What's New in Easel

Rapid toolpaths improvements

We have optimized how rapid motions are calculated. Easel will now try to minimize unnecessary travel across your design, and move to closest shape much more often, leading to fewer rapid motions overall.

This leads to shorter carve times, with some designs reporting over 10% reduction in carve time. The more rapid motions the design has, the better the improved toolpaths will perform.

Feature is now live in Easel and available to everyone for all designs & package plans.

Community Cut Settings

Dial in your feeds and speeds using real data from the Easel community.

Choosing the right feed rate, depth per pass, and spindle speed can be the difference between a clean cut and a ruined workpiece. This new feature shows you what other makers using a similar machine with the same material & bit combination actually use, so you can start from a setting that's already working for others.

Powered by real carve data

Easel records anonymized cut-settings data for every carve. Community Cut Settings aggregates that data and determines the most popular, proven settings for your exact configuration:

• Your machine — settings are grouped by machine work-area size, so a desktop CNC sees desktop-CNC data.
• Your material — matched to the material you've selected.
• Your bit — matched by bit size (or tip angle for V-bits).

The result is a recommendation grounded in thousands of real, recent carves.

How to find it

1. Open the Cut Settings panel for your project.
2. Choose the bit you want to set up — Roughing, Detail, or Outlines.
3. Next to the Automatic and Manual tabs, select the new Community tab.

Using the most-used setting

When you open the Community tab, you'll see the Most-Used Setting card. This highlights the single most popular combination of feed rate, depth per pass, and spindle speed for your current material and bit.

• Click Apply these settings to use them in one tap.
• If your current values already match, you'll see "You're using this setting" instead.

Exploring all settings

Want to see the full picture? Click Explore all settings to open the heatmap.

The heatmap plots feed rate against depth per pass for a given spindle speed, with each tile representing a combination other makers have used:

• Brighter tiles = more popular. Settings used in more carves glow green-to-yellow, while less-used settings stay a darker purple-blue.
• ⭐ The star marks the most-used setting for the selected spindle speed.
• Spindle speed selector at the top lets you switch RPM ranges and see how the community's choices shift. It also shows how many carves fall in each range.
• Hover a tile to see how many community carves used that exact setting.
• Tap any tile to preview its exact feed rate and depth per pass, then click Apply selected setting to use it.

Helpful tips

Spindle speed on manual machines. If your machine doesn't control spindle speed automatically, Easel still recommends an RPM — you'll see a reminder to set it by hand.

No data yet? Some material-and-bit combinations don't have enough community carves to recommend a setting. When that happens, you'll see a "No community cut settings available" message — fall back to Automatic or Manual settings for now. As more makers carve, coverage keeps growing.

You're always in control. Applied community settings are just a starting point. Tweak any value and the setting becomes your own custom value — nothing is locked.

FAQ

Where does the data come from? Anonymized, aggregated cut-setting data from Easel carves across the community. No project or personal information is shared.

Why don't I see settings for my bit/material? There may not be enough community carves yet for that exact combination. Coverage improves over time.

Will this overwrite my saved cut settings? Only when you choose to apply a community setting. Until then, your existing settings are untouched.

Does it work for every bit in a multi-bit carve? Yes — open the Community tab on each bit (Roughing, Detail, Outlines) to get a recommendation tailored to that operation.

Favorite Icons

You can now add Pro Design Icons to your Favorites, making it easy to access the icons you use most often.

To add an icon to Favorites, click the Favorite button next to the icon while selecting it. The icon will then appear under the Favorites category in the left panel.

To remove an icon from Favorites, open the Favorites category, select the icon, and click the Favorite button again to toggle it off. The icon will be removed from your Favorites list.

Rapid Connect from Browser

Easel can now directly connect to your CNC machine without the need to install any software (the Easel Driver). This means you can now connect from more devices, including Chromebooks and older Mac or Windows computers.

How to Use

If you are using Chrome, Edge, or Opera and do not have the Easel Driver installed, you will get a new screen when you click the Carve button that looks like this:

This will open a list of ports where you can authorize Easel to connect:

Automatic Reconnect

Some machines identify themselves uniquely to your computer and Easel will reconnect to them automatically. Others will ask you to re-authorize the connection each time you plug in. You still have the option to install the Easel Driver if your machine falls into the latter category.

Firefox and Safari Not Supported

This feature relies on behavior only available in Chromium-based browsers (e.g. Chrome, Edge, Opera). Firefox and Safari are NOT supported.

Already Have the Easel Driver?

If you've already installed the Easel Driver but want to use the new rapid connection functionality, you have the option to uninstall the Easel Driver.

Improved Image Trace

Improved image trace with a new algorithm that supports color images. This should make it faster to go from a source design to a finished product in Easel.

Italic and Bold Fonts

Easel now supports italic style for all fonts (including your own imported ones) and bold style for select fonts in available in Easel Pro.

You can access the variant styles in either the text tool or in the Shape tab of the properties box when editing text.

Faster V-Bit Toolpath Generation

Toolpath generation just got a turbo boost! Easel now generates V-bit toolpaths 30% faster on average.

Spend less time waiting and more time iterating on your design.

Share project photos directly from your phone

When sharing your projects to the Easel gallery, you can now attach photos directly from your phone by scanning a QR code. This eliminates the need to email or transfer photos to yourself and then upload them to Easel.

The publishing screen now shows a QR code:

Scan the code with your phone to choose photos from your library or take a new one:

After selecting photos and clicking "Send to computer," your photos will pop right into the desktop carousel image picker — ready to be reordered, featured, or removed before publishing.

New Toolpath Simulation Controls

The toolpath simulator got a complete refresh!

In this new version of the simulation controls, you can isolate and preview the tool paths for any individual bit with one click — all in one cleaner, less cluttered control bar.

The timeline also now features color-coded sections for each pass, allowing you to quickly see how much of the total carve time will be taken by each one.

You can also now quickly select a playback speed from a dropdown menu:

There's also a new button to close the tool path simulation and return to a clean design preview.

Finally, the new controls work the same in 3D workpieces:

Workpiece names & notes in editor

Easel's design editor now shows your workpiece's name and any notes you've entered, and lets you edit the name and notes right there without leaving the design:

Notes are a great way to leave reminders for yourself about how to carve, assemble, or finish your project, or to give tips or instructions for other Easel users when you share a project or publish to the Easel Gallery.