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Got this email from Autodesk that Fusion is increasing their annual price by a huge amount. I subbed for 1 year a couple years ago for I think $380. Then I was able to get an educational sub after that. Fusion is still the cheapest CAD software out there, not including the free stuff like FreeCAD, but still, this price increase is massive.
It should be noted that it's still free to use for personal use minus the extra features.
No, no - they're not raising the price; they're rebalancing it to reflect the value it delivers!!1!
And since they've reduced the free version functionality significantly, I believe I'm due a substantial rebate.
A five finger rebate
I dont use it, but did they bundle any other software in or add any features that would justify the use of the word "rebalancing" or is it just plain old fashioned corporate bullshit?
The problem is that there is no real competitor to fusion. If you think about usability/learning curve
SolidWorks for Makers seems like a decent competitor. $48/year USD for now.
I thought they got rid of that tier. Might have to try it out if it's still available.
Seems to still be offered, the license allows up to $2000 profit as well instead of $1000 revenue with fusion.
Yeah, I've used multiple CAD tools, from pro/engineer to F360, but the learning curve of freecad felt like a brick wall.
FreeCAD definitely has a steeper learning curve and a few rough edges, but to me it was absolutely worth it to learn. I really don't like my files subject to the whims of Autodesk.
~~I got stuck on googling how to make a fillet in freecad, to which the answer appeared to be, "yeah, nah, you sort of can't". Oh okay, this program is not for me.~~
~~Edit: if people want to help/criticise, I recall the problem was that I couldn't do it parametrically, which is the only way I like to model any engineering parts. So far the only thing that information has gotten me is a downvote. If freecad is as full featured as you say, then this should be easy to do. Feel free to tell me how.~~
EDIT 2: after the info I got, I looked into it more and discovered my problem was a bit different - I couldn't do a parametric offset line in a sketch, because I needed to make a particular pattern. I ended up doing it with OpenSCAD if I recall. I apologise for saying freecad couldn't do fillets, that would've been extremely basic. It was still a very painful experience just to figure out that it couldn't do what I needed.
whens the last time you used freecad? theres literally a button for making fillets.
For years, in fact.
Huh, I've definitely done fillets before. Though they're more nuanced than F3D or SW or ProE.
I've found freecad to be feature complete and fairly performant as a pure CAD tool, but the workflows take getting used to and there are some rough edges where things are just significantly more complex than in competing commercial software.
Yeah, I've done some editing in FreeCAD, but I'm lost at the rest.
Very true, and the reason I went with Fusion in the first place. It's easy to pick up while still being fully featured.
Just in case anybody doesn't know, if you're a US or Canada veteran, solidworks is $20 a year
So if you make 1000$ in a year from modeling, 680 goes to fusion360
Revenue does not mean profit. So if you sell something that costs $800 in material, soll it for $1000, you still need to pay for fusion…
And then If that's all you sold that year You're all of a sudden at a $480 loss.
I am on my 7th or 8th year of it. I don't use it for making money, but use it for making 3D printed things for around the house, then upload them to Thinginverse and Printables for everyone else to use.
It looks like Solidworks for Makers is US $48 / year.
A couple of answers from the Q&A at the bottom of the page:
"3DEXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS for Makers is meant for personal projects and non-commercial use. Per our terms and conditions, you may sell items you make for a profit up to and not exceeding US$2,000 a year. If you are interested in building your business with SOLIDWORKS tools, check out our start up program or our commercial offers."
"Currently this offer is available for purchase with a billing address within the following countries: Algeria, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Morocco, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. More countries will be added soon."
"Files and data created with your Maker account are digitally watermarked and can only be opened up in another Maker platform. You cannot open up files created with your Maker account within a commercial or academic platform. This digital watermark is added to native 3D file formats, such as .3dxml, .sldprt, .sldasm, and .slddrw. Neutral 3D file formats, such as .stp or .iges can be opened on any platform."
Oh wow, thanks for this! I'm a veteran and $20 a year is awesome! I do the same, mostly just making things around the house. I don't really upload them though, because most things I make are super custom to my needs.
Are you familiar with the watermark they are talking about? How does that express itself; does it show up on models or is it like metadata in a file?
I've not heard anything good about 3DEXPERIENCE, I really wanted to get it but after reading what other people have said, I decided not to.
It's one of the biggest problems of the whole 3d printing ecosystem that so many people are relying on software like fusion or tinkercad that could shut down, lose its free option, and see massive price increases on subscription software.
I wish I could wrap my head around freecad, but we're just not there yet and we may never be. I feel like it or something like it must be our future because until we have a full libre software chain we're living on borrowed time.
I’ve started watching a freeCAD tutorial series on YouTube. It’s a little slow going, since I don’t have a huge amount of time to dedicate to it, but it’s amazing how quickly the basics can be picked up.
I've been using Solid Edge for a while -it's very solid once you learn it, just a less mature UX compared to 360. But no bullshit, it just works, I love not losing work because half the system is in the cloud and randomly forced you up to log in.
I used to use a lot of Autodesk software as a hobby by abusing their student versions but they've really tightened their belt on those lately. I always thought if I turned a dollar on one of those old projects I'd absolutely want to give Autodesk their fair share but if they're going to be greedy then fuck em.
And they make it tricky as hell to find the hobbyist license. I really hate this exploitative shit. Same for Adobe.
Lol that's worse than Adobe pricing
Autodesk have always competed well with Adobe at screwing over their customers.
Fusion is still the cheapest CAD software out there
Is it thou?
I was looking at Solidworks and it looks like I can sub for $99/year
https://www.solidworks.com/solution/3dexperience-solidworks-makers
Come, join us: FreeChads
Makes me glad I still have access to my old university email and credentials.
I switched to Shapr3d a few years ago, but I follow the work of the FreeCAD team with great interest.
IMHO, I think Autodesk should provide a free/limited version of Fusion360 for the people who only want to design and 3D print small pieces
They do. It’s free for personal/non-commercial use.
So my educator free subscription isn't changing?
I don't think so. I'm on the education license as well.
So most of the big packages have a cheap or free tier for hobbyist/maker use, and I think they all do for educational use. The rub with most of these is that they are either not for commercial use (OnShape, Solid Edge CE), or they have "gotcha" thresholds ($1000 revenue for F360, $2000 profit for Solidworks).
Now if you wanted to go completely free-as-in-beer and still retain full commercial rights, you really have to go open source. Then there's also DesignSpark Mechanical, which is Windows only and not truly parametric, but is much more advanced than something like TinkerCad. They've got their own issues with feature erosion in the free tier, but because the company's main business is selling components, they haven't removed commercial use from it yet.