There’s definitely a lot of information out there and it seems the documentation doesn’t necessarily keep pace with the progress being made - plus there’s different documentation depending on where you purchased your kit from. You mentioned “The M2 guide says I need to use Makerverse”, so it sounds like you purchased your kit from MakerMade (??)
There’s a ton of flexibility / options, but personally, I ended up leaning towards:
- LibreCAD for the CAD drawings (DXF creation). I haven’t worked with SVG files yet, though I did dabble a bit with Easel. As far as I know, the “non-PRO” version does not have a 30 day time limit. My login at least still works
- Carbide Create V5 for the DXF to G-code conversion
- Makerverse for the G-code execution (I purchased my kit from MakerMade). I’m still running with V1.12.
I made a summary of my initial experiences here - because like you (& likely all of us), I also waded through a lot of information and ended up noticing some inconsistencies etc. Hopefully it doesn’t add to the confusion.
Best of luck with the setup and enjoy !