Fusion 360 Personal Plan LIMITATIONS (Concerns + Alternatives???)

NOTE to all: Step is going to continue in the free license. Thanks for the info Angus. Continuing on as a very satisfied hobbyist using an amazing product.

This is how opensource is fueled.

If Autodesk had a free personal use a 40-150k a year income 500-2000 perpetual license and then still keep their over priced full with upgrades for the larger industry version.

Kompas3D for Home is $15/year and annual renewal is ~$5 at current RUB/USD exchange rates. Isn't supposed to be used for commercial work and doesn't have some of their high end mechanical and other industrial engineering modules (fluid and air modeling, materials library, draft documentation, cabling and harness module, strength and load testing, mold making for injection, stamp making for sheet metal, pipeline design and so on, but you don't need that unless you're a design engineer in industry and then you can afford the pro license anyway), but that's not in 360 or OnShape at all. Works under Wine now and they'll have a native Linux version next year. Not as good as 'free' and certainly sad that they no longer offer one-time licenses, but it's a polished, professional product that runs a major industrial nation (in use at RosAtom, RosCosmos etc). It's pretty impressive that what is essentially a Solidworks-level product offers a low cost hobbyist license everyone can afford (basically one cup of coffee in Moscow if you don't go somewhere really expensive). It should perform well even on lower end machines (they have their own 3d engine and optimise it heavily, because Russians, previous version ran all the way down to Windows XP). There's also a version for students, but I think you need to attend a Russian uni/engineering college to get it.

Just a suggestion of another alternative. If you hate Russians and everything to do with them, don't buy it and keep it to yourself. Really can't be bothered to deal with the pervasive bigotry. You lot didn't stop buying US software when they invaded Iraq, and Iraq was just sitting there chilling, so I don't want to hear it.

not rediculous.. since they first started adding limitaitons, they've continued to do so. Fusion360 is pretty much useless for hobbyists unless you just want a repository of models for exporting to 3d print.

Only having x amount of "editable" projects (i think it's 6 or 8)
Post-processing CNC jobs now causes ALL movements to go at the slowest feed rate in the job (this means that to move from point A to point B will be as slow as the slowest feedrate in the job. so what used to be a "rapid" movement, now only goes as slow as you set the slowest feedrate. if you're slowest cutting feedrate is say 5mm/s, then ALL of your travels will be 5mm/s)
They have also removed a whole host of features, and limited just about every aspect of the software.

I'm pretty sure the goal from day 1 was to get people used to it, and make it as widespread and useful as possible, and once they reached saturation, drop or limit as many useful features as possible unless you pay for it.

Correction, its more expensive then adobe, its 700 dollars a year

3mf is better because it keeps the metadata, the dimensions and the orientation of the objects.

I dropped Fusion a long time ago, and went back to Bobcad and Mastercam. I don't want my shit in the cloud.

As a software developer myself, I would rather spend the next 15 years building my own cad software in my spare time than paying $1700 a year for their stuff.

The "free to students so they will demand it be purchased by companies when they get into industry" marketing method was pioneered by Autodesk with Autocad in the '90s they learned it from watching Apple give away computers to schools.

"Can't survive without making money" big companies like these can't survive without making more profit than the previous year each year. There fixed it for you.

Hello Angus, just came across your video and enjoyed the balanced business viewpoint between users and providers. The references you make to SolidWorks also interests me as I am a fairly serious hobbyist woodworker who wants to use a parametric cad program for my projects. I’ve purchased a new Mac and looked forward to subscribing to SolidWorks, but it’s been a nightmare trying to make my system compatible with their cloud even though I’ve purchased parallels, windows and spent much time with support assistants, so I’m thinking of giving up and using fusion. I’d be interested in your thoughts please only if you can spare the time and would like to ask whether it is possible with the free version of fusion to create workshop drawings ? Thanks, Alex

Welp, this video was helpful. I am shopping for the new CAD/3D software as I am no longer willing to pay the monthly/quarterly/yearly fees, pending how you have things set up. I will miss ESPRIT, but I can't justify them anymore. I have nothing negative to say about them, other then the never ending DUES, which they are entitled. 20 years ago, it made sense with the machines I had and the CNC equipment I was running, but I am still running the daylights out of those machines and machining centers and the software fees is chewing into our budget, almost to the point that we can't afford to upgrade to new machining centers. It is a viscous circle, while trying to be competitive in a dog eat dog industry. Things two years ago were rock solid, but today, we are being killed off, by our own government and nothing we can do about this campaign to destroy the US manufacturing with rules and reg's. Another 1.5 to 2 years, hopefully, the US can get back on track. YES, it is this Biden admin directly that has caused this suffering. Thank you for the input.

There is simply no way that as a retired academic I could afford 360, and the price is pretty ridiculous for a distributed network of makers.

Feb 2023 STEP export is still available.

I'd probably pay $300 a year, but they don't respect the consumer and their lock-in tactics make that clear to me.

NYKNYC, if you don't know how to relate this to this issue then you are already lost.

The one program I use quite a lot is called shaper. It’s based on iOS and uses the Apple pen but has decent desktop applications as well. Great educational programs (free) and is quite powerful from my usage. It’s around 320$aus a year but works very well on ios

Gimme a break. Autodesk is rolling in money - they have to wear eye protection in their offices because of the blizzard of $100 bills flying everywhere.

Hi, i suggest to have a look into selfcad as an entry 3d software but still powerful

Please Blender guys finish CAD sketcher as soon as possible!!!

Adsk even axed new commercial products without providing an alternative, don't depend on it.

See, fusion 3d figured out that I was going to learn about 3d printing, so they decided to start charging money for it. Lol

I love how Hobbyists complain about paying for software to do their hobby, yet are happy to pay for the martials/equipment to do the same hobby. Worst thing software companies do is let products free to hobbyists, whine, whine, whine about a few limitations in a FREE version over a paid version, are they not aware these companies have overheads?

I 68 year old now so it's not going to be s problem for me BUT it looks like I won't be able to leave "granddad files" that my gran kids can look at back in the day before multi lazer printers were so cheap.
Yup they need to make cash but with fewer users less feed back = slow decline.
Just my thoughts and I'm not a fan boy or the opposite. so if you are a fan boy good for you but you won't help the problem just compound it...
He sits back now and waits for the hate mail..

People whinging about restrictions on FREE things makes me laugh.

I'm currently switching to FreeCAD, it's simliar to fusion but without a comfy pillow to sit on. I miss the user friendly design, shortcuts and so on but it's working. There are some good videos from people switching from fusion to freecad.

I disagree with your introduction argument, good products can charge from day one, they don't need a sneaky foot in the door approach 😒

onshape

I almost completely agree with this video angus.

But to say that rhino is very far from being a parametric design program is a complete absurdity, and a manifest lack of knowledge.

What it is not is an industrial design program per se like catia, solidworks, inventor, solid edge, ptc creo.... and others. It is much more flexible and less constrained.

It is a programme that combines the modelling of complex surfaces such as catia (complex curves of fourth and fifth degree), with the drawing of simple elements (lines) such as autocad, it is a programme originally designed for shipyards.

And it has the advantage that mcneel allows to implement tools, almost without any restriction.

That is why it is the program that reads and exports the most formats, and more and more are being implemented every day.

It is the home of grasshopper, the first tool that allows 100% parametric design, not only based on data, but also on programming by code, like phyton and C#. To ignore this is a serious mistake.

You can generate 100% parametric solutions in it, and even machining with robots, 3d printing and generation of virtual g-codes...

This has been copied by others like bentley in generative components and autodesk's dynamo, it is the same, same philosophy, maybe more difficult to handle, because of the rustic environment in the case of bentley.

I think it is a pain in the butt

Just wanted to leave a note saying thanks, your mention of the archive option fixed the problem which made me dump Fuchsia 360 when they introduced the restrictions.

I set all my documents to read-only but I still couldn't create a new project, so I dumped Few sean 360 to concentrate on learning KiCad for my electronics work instead of Eagle. I still had the problem when I finally came back to it, but once I archived everything it allowed me to create a new project.

Personally, I have no problems making my terrible 3D models available on a non-commercial basis (if at all). But it's a bit difficult to do the same for electronics projects. At least with KiCad being FOSS there's worry that I'm breaking the conditions of my license if someone else decides to use my files for commercial purposes.

what counts as a document ? a Project ? and do folders count as well ?

Auto desk gave me a 4-year educational license for Inventor when I was a freshman, I really wish I had renewed that before I graduated…

Great video, I just want to correct that Alibre Atom3D does not support boolean function.

pirate it

I just paid for Fusion called it a day its good stuff and we been lucky that its been free for that long

Very good information. Thanks!

Struggling to sell myself on Fusion 360. After using other platforms for years, I just doesn't seem to have professional capabilities. It's awkward in its simplicity. I have not used AutoCAD products in several years, but at one time was certified in AutoCAD and AutoCAD 3D (solid modelling via key commands), then used Inventor briefly before Solidworks (certified professional) and SolidEdge (terrible IMO). I see how folks (especially makers) would be drawn to Fusion 360 for it's A-Z design to mfg capabilities, but it's still lacking from a professional standpoint. It's a bit had to swallow when coming from that background. It does work nicely with my router though.

10 Active document limit doesn't restrict how many projects you can have. Next to each project, there is a tab "Editable" or "Read-only" that you can turn off and on. If you change a Project to "read-only" you will free up another space.

Have you guys come across design spark mechanical or space claim? Easy to learn and really attractive too! One is free and the other is paid (£2000) one off payment.

and only one tool no tool change

DUDE - JX-9P...... Blast from the past. Wheres your music?

I grew up using solid works, i switched to inventor and now i'm using fusion360
and i've gotta say, inventor was fantastic. I just make no money off anything i design and i can only sell my kidneys once.

2000$ a year 1700$ a year... lol most people still make 40k a year gross. these companies are out of touch. thats how piracy started back in the day with them charging absurd sums for products. we are going back to those times boys

Hi there; any thoughts on Alibre??

Just get the crack version. It’s that easy