Fusion 360 changes

SolidWorks is also available for $25/yr (as of last year, anyway) to US & Canadian veterans. This is the student version, which is to say it’s the full pro version, but not valid for commercial work, and puts watermarks on drawings, and any native file saved & opened by another installation of SolidWorks gives a warning.
https://store.solidworks.com/veteran/default.php?command=Step1

Here’s the link to the EAA site referenced above:
https://www.eaa.org/eaa/eaa-membership/eaa-member-benefits/solidworks-resource-center

@plasticmetal
That’s the version my son gets. Not a veteran but active member and student at RMC

I tried to learn FreeCAD a few years ago, but after learning & using SolidWorks at work, I just couldn’t wrap my head around it.

A couple other free / lower cost versions of commercial software that I’ve come across (I haven’t used either):
Creo Elements: https://www.ptc.com/en/products/creo/elements-direct/modeling-express

Alibre Atom: https://www.alibre.com/atom3d/

Based on the moves they made I think they are just one step away from dropping stl’s and 3 axis cam. I would have thought Autodesk would be keen on the Abobe model and try to transfer the no cost users to a $10 a month plan but they are pushing a 40% off $35 cad a month plan with the kicker that you have to pay for a year in advance. In any case I guess I’ll have to find an alternate solution now. I can’t imagine anyone taking on the challenge of learning it now unless it’s a commercial choice.

I think they are probably close to critical mass. Their user base will still grow, as students learn it in school and companies have already standardized on it, you won’t be the only person on a team that doesn’t use fusion. But then that kind of depends on if you are in a company or not, and if you are, these rules won’t affect you.

I wonder how many large OSS projects are now screwed though. The immediate thought is for V1 users, but also wintergatan, which has a huge cad effort.

1 Like

The two things that look like are really going to bite many users is probing and Fast moves. Reading into it, the fastest you’ll be able to move is your feed speed…

I know there are a couple people who’ve created tool changers for MPCNC… those people are going to be cooked as well.

Tool changes and probing and fast moving are in cam so not everyone uses their CAM here Estlcam still does that

There are a lot of people who really like fusion cam. It will suck for them. The other options like estlcam, kirimoto, freecad have always been there, yet the fusion users are passionate.

So the CAM is getting limited too? It looked like just stuff like 5axis was being limited. (scrolls up). What does “automatic tool changes” mean? Like T0, or is it going to kill the pp’s ability to do any tool changes?

I wonder if there’s anything we can do in another program, like a python script or a website to detect where there should be a rapid and speed it up, or combine single tool files intelligently.

1 Like

Yeah, no high speed feed. Max speed is going to be the cut rate. Linking moves can be slowed down from there, but not sped up.

No tool changes means that you won’t be able to simultaneously post toolpaths with different tools. Multiple paths with the same tool is OK. Both of those things are going to be the biggest suck for most of us, I think. A lot of people still post paths separately anyway, regardless of the tool, so it’s not TERRIBLE, but the rapids, man…Think of the adaptive clear/trochoidal. HALF that is linking moves.
Everything else seems pretty “meh”, I agree. I guess it just means no reason to learn the simulation.
Also, no exporting step or iges. That seems kinda rough to me.

No limit to the number of docs or files you can create and keep, just how many are going to show up in the active browser. So once you get past 10, you’ll have to archive something in order to create new or open old.

I guess it’s time to reconsider how much I like Fusion (which was really kind of a lot until this afternoon). I had a crack at FreeCAD a while ago, but the interface for Fusion is just so…NICE. Made learning pretty easy for me. Guess I’ll go see if FreeCAD got polished up at all.

I think I might spend 10 or 15 bucks a month for the extra features because I spend so much of my free time playing with it, but $25USD if I don’t mind paying a year ($23 for 3 years) in advance is just a bit much for me. I also brew my own coffee unless my credit rewards include some free Starbucks.

Here are some links I dug up that go through the Fusion changes pretty thoroughly, for everyone’s benefit.


Why wouldn’t you use onshape?

Good question. Don’t know much about it.

I tried to look around at kirimoto, but couldn’t seem to find a Marlin post processor. Has that changed, or is it something that needs to be done?

2 Likes

I looked at it. I pointed out a few issues with the Z speeds, and some were fixed. I need to follow up again. It isn’t really a Marlin Post Processor, per se. But there seems to be enough flexability to support Marlin in the configs. I know Scrounge79 uses it. I haven’t actually put anything on the CNC from it yet though. It is a bit different, in that it only works on stls, and not on dxfs at all.

1 Like

It was fun while it lasted. I’ll pass on the rant.

Glad this happened right before I started on the boat. :crazy_face:

1 Like

Well since I am not even in the shallow end with CAD, but have a copy of F360 which I was ‘about’ to start fiddling with, I don’t know if any of those omissions will impact on me or not.

Here I am, CAD drawing skills zero, but with one or two projects which will require more than tinker cad can offer… where do I start now?

All of your designs would be open to anyone who wanted to use them.

And browser-based CAD is awful.

Have you tried it? It works pretty well. It has hardware graphics acceleration. I’m not a pro cad person, but I don’t get angry at the browser with it. The problems I have are usually my own inability to cad.

True. I forget that people don’t always want to share everything :slight_smile:

1 Like

That’s thrown a spanner in the works. Rats. I was thinking to myself that I was just starting to move from complete idiot to partial idiot as a F360 user.

The cloud rendering worries me, does that mean that STL exports have gone. The 10 doc limit is also a pain. I can see those going as well soon…

I am also trying to parse what “stay true to our guiding principles of democratizing design for everyone.” means.

I have tried FreeCAD on a Mac and it wasn’t fit for use, none of the max software I tried was any good (IMHO) on a Mac. I wanted Freecad to work, but it crashed time and time again. F360 is just too expensive for a hobby user so not sure what to do now. I’d pay £5-10 per month for it, but not the £263/year (£20/month) feature.

Oh well, back to the drawing board (no pun intended) though I may just accept I only have 10 live documents.

Rob