I’ve been actively using Microvellum Toolbox, and their various other applications for the better part of the last decade, and while I have researched many alternative solutions over the years, I still firmly believe it is the best solution for my team of 40+ Millwork Engineers. That is not to say that it is without flaws or shortcomings, or that other packages don’t have any advantages over it, however for my money, and my employer’s money, it is the best singular solution, and here are my top 5 reasons why.

It integrates seamlessly with AutoCAD.
Despite many worthy competitor’s best efforts to gain market share, Autodesk’s AutoCAD is the the 800 pound gorilla in the industry. Every trade from architect, to interior designer, to general contractors and MEP engineers use it, or other Autodesk products that play nice with it. So being able to produce shop drawings, as well as fabrication drawings and models all in one software package from submittal through production release is the best case scenario.
Additionally, Microvellum’s libraries are configured to produce your 2D drawings and your 3D models. This streamlines the drafting process, while minimizing mistakes from disjointed drawings and models of other software solutions.
It is machine agnostic.
Many available CAD/CAM solutions are designed for use with, and sometimes owned by, specific machine manufacturers. What this means is, they will integrate very well with certain machines made by preferred manufacturers, and their support will be limited for other machines. Beyond that, certain packages will also work very well for saws, but less so for nested based CNCs, or vis versa.
Microvellum is agnostic of this, and is capable of producing machine connections to saws, nested based CNCs, vertical machine centers, and P2P CNCs as well as boring machines, and more. They are also willing and ready to develop new post processors and machine connections specific to your company and situation.
Additionally, if you are already invested in a certain optimizing software package, they can produce a toolfile that outputs all of the necessary data in the correct format for importing and optimizing there.
They actively solicit and act on user feedback.
Microvellum hosts a very helpful support site with active and friendly forums of other users. One these forums, any user with an active support account can post feedback, feature requests, or questions about existing features. The forums are actively monitored and responded to by Microvellum support admins, and each feature requests is given a status when it has been developed and incorporated into a major release to the software. I have personally had multiple requests completed and added to new software releases.
Additionally, Microvellum hosts an annual TechCon user conference at their headquarters, where they announce upcoming features and updates, provide training classes, Q&A sessions, as well as networking opportunities with other users. At the end of each conference they have provided an opportunity for user feedback of feature requests that get documented and published for all attendees.
The product libraries are open and completely configurable.
The newer versions of Microvellum Toolbox are based on a SQL database, however the product libraries are still fundamentally the same as they have been for years, in that they are based on a series of spreadsheets and workbooks that can be accessed and fully customized by the end user. These spreadsheets recognize basic and a long list of advanced Excel functions, which allow for extensive development of parametric formulas and logic based operators.
While supporting and providing access to this level of development for power users, the product comes complete with a fully functioning library out of the box and does not require you to ever interface with this side of things to effectively use it in a manufacturing setting. To me this is the best of both worlds, by supporting the needs of both new and power users.
Built in report designer.
With the release of version 7, Microvellum shipped with it’s own built in report designer. This powerful and robust addition allows for completely customized and user specific reporting from every level of the software. Additionally, they provide the ability to link to external data sources and to create relationships between the internal and external data sources. What this does, is provides a way to natively report from both Microvellum, as well as your other software solutions, such as ERP, or MES packages your company may already be using, and produce those reports all from one location.

While there are many other great reasons I choose Microvellum for my organization, these are my top 5 reasons.