Submitted 11 months ago by canthidium@lemmy.world to 3dprinting@lemmy.world
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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. This increase is ridiculous.
It should be noted that it’s still free to use for personal use minus the extra features.
The problem is that there is no real competitor to fusion. If you think about usability/learning curve
Onshape has replaced fusion for me, was an easy switch.
I find Onshape to be much better than fusion.
Ya TheDuckPrince clearly didnt look very hard for competitors, onshape is great.
Isn’t onshape for non-commercial only?
If on shape had built in CAM like fusion does, I’d switch in a heartbeat.
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.
Yeah, I’ve done some editing in FreeCAD, but I’m lost at the rest.
I would love for you to explain how the workflow is any different than in something like SolidWorks? I use SolidWorks in my day job and I use FreeCAD exclusively for my personal projects. It was a pretty seamless transition for me. Sketch->Feature, repeat, paying attention to order of operations in your model tree. What’s so different?
Is FreeCAD’s UI a little rough in places? Perhaps, but a lot of the things that people complain about in FreeCAD are present in commercial software. If there’s one thing that SolidWorks might do better is allowing you to get away with things like over-defining geometry accidentally. It’s more forgiving of lazy modeling.
FreeCAD has improved significantly in just the last few years. There is a good community around it. We need more people using it and learning how to model.
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.
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.
Very true, and the reason I went with Fusion in the first place. It’s easy to pick up while still being fully featured.
OnShape
Just in case anybody doesn’t know, if you’re a US or Canada veteran, solidworks is $20 a year
Will need to look into this thanks!
So if you make 1000$ 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.
And if you make $70,000 in a year from it, $680 goes to Fusion360.
Let’s stay realistic here, mmkay?
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.
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 earn 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?!?!)
If you want a net profit of $1000 you would need three subscriptions
I’m sticking to FreeCAD.
It’s such a bad piece of software I just don’t get how people can use it…
There was a bit of a learning curve but after a few days I found it works very well for my needs.
How?
I spent a lot of time in free cad and am now trying Bricscad. I wanted to use Alibre because it's way cheaper but it's windows only and I couldn't get it running in Proton or Wine.
I like freecad a whole lot, but I couldn't stand the number of crashes any longer :(
Huh, I never had crashes.
Even with an Edu License for Autodesk, I HATE the UI.
Me too. While it’s probably not as good as commercial packages, I’ve yet to encounter something I can’t model. Once the topological naming problem is gone (should happen soon) it’s gonna be a delight to use.
The TNP is problably one of the most infiriating bugs FreeCAD has.
Once that’s gone, i’m sticking to FreeCAD till I get bored with this hobby or I die.
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.
There is going to be a TON of progress next year. I think 2024, freecad will be very usable for hobbyits.
Hey, give us one of those cool privacy respecting links if you don’t mind :)
I’ve just become a CAD hobo or squater you could say. There will always be one ““free”” piece of cad software that caters to the casual 3D printer and I’ve just accepted that they will inevitably raise the price and I’ll just have to jump ship again. But, at least I get to keep all the knowledge and that is what counts.
Uhm, what about Blender?
Blender is not designed as a CAD software. It is for 3d modeling. So you would use Blender to make graphics for a video game, or a 3d movie.
CAD is more for designing things to be made outside of a computer, so 3d printing, CNC or stuff like that.
Blender doesn’t consider the object as a whole, and can leave holes that a CAD setup would handle.
blender can be used as cad software, but for any practical application, you want parametric design.
I wish I could wrap my head around freecad, but we’re just not there yet and we may never be.
May I ask why it is that you say this?
I've got an IQ of 87. So far, tinkercad is basically the best 3d modelling program for me so I can make stuff by using arrow keys to move around basic shapes.
I also have this question. What is so different about the workflow between FreeCAD and other 3D CAD software? If you can do one, you can do the others.
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.
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.
If that’s the case, you don’t need to be paying for Fusion. You should qualify for the free, personal license.
Yeah, I make things for me and family, but you’d be surprised at how many other people would be interested in it as well. I certainly was. I looked at my Thingiverse analytics, and I’ve had 10’s of thousands of downloads of my things. I know those don’t directly translate into prints, but I was shocked at how many people downloaded my designs that were originally just for me to organize my sandpaper, or sift sand or hold my CNC collets and wrenches. . .
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.
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.
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 intefaces.
I’ve searched for this and couldn’t find it. They must hide it well. How well does it run on Linux?
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…
Sorry, I don’t have the slightest idea.
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.
Lol that's worse than Adobe pricing
Autodesk have always competed well with Adobe at screwing over their customers.
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 love synchronous mode for quickly adjusting parts. Otherwise the standard mode works pretty much the same as solid works with some quirks.
And they make it tricky as hell to find the hobbyist license. I really hate this exploitative shit. Same for Adobe.
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 $99/year
Says 48$/year or 15$/month for me.
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
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.
So my educator free subscription isn’t changing?
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.
Juste crack inventor
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.
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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.
overzeetop@lemmy.world 11 months ago
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.
altima_neo@lemmy.zip 11 months ago
A five finger rebate
Delphia@lemmy.world 11 months ago
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?
turkalino@lemmy.yachts 11 months ago
What did they take out of the free version?
overzeetop@lemmy.world 11 months ago
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.