That evening, Miguel decided to take a different path. He posted a message on the university’s design forum, explaining his project and asking if anyone knew of a legal way to access ArtCAM or a comparable open‑source alternative. Within hours, a fellow student replied with a link to and a tutorial on using its CAM workbench for 3‑D sculpting. Another alumni, now working at a local maker space, offered Miguel a trial license of their in‑house software, which included a full ArtCAM feature set for the duration of his project.