Apparently it means “Please don’t stop using Fusion, we depend a lot on the feedback and beta testing you’ve done for us.”
You can still render locally. I didn’t see any differences between a couple of things I did locally vs cloud, except that my project didn’t have to wait in a queue for local render. A new graphics card is cheaper than a one year subscription…
Here is a nice intro video to freecad:
I didn’t even know you could render locally or does rendering locally mean just ray trace type rendering as opposed to cloud conversion to STL?
Rob
yeah, their rendering is for images/animations of your model (AFAIK). I just tried, and I can export a single part to STL in offline mode, so maybe that’s still ok (they are so far still including that function for free). Trying to export an entire model requires “cloud translation”, but that just turned my entire model into a single STL which is probably not what most people want. I certainly don’t.
There also seems to be question in their comments over there about removing simulation. I took that to be the FEA-type module, but a lot of folks are concerned that it also is removing the CAM toolpath simulation as well. That would be really, really, really bad. I don’t think they could keep any CNC users on it at that point.
Thanks for that. A lot really. I’m going to check it out later. I remember a year ago trying to find decent videos and getting really frustrated with the quality that was out there. It felt like either I had to understand a lot about CAD and/or the intent of the software to understand them, or else listen to somebody blather on about a lot of things that weren’t important to skill the video was supposed to show the viewer.
I thought (still do) the interface is a bit on the complicated side, but I messed with it last night and it’s a little easier to understand after all my practice with F360. It just feels really…clunky. But then, so can a performance sports car until you get used to the clutch, and there’s only one way to do that.
I started following freecad on twitter and they recommended that video. They are also asking about what information they can share to make it easier. I suspect they are seeing this as an opportunity and a moment to grab some more users and make things better. This might be very invigorating to the project.
I wouldn’t mind something with a little faster pace. Something meant for people who already know some other similar CAD program.
It’s hard to imagine something like freecad succeeding. It is completely free and open. People volunteer to develop it and some people volunteer to pay for some development. It is built on goodwill. Sort of the opposite of the Boston common problem. But there are other examples of this working. Blender and inkscape come to mind, and of course the linux os. Once a FOSS project gets big enough, it can be sustained by donations and support contracts. It seems like it is close to that.
There was also a walkthrough with freecad, freecad cam, grbl, ugs focused on the mpcnc here:
I’m not sure what the current state of cam and marlin PP is in freecad. I’m sure I’ve been told, but I forget. It might also be a good time to poke at that problem and make it as good as the guffy post processor.
Isn’t October 1 the scheduled date for changes taking place?
The real pain for me with the 10 document limit is when I have an assembly of referenced parts. Guess I will start breaking those links before exporting the files. I wonder if they will ever consider having the option of your files being located locally or on the cloud so it would not impact their online storage.
It is, but they said we’ll still be able to export stls. I tried offline to see if it was also using cloud translation.
The amount of cloud storage used is negligible, these days it’s effectively free for the volumes they will be working at (or the incremental cost is hundreths of pennies). If it isn’t I’m happy to help them out. Our family home server has 24TB of disk. We throw anything and everything on it, I don’t care to be honest. It cost me less than $1K to build.
The reason for the 10 documents limit will be to encourage people to upgrade to the paid version. Just enough to hook you in and then sting you for the ‘heavy’’ stuff’. Mmmm interesting business model, where have I seen that before?
After watching that video, and seeing there’s an entire playlist of them, I really hope there’s a nice workflow for marlin
I found this post on their forums, though it’s dated
https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?t=36331
and
https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?t=33910
The second link seems to imply, just choose grbl to export gcode and it still works with marlin…
Thanks to my sloppy organization and total confusion of Fusions file structure, these changes shouldn’t effect me much. Lol
Oh this sucks.
I’m a huge Fusion360 user. Not only just CNC but for my 3d printed designs also.
I might have to take another look at using my wife’s Education license to run F360 from. I used to do that for Inventor, it should work for F360 too.
Yeah, simulation i rely on heavily after doing toolpaths
Generation - does that mean tool path generation is going away? This sucks a lot if that’s the case.
Actually, the more I read about this the less I wonder if I’ll really be affected.
It sounds like the 10 active documents just means I’ll have to shuffle documents if I want to open an older design. I don’t do this very often, so it might not bother me.
You can still export STL files and it sounds like you can still export a dxf from a schematic, which is what I already do.
The simulation might bother me, but I can’t find info as to whether that’s talking about simulating tool paths, or the material simulation (which I’ve never used).
I don’t use the cloud based rendering. I’ve only ever used local.
The only thing I think will really affect me is the lack of rapid movement, but if I can export dxf, maybe I’ll go back to using ESTLCam (really don’t want to do that).
from another blog I just found on their site:
- Rapid moves: Rapid moves traverse long distances across large machines at significantly faster speeds than the cut feedrate. Higher end machines typically have longer distances to travel and faster rapid speeds, making this feature valuable to those in a commercial setting but unnecessary for personal use.
They must have not heard of the LR2…
I’m pretty sure it’s generative design, not generation. The biggest change to toolpaths I saw was having to make separate posts for different tools. You can still post multiple paths with the same tool together, it SEEMS. Looks like an easy fix if you really really want it, just write out your script, then copy paste the files together or use robocopy (i really love that actually, super underrated function included in windows!). Slightly annoying for us, but a Serious impediment to a production environment, especially with automatic tool changers, i get it.
A few people asked about the cam simulation vs material simulation, but I didn’t see any answers from AD.
Seems the same way for me. Slightly annoying, but it might be worth the tradeoff for the slick interface. A lot will depend on how usable freecad turns out to be now.
It’s a really good point, and odds are solid that they haven’t, and that even if they have they don’t think it’s a large enough user base to push the needle. It really looks like they are trying to punish people using the software on machines that run all day or that have rapids of 300+ ipm. In the cam simulation, you should be able to get details on how much time you spend cutting and how much time in traveling. I think it would be interesting to see how much time that calculates as, and how much time at the lower cut rate. On some of those full sheet jobs, I’m sure it could add up to an hour or more. Again, annoying to us, crippling to a production environment.
The more I read, the more I get it. I don’t like it, and I REALLY don’t like not knowing what they’ll decide we don’t need next month or the month after, but it’s not my stuff. I’m a freeloader right now, so that’s my boat to row.
I’ve watched the first 3 videos in this series, and just starting 4 where it gets into actual cnc paths… freecad looks great. And I’m thinking will fit in great if I can convert to gcode that runs on the MPCNC. Seems quite easy to use now that I’ve watched a couple videos. It might actually become my first choice for 3d print designs.
I read a while back that somebody had put together a marlin pp, and that Grbl already exists. I haven’t learned anything about either, but would that cover your bases?
This has been a timely discussion thank you all! It seems to me that CAD preferences are a bit like football teams or car brands.
I would prefer to keep it as simple as possible, but a few of my first projects will be printed not CNC involving custom dust collection manifolds for a couple of machines - it would probably be cheaper to pay someone to draw them than to pay for a proper pro subscription!
Having said that - pretty much everything else I am likely to do will be quite simple (at least in drawing terms) - OnShape, FreeCad and TinkerCad all seem to more than adequately do the job and will probably take less of a learning curve than F360 would have - perhaps I should just plough in and worry about gcode later.
(Remember - I am unlikely to even start my LR build for some months!)
I will now stand back at a safe distance and respectfully hope to get a consensus on where I should START with CAD! 