PolygonLogix started as a desktop program with a perpetual price, and that is still the product most of this site is about. But a lot of the shops that emailed us over the last year weren’t asking for more features. They were asking for a smaller door: a way to get the nesting and quoting without a capital purchase, a Windows box, or a decision that has to go past the owner. PolygonLogix Lite is that door, and this post is the honest version of who it’s for, who it isn’t for, and why it’s deliberately bare-bones.
What Lite Actually Is
Lite is the nesting and quoting engine from the desktop program, running in a browser, on a subscription: $65 a month or $600 a year, after a 7-day free trial. Drop in DXFs or DWGs, nest them true-shape on your sheet sizes, get cutting time from your own machine’s tech tables, run bulk quotes with price breaks, send a quote PDF or order confirmation, save the quote, export the nested DXF. AI Parse reads purchase orders into the quote the same way the desktop program does. It runs on Windows, a Mac, or a tablet in the office, with nothing to install and updates that just appear.
What It Deliberately Leaves Out
This is the part we want to be clear about, because a cheaper price tag invites the wrong assumption. Lite is not a cheaper way to own PolygonLogix. It is a cheaper way to get the core of it. The things it doesn’t do are exactly the things that make the desktop program a desktop program:
- DXF and DWG only. No IGES, STEP, or SVG import, and no unfolding: if a customer sends a 3D STEP of a bracket, Lite can’t turn it into a blank.
- No Draw. The embedded CAD editor that fixes bad geometry, closes contours, separates assemblies, and unfolds sheet metal lives in Standard and Pro.
- No cutting. Cut paths, lead-ins, tabs, and posting to the machine are Pro. Lite hands you a nested DXF; your CAM does the rest.
- No production or inventory. Job status, remnants, and stock tracking are Pro.
- Your data lives on our servers, not on a machine you own. For most small shops that’s a feature. For some it’s a dealbreaker, and that’s fine.
Who Lite Makes Sense For
The one- or two-person shop quoting a few jobs a week. If you’re pricing laser work off a spreadsheet, a rule of thumb, or the nesting screen on the machine itself, Lite replaces that with a real nest and a real cut-time for less than the cost of one mis-quoted job a month.
Shops that need to prove it before they buy it. Six and a half thousand dollars is a real decision. Sixty-five isn’t. Running a month of actual quotes through Lite tells you whether the numbers match your floor, and the Lite export means the setup you build during that month comes with you if you move up.
Anyone quoting away from the shop. A browser runs on the laptop at the customer’s site, the tablet at the trade show, and the home office at 9 p.m. The desktop program runs on the desktop.
Shops whose customers send clean DXFs or DWGs. If your work arrives as flat DXF or DWG patterns and you mostly need to nest, price, and send, Lite may be all you ever need. Plenty of job shops never touch a STEP file.
When Standard or Pro Is the Better Buy
You get STEP or IGES files. The moment customers send 3D models, you need unfolding and assembly separation, and that’s Standard.
You fix geometry yourself. Open contours, duplicate lines, junk layers: Draw handles them inside the program. In Lite you fix the file somewhere else first.
You want to cut from it. If the goal is one program from PO to post, that’s Pro, and no subscription version of it exists.
You want the data in the building and no monthly bill. Standard is a one-time purchase that keeps working whether you ever pay us again or not.
The math, honestly. Lite is $780 a year. Standard is $6,500 once. If you only compared the two on price you’d cross over around year eight, which is not the point. The point is that the shops that outgrow Lite outgrow it on features, usually within the first year, long before the money matters.
The Upgrade Path Is Real
A Lite shop isn’t a dead end. Your Lite setup exports as a bundle that Standard and Pro import, so moving up doesn’t mean starting over. Start small on purpose, and when you hit one of the walls above, request a demo of the desktop program with the same parts you’ve been quoting.
How to Decide
Don’t decide from this post. Take the 7-day trial, quote real jobs you already know the answer to, and see whether the numbers land where your floor says they should. If they do and you never wanted the rest, you’re done, and it costs less than your phone bill. If you find yourself wishing you could open a STEP or fix a drawing, that’s your answer too, and the demo is free.