Typical Autodesk at work. First lure everyone and make the competition disappear as you can't beat free. Now that everyone is used to this program and the competition is behind because they didn't had a massive development budget, they can start to charge the insane prices
this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2023
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Hmmm… that page doesn’t mention the free “personal use” license for hobbyists.
https://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/personal
^ This page still exists, and doesn’t mention it is going away, so maybe there is still hope.
The free personal portion was nerfed recently with only a limited of active designs available and other functions blocked or paywalled.
It limits you to 10 editable things at once and I think caps the number of components you can have. I haven't found either of these very restrictive to my use cases as a home user/hobbiest. I hope the personal portion isn't going away, will have to deal with migrating everything and learning new workflows 😭
10 project limit is in F360 for years now. Also who cares when you can save/open local files?
You can? How? I’ve fumbled around looking for this but always get the “you’re not connected to the internet”.
You can also mark designs as ready-only and they no longer count, so this limit is really 10 concurrently editable designs. I just keep everything read-only unless I'm actively working on it.
Yes. Also deleting a design puts it into a rubbish bin indefinitely and you can restore them at any time.
It works great for me. You push one button to make something read-only or not. There are very few functions that I care about that are blocked. I use it for design and even CAM on a CNC router.
My wife and I share a $1k Rhino license. Not so cheap but it is a perpetual license.
I don’t fuck with Autodesk, Adobe or ESRI.
Obligatory: Fuck Adobe
If you know how to program, build123d is a FOSS option that isn't FreeCAD! You can create objects directly from Python code, including fillets and chamfers! I've been playing around with it a lot and while there's definitely a learning curve, it's pretty powerful! There's a VS Code addon that allows you to visualize what you're working on and visually debug as well. I can do a lot of things I couldn't do in OpenSCAD (which is another easier code cad option).
As someone who has working in CAD for 15 years I can tell you that most users don't want to program 3D models. All of the top CAD packages are graphical for a reason. We need to build something to be up to par and FreeCAD is also not it.
It sounds cool but the last thing I want to do when designing stuff is to program anything.
Ouch!
I like OpenSCAD. I was interested in your solution until I found an example. It's way too verbose for me. OpenSCAD has its flaws, but it's simple.
OpenSCAD is definitely easier, and I still like it too. I started learning build123d because I wanted fillets and splines, and because you can reference the properties of an existing object (like height) when making another object. Those have always been big drawbacks of openscad for me.
Ouch, makes me glad I stuck to open source options even if they had issues.
I dream about FOSS CAD software at same level as commercial solutions. Using pirated software in meantime 😉
Inb4 "FrEeCaD eXiStS"
Yes, Freecad exists. I may not be an expert, but I do this (drafting and design) for a living, and freecad is terrible. I can get more done in Solidworks, despite it crashing, than I can in freecad in the same amount of time.
Why crashing? I mean, SW its not even fair to compare with freecad
It's the thing that people most often whine about with SW. I don't think it crashes more often than any other program, but when you are in your own world trying to design something it can be annoying.
Edit: I feel it's entirely fair to compare Freecad to Solidworks, Inventor, Fusion360, Autocad, etc. It's a cad program. I'm comparing it to other cad programs. To say that's not a fair comparison is kind of a condemnation of freecad.
I've moved away from free personal Fusion360 to OnShape and it suits my needs just fine. The free tier makes all my models public but I don't mind, and it runs much more smoothly in my browser than Fusion ever did on my desktop.
OnShape is fantastic.
Yes! Access to my files via web browser from any machine without having to install software was what initially drew me in, but it’s replaced almost all the CAD software I’ve tried including Fusion260 and Freecad.
I still use F360 for CAM when I make parts on my CNC mill. Looking for alternatives... I acquired a copy of Solidworks 2020 and it has the CAM package but the learning curve is much steeper.
Okay so Fusion360 money grab, FreeCAD bad alternative, what’s left (legitimate question)???
There's a few permanent license alternatives that I've heard recently. I've been researching Plasticity and Alibre Atom3D
I dunno why you say FreeCAD is bad. When I got my 3d printer I picked it because I knew fusion would rug pull eventually, and fusion doesn't run on Linux without jumping through a bunch of hoops.
It takes a bit to learn, just like any app. But it's just as powerful. I really like the spreadsheet usage in FreeCAD to keep all my dimensions in one place.
FreeCAD definitely does look like a good option. I followed a tutorial the other day and was able to do some cool stuff with it. Autodesk can definitely go to hell but if I find FreeCAD is suitable for the hobby stuff I do, then I'm using it.
It's a pain in the ass to set up and navigate, but I use Solidworks for hobbyists. It's $99/yr and it gets the job done for me. Since I use Solidworks at work, it's nice to have the same software for home so I don't have to worry about learning to navigate another CAD software.
I tried FreeCAD as well, and it's what pushed me to try the Solidworks subscription.
It's so buggy that I really don't see myself ever paying for it.
Ugh
I was using FreeCAD for a long time and while it was ok, it certainly isn't the greatest. I did just jump on this though. SolidWorks is so much nicer. https://www.solidworks.com/solution/3dexperience-solidworks-makers
I mean arr exist. And with these practises they sure promote it more then do for them self.