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.
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I’ve been using Solid Edge for a while -it’s very solid once but with 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.
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 $99/year
https://www.solidworks.com/solution/3dexperience-solidworks-makers
Says 48$/year or 15$/month for me.
Yeah, sorry… I think it’s $99CAD but yeah, $48US
No need to apologize, even if it supposedly is the custom in your part of the world. 😉 You still pointed out something that I didn’t know about and for that you have my eternal gratitude. Not much of it, mind, but some of it.
I’ve been considering switching to this but I’ve heard a lot of bad things
I’m sticking to FreeCAD.
It’s such a bad piece of software I just don’t get how people can use it…
So my educator free subscription isn’t changing?
I don’t think so. I’m on the education license as well.
New Lemmy Post: Fusion 360 increasing annual price by $190 USD (https://lemmy.world/post/9087502)
Tagging: #3dprinting(Replying in the OP of this thread (NOT THIS BOT!) will appear as a comment in the lemmy discussion.)
I am a FOSS bot. Check my README: https://github.com/db0/lemmy-tagginator/blob/main/README.md
I don’t understand the point of you. You link a post to the same post, tell everyone the new post is itself a new post… it looks like the only partially useful thing you do is add tags, and in this case it’s literally just the community name in tag form.
Why did someone write you? Why do you exist?
My understanding is that this bot serves no direct utility for Lemmy users, but helps users on other fediverse platforms (like Mastodon) discover Lemmy posts through tags.
Ah, kinda annoying for lemmy users then, but if it’s useful for some then so be it.
You can block it and it won’t show up anymore
The problem is that there is no real competitor to fusion. If you think about usability/learning curve
Yeah, I’ve used multiple CAD tools, from pro/engineer to F360, but the learning curve of freecad felt like a brick wall.
Yeah, I’ve done some editing in FreeCAD, but I’m lost at the rest.
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.
I think SolveSpace and OpenSCAD have trouble with fillets, but FreeCAD should be fine, though as a person with a non-technical background, FreeCAD is still generally miserable to use.
the fillet button 🤯
Exactly the words that I had come to mind lol
I don’t know how long ago you tired this (early versions were, even I will admit, kind of crap) but in the current FreeCAD release of 0.22.1 it’s incredibly easy.
Just select the edge(s) you want to fillet and and press the “fillet” button in the Part Design workbench…
And on the panel on the left you can set the radius. The profile of the Fillet tool is always a 90 arc of circle with the radius you’ve specified.
Or, if you want to get fancy and make your own bespoke custom fillet. Well, you can define its profile in a sketch. Here I just used a bezier to make an arbitrary curved shape. You are defining the profile of the material you want removed here, i.e. the negative space. You can make this as mathematically rigorous and precise as you like.
Then, position it somewhere on the vertex you want to profile and once again in the Part Design workbench, select that sketch, and hit “subtractive pipe.”
From there, you can hit “add edge” to define which edge(s) you want it applied to. You get a preview of the material removed.
Et voila.
I appreciate all the effort you went to, and I can do this as it turns out. Now that I’ve researched what problem I was having, it turns out the issue was that I couldn’t do a parametric offset line in a sketch, which was crucial to what I was doing at the time, so I had to give up on it.
I was using 0.19 at the time, because that’s what I’ve got installed.
I’m curious what a parametric offset would be. If it is what I think it is, I’ve accomplished that with some construction geometry. Add a construction geometry line constrained appropriately (e.g. perpendicular to some other line, particular length, etc) and then use its other end to attach and constrain the offset line.
Yeah, that’s what it is. That would probably work at least for straight lines, which was the case I was doing.
whens the last time you used freecad? theres literally a button for making fillets.
I tried using Freecad as to filet something recently and it told me to look at the error console for more information, after googling for where the error console is, I realized the message to look at the error console was being output to the error console.
There was no more information to be had. It is a UX and functional nightmare, and it is what it is, but the downside is this means millions of engineers are being trained on subscription web sites, and eventually this will be used to both squeeze people for money, and also to prevent people from creating unauthorized or patented parts.
For years, in fact.
I honestly forget, it was such a terrible experience I didn’t give it any more time. I think that the problem was that I couldn’t make it parametric.
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.
Onshape has replaced fusion for me, was an easy switch.
Ya TheDuckPrince clearly didnt look very hard for competitors, onshape is great.
I find Onshape to be much better than fusion.
Isn’t onshape for non-commercial only?
Non-commercial is the free version, with all your parts public.
They also have a pro license with a fee, where your parts are then private obviously.
The pro license is like $2000 per year.
So TheDuckPrince was right all along.
How about OnShape
OnShape is free but explicitly non-commercial if you don’t pay, and it requires your models to be publicly available in a potentially weird way where someone else could make money from your stuff but you can’t. It’s a weird AF licensing setup.
I like their pricing scheme though, because most makers work on open source.
Open source is not the same as, “you are barred from commercial use,” which is why I hesitate with OnShape. At minimum, these companies need to tighten up their licensing terms to be strict but fair.
to wit, Creators have this:
Trial or Free Versions. Trial and free versions of the Service are made available by Onshape. Trial versions of the Service are intended for evaluation purposes, and may be used for commercial or non-commercial purposes during the evaluation period. Free versions of the Service are intended to support (a) creating and editing intellectual property for non-commercial purposes, and (b) viewing, commenting and import/export for commercial or non-commercial purposes (to the extent the plan offers those features). If you intend to use the Service outside a trial context to create and/or edit intellectual property for commercial purposes (including but not limited to developing designs that are intended to be commercialized and/or used in support of a commercial business), then you agree to upgrade to a paid subscription to the Service. Trial and free versions of the Service are otherwise subject to the terms of this Agreement.
but consumers have this:
For any Public Document owned by a Free Plan User created on or after August 7, 2018, or any Public Document created prior to that date without a LICENSE tab, Customer grants a worldwide, royaltyfree and non-exclusive license to any End User or third party accessing the Public Document to use the intellectual property contained in Customer’s Public Document without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Document, and to permit persons to whom the Document is made available to do the same.
Maybe there’s some nuance I’m missing, but on its face that’s total bullshit. You can use the trial version for commercial purposes as long as you don’t intend to KEEP doing so, but not the free version. Meanwhile, you are automagically granting a license to commercialize your files for literally everybody else. Sloppy at best, exploitative at worst.
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.
That’s a more reasonable threshold, and allows some wiggle room if you have an idea that blows up and makes you a few bucks (what is profit? Can you count your PC and printer as capital expenditures? etc etc).
Autodesk is gonna Autodesk, but they should, at a minimum, match that term.
Nice, someone commented veteran pricing that’s $20 a year, which I qualify for, so definitely going to try it out. Thanks!
Very true, and the reason I went with Fusion in the first place. It’s easy to pick up while still being fully featured.
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The new CAD assist feature will save me hours from every setup. If you do production work (metals, plastic injection) fusion’s value is still a hard to beat. Pays for itself a lot of times over.
The prismatic option when converting meshes is the big one for me. I find I am modifying downloaded files so often.
And they make it tricky as hell to find the hobbyist license. I really hate this exploitative shit. Same for Adobe.
So if you make 1000$ in a year from modeling, 680 goes to fusion360
If you want a net profit of $1000 you would need three subscriptions
Just use the same creative^W standard accounting practices that all other companies use. Take Google for example… we all know that they don’t pay any taxes, because they don’t earn any positive revenue. Right?
So I’d like to use the same approach. I would not be the one making $1000. That would be my, um, cousin, who just happens to live in Bermuda. HE is the one making all that money, not me! So I don’t have to pay the $680, right?
(By the way, can I also stop paying taxes and be worth a trillion dollars now? No? Why not?!?!)
And if you make $70,000 in a year from it, $680 goes to Fusion360.
It’s just like rent inflation while wages stay the same
Cost of business is factored into price to the consumer. A single freelance contractor trying to help pay rent and groceries for his wife and 2 kids shouldn’t need to eat the increase at the expense of his family’s financial support, so he charges more for his services.
A big company will also increase their costs likewise, but they already have expenses covered and the extra money goes into stock buybacks and board member compensation packages.
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.
What do you guys use fusion for? I was told to learn it but idk its uses. Im into 3d art and I was gonna use plasticity instead of fusion.
Fusion360 is for CAD, people use it for designing mechanical parts. It has features like simulation, generative design, shape optimization, additive manufacturing design, etc. It is a really complete software for what it does, and that’s why it is a shame that the price increased so much.
For art, you should try Blender. It’s widely used and libre software!
Yeah Im a 3D artist, already use blender, I was told that for mechanical models like game weapons for example, fusion works great. So I wanted to know if I should try.
3D CAD. I use it for designing models to print on a 3D printer. My favorite feature is the design timeline
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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.
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 don’t know exactly how it is implemented, but if I had to guess, it is probably just metadata in the file. I know that when I print out the 2D drawings I make, it puts text in the bottom corner with something to the effect of “This was made with the educational version of Solidworks, Not for commercial use” or something like that. I expect something similar if you tried to open a file made on the educational version on the commercial version, there would be something similar on the screen. Not sure though, since I only have the educational version.
It’s a very sticky watermark. If you open and save a file in educational, the watermark cannot be removed even if you open it in paid commercial version later.
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.
I tried it and made a few things for around the house.
It’s fine, but it’s Invasive, and so cloud connected that I got really fed up with it.
I would pay them the same price for an offline only version.
I’ve searched for this and couldn’t find it. They must hide it well. How well does it run on Linux?
Sorry, I don’t have the slightest idea.
Probably not well. Its drm does some weird shit where it (3dexperience) runs in the background and then launches a web page that has you log in and you launch and update from the browser. I think there’s a way to directly launch it with a shortcut but all in all it just does so much weird shit that i haven’t even tried.
I miss Autodesk Inventor but i can’t remotely justify the price for dicking around with personal projects and solidworks for makers is a pretty damn good deal. Plus SW seems like the industry standard so looks better on a resume? I’m a programmer so it doesn’t really matter but meh.
OnShape might be okay, probably runs just fine on Linux, but i hate that its cloud based. I just want to own my software goddamnit.
One day we’ll have a foss parametric non-destructive blender-level cad suite. FreeCAD and OpenSCAD are neat but not really what I’m looking for.
I’m ranting again…
Can’t say you own any 3d cad software anymore anyway since they all went to subscription only about 10 years ago.
Thanks for the tip, I use SW at work. This would work out well for me.
I use CATIA at work, and it’s funny how both programs are made by Dassault, but have such different interfaces.
Probably bought by Dassaut and developed by different teams
Come, join us: FreeChads
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.
What did they take out of the free version?
It’s been a little while, but they gutted the mesh editing tools in he free version. They also dropped the number of active models, restricted certain file-functions (maybe assemblies…I don’t do any/many), and limited file import/export.
A five finger rebate
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
As a hobbiest who’s relatively new to CAD, I wish I liked Shapr3D more than I do. I want to use it on my Mac but everything is multiple clicks away compared to other software and it seemingly has fewer keyboard shortcuts to compensate :/
Also, this is probably user error but I could not for the life of me figure out how to make the spout on teapot for a Halloween costume in Shapr3d. Spent maybe an hour and a half on it. Ended up installing Fusion360 and had it done in about 30 minutes. I don’t know the term for it but getting an extrusion to follow/form to a bunch of different sized circles in Shapr3d wasn’t doing what I expected.
They do. It’s free for personal/non-commercial use.
