this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2023
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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. 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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[–] [email protected] 45 points 1 year ago (5 children)

The problem is that there is no real competitor to fusion. If you think about usability/learning curve

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Onshape has replaced fusion for me, was an easy switch.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

I find Onshape to be much better than fusion.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Isn’t onshape for non-commercial only?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The pro license is like $2000 per year.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

So TheDuckPrince was right all along.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Ya TheDuckPrince clearly didnt look very hard for competitors, onshape is great.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

If on shape had built in CAM like fusion does, I'd switch in a heartbeat.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

SolidWorks for Makers seems like a decent competitor. $48/year USD for now.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I thought they got rid of that tier. Might have to try it out if it's still available.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Seems to still be offered, the license allows up to $2000 profit as well instead of $1000 revenue with fusion.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Nice, someone commented veteran pricing that's $20 a year, which I qualify for, so definitely going to try it out. Thanks!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Yeah, I've used multiple CAD tools, from pro/engineer to F360, but the learning curve of freecad felt like a brick wall.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Yeah, I've done some editing in FreeCAD, but I'm lost at the rest.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Very true, and the reason I went with Fusion in the first place. It's easy to pick up while still being fully featured.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago