but on here so I’ll pass it on. Easel works fine with mpcnc. It only uses like 3 total commands, so the fact it’s “grbl” doesn’t matter. I run most my projects through easel.
Only change I had to make was updating one line of code in the Marlin firmware so the G0 wasn’t dreadfully slow. But you don’t have to do this, it will cut just fine. Also you have to export your gcode as mm or your will have the slowest machine on earth.
Thanks for that - can you give me an idea what line of code I am looking for? 
I wonder nobody mentioned https://www.grblgru.com/
its very powerful and not too hard to learn.
Not as userfriendly as it could be but free and you can contact the developer and ask for improvements (I did many times).
inside the firmware before flashing you will see a file called configuration_adv.h, should be in the marlin folder
your looking for a line like this:
//#define G0_FEEDRATE 3000 // (mm/min)
uncomment it (remove the //) so it looks like this:
#define G0_FEEDRATE 3000 // (mm/min) 0
now when easel sends it a G0 command (basically a jog command) it will run at 3000mm/min instead of the previous G1 command (which is almsot always a z movement, so slow…)
If you make this change, you might also want to modify this line in configuration.h:
#define DEFAULT_MAX_FEEDRATE { 50, 50, 15, 25 }
Take the 15 down to 8 or 10. I have lost steps at values over 10mm/s (600mm/min), and the use of 3000 for G0_FEEDRATE means that you will be attempting rapid Z moves at 15mm/s (900mm/min). The lead-screw-driven Z axis cannot be moved as fast as the belt driven X and Y.
Thanks Andrew (nad Robert) - deep down I knew I’d regret asking htat question! I am starting from a base of zero knowledge here - so will chew this over for a VERY long time! 
well you dont HAVE to change it, your jogs will just be slow. You can still mess around with easel and do some test pieces. If you find you like it, I can just send you a modified file to drop in.